Would you like to have a simple method to know what you are being told is the factual truth?
How about getting out from under the bad feelings left over from reading “news” or “social” media?
After half-a-century of researching the human condition, I can tell you that there are simple ways to verify what you read or hear. And you can be in control of how you feel all day long.
Today, we’re going to let you know how to find out if someone is lying to you or misleading you. And that alone will help you avoid the feelings of mistrust and betrayal we find in our “news”.
Sure, it’s simple to just say “cut out all the news”, but that won’t help when people you trust tell you something they feel is is the gospel truth – but turns out false or fake at its base. It doesn’t matter how deeply they believe in something if it’s based on fiction. Because that is a form of insanity.
Of course, if you can quickly get to the bottom of what someone is telling you, then you can live a far more peaceful and profitable life. Because you aren’t taking wrong turns that upset you or cost you money. And that by itself will help you escape from stress and the emotional problems that brings.
There’s a mostly unknown course that Napoleon Hill created in the mid-50’s and ran until the early 60’s – it was called the “Science of Success” and put the final polish on what he started with his “Think and Grow Rich.”
That course consists of 17 natural principles, which are known in part or completely by successful people. When you read these materials, you can think, “Oh, that’s just common sense.” And you’d be right. But common sense isn’t “common” to all people everywhere. Even between family members. Because no two people have the same experiences and they don’t always get the same “lesson” from those incidents in their lives.
One of Hill’s key principles he called “Accurate Thinking”.
You can use this to find out if what someone is saying is factual:
– A fact is something that occurred, and can be observed.
If you are told something is a fact, then someone had to observe it – even if it isn’t the person telling you about it.
So when you read or hear something, you should be able to verify with that person, or from that source, who it was that actually witnessed that incident happening.
– If you don’t have a source behind that “fact”, you have an opinion.
Opinions aren’t facts. And like belly buttons, everyone has one – but they are worth exactly what you pay for them.
– Conclusions are a third type of statement that you may hear.
They show up somewhere between facts and opinions, but may be closer to an opinion than fact, depending how accurately that person thinks with verified facts.
There are two ways people come to conclusions rationally:
– Inductive reasoning
…where a person lines up a series of facts to base their conclusion from. Such as: if a=3 and b=4, then a+b=7.
– And there’s deductive reasoning
…where a person derives a conclusion by working backwards from a result. Such as: if c=7 and b=4, then c-b=3.
And conclusions are most useful if they are closely based on actual facts. The use of conclusions is to test that model and see if it then steers you toward an observable fact. But where their core data aren’t actually based on verfied facts, then their conclusions are only third-hand opinions.
Take any headline. Is it saying that something occurred, or is it only “claiming” something “allegedly” happened? Or is the entire headline just an opinion or conclusion based on non-factual suppositions?
In any reading or talking to someone, you should be able to ask that person where they got their data from – politely, of course. If they can’t come up with a source, or give a general source without specifics (like giving only a newspaper without naming a particular author or even an article’s title) then you aren’t able to use their data as factual. And this means that any reporting based on “anonymous” sources isn’t verifiably accurate either.
OK, now that you have your facts, what do you do with them?
Hill stated that you need to be able to take your facts and then winnow them out – in order to find the “important” facts. The important ones are those that are valuable to you personally. Because you can take these facts and achieve, acquire, or attain whatever it is that you really want out of life. Those important facts help you attain your goals.
In our modern times, we are surrounded with more data streams than we can easily utilize. You could literally spend all your time just sifting through the massive amounts of data you encounter each day and verifying the (few) facts you’ll find there.
Keep track of the important facts, and do your reasoning with these. That type of thinking is accurate. And your accuracy improves when you practice thinking with the simple principles above.
As you go along finding actual facts to think with, your life will become simpler, and more peaceful, more abundant. Because you are going to start keeping tallies of who is giving you non-factual data on a regular basis. Several “news” agencies and outlets have developed bad reputations for “fake news” reporting. So you can simply avoid getting data from these sources.
The next point is to recognise when you are finding more emotional wordage than factual events in any sentence. This is very common. It is what makes “news” interesting. If people only reported dull, boring facts, no one would want to read anything. And emotional response is probably the entire reason
fiction books and movies exist. All just to provide diversion from the very dull world we live in.
Walter S. Campbell, himself an accomplished fiction writer, described in his “Writing Non-Fiction” that every sentence in a non-fiction piece should contain one part of emotion along with each part of fact. And good copywriters know how to wring exciting emotion out of any pitch for an otherwise dull product.
What you’ll soon find is where certain authors are all emotional pitch and no factual reporting. Sure, there are newspaper columns and whole sites that do all “analysis” and “opinion”. And yes, it’s great to read very entertaining material now and then. Particularly if they sneak in an otherwise unreported fact that might be important to understanding the motivation of certain politicians.
But political writing isn’t always valuable to use in achieving your goals in life. Because those waters are murky with deception and persuasion. Afterall, except for certain maligned voting machines, those politicians need your vote to keep their job – and so will tend to tell their constituents just what they want to hear. And that may or may not include many facts, but will have the kicker at the end telling you to “get out and vote” for them and their cronies. Another sales pitch, in other words.
So, recognising and separating the emotional words that accompany otherwise factual reporting is another tool to use in accurate thinking.
You will begin to find, as you start improving the accuracy of your thinking, that you start feeling more certain about what you’re reading and hearing around you. Of course, you’ll also find out who was trying to convince you were insane – plus you’ll meet a lot of people who need this data far worse than you do.
But life can become simpler as you find facts and weed out non-factual sources. And what you want to be and have out of life becomes simpler to become and attain. Because that is the point to all this – to help you achieve your own success.
Again, this is just one of the 17 natural principles Napoleon Hill described in his long-lost “Science of Success”. I encourage you to search this course out and study them for yourself.
Because, living more simply and more sanely is something you and all your family and associates could use. Some far more than others. Separating the sane from the insane around you will give you a more profitable future.
Try it and see.
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