Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: A new overarching theme begins — reflection, thinking, and acting. Marc and Jürgen join Dr. Yasemin Yazan for a first approach to reflection: what triggers it, how it differs from thinking, what role emotion and smell play, and why self-reflection can feel like a fight against yourself…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you all. Today we’re starting our new overarching theme, so we want to do a first approach, as usual whenever we start a new overarching theme. Today’s topic, or rather the topic for the coming days and weeks, is reflection, and I’m really curious about all the first impulses that come together here, so we also have the chance to check whether the preparations we’ve made might be missing some aspects that carry relevance and should be picked up. It also helps us, when switching overarching themes, to ease into the topic a bit more gently, to see and gather what first impulses come to mind in this context, and to look at what comes together today in the exchange. So you’re all very warmly invited again this morning, as every morning, to join in and bring your thoughts — reflections, a first approach, what reflection actually is, what falls under it, and so on. We have a recording running in the background too, just a reminder, the whole time. That means anyone who joins automatically agrees that this will be recorded and published accordingly. We have three room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason can of course use the chat to bring in one thought or another. And with that, I’ll gladly mute myself and see what your thoughts on reflection are, and who’d like to open the round with me first this morning.
A very good morning, dear Marc. What are your first thoughts on the topic? My first thought is that I’m with you this morning without coffee, because I had some technical issues, but I’ll give it a try. Good morning, basically — that’s my first reflection this morning. I’d like to approach it the way we said yesterday too — I really picked that up from Jürgen — and do what everyone does: make sure I’ve got “reflection” correctly pinned down, so I looked it up again for myself, and it means checking and comparative thinking-over. And with that I’d automatically already arrive at the term that would have come to mind first for me with reflection — not just thinking, but reflection as this checking and comparative thinking-over. And then the first term that comes to mind in that context is self-reflection.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And with self-reflection it becomes clear that there are different levels of reflection, so to speak. That means we can think in a checking, comparative way in relation to ourselves. What other aspects might there be where we can go into reflection? What other levels are there, for example? We can think about ourselves, but also about other things. But for me, self-reflection was one of the things that changed me personally the most, because through self-reflection I wasn’t dealing with someone else — what does that person think, what do they say, what does that do to me — but rather I first tried to understand why I arrive at certain conclusions. And that self-reflection led to a much, much more honest, and at times more painful, way of dealing with myself. And what I said recently, which made Jürgen laugh so much, was that this self-reflection was more of a battle of Marc against Marc, which is far, far harder than Marc against everyone, or Marc against others.
Yes, I remember. Thank you so much. The battle of Marc against Marc. Yes, wonderful, thank you so much for that. And, well, let’s see — others are invited too, feel free to join, bring in your thoughts, your first impulses, and let’s look together at what different perspectives we can open up, what all comes to mind for us on the topic of reflection, what we can include under it. I find it interesting too, this checking and comparative thinking-over that you mentioned — that immediately brings in the aspect of thinking too, which isn’t our focus right now, because we talked yesterday about how we’ll run through three overarching themes in sequence, and afterward we’ll draw the connections and address the linkage. The second overarching theme we’ll cover after reflection is thinking. So I find it quite interesting that it already pops up directly in the definition itself. Would you like to add something here, Marc?
Yes, that led me to some pretty abstract further thoughts about thinking-over. My reaction to “thinking-over” was, well, what actually moves me? And now here comes a play on words — I thought about what moves me, and what stresses me, what causes stress for me. And what moves me not just mentally, but physically? And I found movement, for myself. And I’ve been keeping that up more again since this year. For a while that wasn’t the case, that I really interrupted my workday. But now, especially with weather this nice, like today — and it doesn’t have to be a long walk. But leaving the computer, the screen, leaving the office, going outside and being in motion, brings me either to reflection or sometimes just to relaxation. And I’ve taken that as a balance for myself. For me, being active used to always be something — I had people like Jürgen in mind, extreme athletes, crazy people, so to speak. Jürgen, you know I don’t mean that badly, but people doing extreme sports, that was never something for me. And I found my own way — being active can just mean 20 minutes of a nice walk, no gear, no sweating, just moving through nature.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And these examples show, to some extent, just as it already becomes clear in the definition — if you think about it, and there’s that word “think-over” again, “thinking-over” has a prefix, namely “over,” meaning reflection is something that has to do with a certain look back, so to speak. The question is, how is that actually in the here and now? Is it always still a look backward, or where do we actually look then? Can we reflect in the here and now, or is that always a past-tense situation? That might be an exciting question to explore too. A very good morning, dear Jürgen — what are your thoughts on the topic?
A very good morning, dear Yasemin and dear Marc and everyone else. I had to laugh again, and it’s always lovely having you on stage — that’s how you start a day, with laughter, dear Marc, and that’s wonderful. Yes, regarding the topic, I’d like to search — this time not primarily for clear-cut terminology, but for the meta-level. I see the entire overarching theme, Yasemin, and I’m sure this is correct, in the sequence reflection, thinking, and acting, if I remember correctly. And if I assume this as a process, that there’s a procedural connection here, then that’s already a topic in itself, I think — that thinking, for example, presupposes reflection, or that acting always presupposes thinking. If I take this as a process and as a big overarching theme, then I ask myself, is there, for a process, a predecessor and a successor, classically, as you learn to ask as a process owner — the process doesn’t start out of nothing, to put it a bit pointedly. If you define reflection, as you’ve partly already done, as thinking, as thinking-over — what actually brings me to think-over something in the first place? And at the end, the acting is essentially the result of this whole process, along the lines of “I acted, done, check.” And I think we should definitely bring two more cornerstones of this process into the discussion or the deliberation. Namely, as the initial point, perception. Perception, in my view, understood as something that runs more in the unconscious and subconscious, the actual initial trigger, meaning arriving at the start through a sensory perception — now I have to think about this. And the question that naturally arises is, is that how it is, and is it always necessarily the case? But I’ll just put that out there. I think that looking at the overall process also requires a look at this perception — again, by my own definition, the purely sensory, more subconscious triggering of this process. And the second cornerstone, after acting, is for me essentially the insight gained from the whole thing. If I was prompted to think, to think-over, if I move from reflection into thinking — the difference for me is that I quite consciously bring in, for example, checking loops, points of doubt, in order to then do something. Then I’d say the process could well be concluded with the acting — I’ve accomplished something, I’ve achieved something. And then the question is, is this acting, and the result of it, also a further contribution to my — quite deliberately not knowledge, but insight. That would be, for me, a first approach to this big overarching theme. So, that was for me this meta-level, without wanting to go into terminological detail and, in particular, the boundaries between the terms. Thank you for listening.
Thank you so much. Then let’s look once more, briefly, at this predecessor and successor, to pin it down more precisely. So the predecessor, thought of as a process, of reflection, if there is one, is perception, you said, understood as a sensory perception that, so to speak, kicks off this process. And the successor is then something coming out of reflection at this point, if we decouple it from thinking?
No, sorry, I didn’t express myself clearly enough there. For me the sequence of reflection, thinking, and acting is coherent — consistently coherent for now. I’m only proposing, for these three terms respectively, perception as the initial trigger, the sensory perceiving, and after these three terms as a supplementary building block, so to speak, insight, with a question mark.
Okay, great, understood, thank you so much. Marc, would you like to add something?
This topic really challenges you. I hope I’m putting your terms together correctly, dear Jürgen. I think, or I just noted for myself, acting without thinking. Most of the time we act without thinking, in brackets, unconscious bias, so out of emotion. Of course we’re always thinking something, but we’re not thinking it over. And that’s, for me, what you just said with perceiving, thinking, and acting — I’m trying to sort these terms out. Of course, we perceive something, but we often act without thinking. And if I have a situation — just as an example — two people run into each other in the city, and someone says to me, sensory perception for me would be if someone says to me, hey, you idiot, what’s that supposed to mean? Now, I’m not physically built to ever get into a physical confrontation, so I’d think it over and think, that person’s having a bad day, just avoid the trouble and let them talk, I have no interest in this confrontation. Someone with a higher aggression potential would probably, in that same situation, if someone said, hey, you idiot, or what kind of weirdo are you, not think at all and act immediately. And for me, thinking, or the distinction, involves consciously thinking-over, and not acting out of past experience or out of emotion. Because when we act out of emotion, there are feelings involved. And that’s hard. We’re always thinking something with everything we do, but we’re not consciously thinking it over. And I’ve noticed for myself that I arrive at different results, and also different actions, when I manage to consciously think before acting, rather than just acting, driven by emotion.
Yes, thank you so much. Let’s actually differentiate this a bit more here, or rather break it down further in our consideration. We said we’ll do three overarching themes — reflection, thinking, and acting — and then afterward we’ll look at this linkage, this process chain again, and make it clear. So I’d rather not look ahead toward insight today, or even the way it’s formulated as a question, but really put the focus more on reflection today. And then we can pick up this aspect of insight when we’re in the acting overarching theme, to see what derives from it. And of course, in the linkage — maybe in the last week, or even longer, I don’t know exactly — when we build the bridges between reflection, thinking, and acting again, we can gladly pick up this upstream and downstream aspect then, while today, since we’re looking exclusively at reflection, or from today onward, we can of course still look at this initial trigger too, because we don’t have a separate room for that, and it connects directly to reflection. Go ahead, Marc.
Yes, this thought occurs to me, dear Yasemin — where does reflection actually originate from? Can it also be an attack? That’s the first exciting point for me. Imagine a relationship, and my partner says, “Marc, you should think about what you did, reflect on it.” In the past — I’m not like this anymore — but in the past I would have immediately found that an attack. Why should I reflect? Everything I do is correct. Everything I do, I can justify. I don’t need to reflect on anything at all. Maybe you’re the one who needs to reflect. And then the question is, when can such a reflection process even take place — when it’s brought to us from outside, or when I decide, I want to reflect on what I did, why I did it, and whether I’d do it the same way again.
Yes, exactly, that’s how I’d put it. But if this reflection process is triggered from outside, as a demand, then I don’t even know whether it can be set in motion at all. I don’t think so.
Yes, thank you so much. And above all, there’s the question of this being triggered from outside through something. We talked about extrasensory perception, for example — here it’s a very active demand, for instance from a third person, from outside. So where exactly do the differences lie here too? Maybe worth looking at that again. Jürgen, would you like to follow up on that?
Yes, thank you, dear Marc. That’s actually exactly the important point for me — finding this starting point of reflection with a view toward a clear terminological definition too. There are so many philosophical considerations in this context that can easily be shorthanded into “thinking about thinking” and such wordplay, but for me it’s really essential to find this cause, because — sorry, if I go back to the entire overarching theme again, as a process of reflection, thinking, and acting — that’s a highly complex process, we all know that, anyone who’s really gotten into thinking, into brooding, and our brain demands a lot in terms of resource consumption too. And I assume, dear Yasemin, and you can surely back this up better, that the brain, from a resource-saving perspective, already applies a kind of sharply defined criterion, I imagine, to say — and now I’ll take Marc’s example — every stimulus that’s brought to me from my environment, and very importantly also from within myself, from myself — I catch some word from your discussion, for example, or in an article, and immediately the little machine up there starts rattling, consuming energy. And that’s, sorry, for me a really interesting point — can I resist this automatism, also with regard to what Marc said, when something is brought to me and I don’t want to reflect on it at all? But I still have to recognize that something is now tugging at me, at my resources, and wants to force me into this resource consumption, this mental one. And, as I said, that’s a really important point for me, not least to say, so what actually is reflection, and what’s its essential content, and also the distinction toward thinking. Sorry if I emphasized that so strongly again.
Yes, thank you so much. And that basically brings us to something we can look at more closely — and I find this question about the automatism really exciting too, whether I can override it. Ultimately it’s a stimulus that comes in, which leads to a process, so to speak — not thought of as a thinking process now, but really thought of biochemically, from our brain’s perspective, that sets a process in motion where various things happen. And we talked once about how learning works and so on. That means, whenever we get stimuli from outside, in whatever form — it could be a demand from my partner, it could be that I’m sitting in some lecture and hear something, but it could also be that I’m walking in the forest and hear birds chirping, that there are sounds, that it’s something I smell, that it’s not just through hearing but also seeing and so on. So really, really different things can be, so to speak, fed into the body as stimuli, and it can also be information, like reading something somewhere, and that then triggers a process. And with this process, especially against the backdrop of energy consumption, which was mentioned too, one of the first tasks our brain actually checks is whether this has any relevance for us regarding securing our existence. That’s the first thing that gets checked. And to check this existence-securing aspect, connections are naturally established. That means, within milliseconds, it’s checked whether I have any reference points to this information, to this sound, or whatever, where I create a kind of resonance. So, is something stored from the past? If certain building blocks are stored, then connections are sometimes established to build a bridge. That means not everything we end up interpreting is necessarily accurate. It can also be, for example — you know this from fill-in-the-blank texts or similar — we complete things even when not all the words or all the terms are contained in the sentence or word structure. And still we piece it together. And these are various units of information available to us. And through these information units we receive, immediately — well, take the word “tree,” for example, now I have to think about it myself — T-R-E-E, four letters, are actually four letters detached from one another. But our brain immediately puts that together within milliseconds and references prior information already stored in our brain, namely, we know this, right, in this constellation T-R-E-E it’s a tree, and actually it’s only four units of information we received, and our brain reacts to it immediately and can categorize it. This categorizing is ultimately important again so we can look and check whether this has any effect on securing our existence, so to speak. To be able to check that, we have to do something with the stimuli that come in. That’s maybe how it is, and we can look at that more closely now and think about it further. Above all, I find this automatism thing really, really exciting in this context, because these stimuli are always and everywhere present, meaning this process initially runs unconsciously, and then the question is what I then do with it, or what my brain then subsequently does with it, and there we connect to various questions, so to speak — securing existence was one, the second is, does this have some kind of benefit for me, and if I can recognize some benefit for myself in engaging with this question, then I start to reflect, and then possibly get into thinking-over too. And what ultimately, in a context-specific way, sets that in motion has to do with the evaluation happening in my brain. That means an evaluation process is also carried out, which ultimately decides what happens with the originally incoming stimulus, which gets processed in our brain network, our synapse network, so to speak — whether information gets passed on, whether it bounces off directly, isn’t let through at all, and so on. And those are the biochemical processes behind it. Would anyone else like to add something here? Marc, Jürgen?
Very gladly, Jürgen. Yes, thank you for these remarks. I feel confirmed in my suffering assumption there. And if you transfer that to the process perspective, where I know my way around a bit better, it’s essentially, dear Yasemin, exactly this preliminary step that actually signals “ready for reflection.” So it’s basically what decides — you put this so aptly — whether this resource consumption brings us a benefit, whether it’s to our advantage, and hands it over, so to speak, to whatever kind of system, and says, okay, now you can start running, now you can think it over and consume resources accordingly. And a really essential example, if I may add this, from this whole sensory range — you mentioned it, with visual perception, a visual stimulus and trigger — I’ve had the experience, and I see it confirmed, that the most memory-triggering sense we have is smell. I’ve noticed this about myself — this might sound surprising to some, but the stimulus I catch through my nose, this olfactory information, very often and very intensely triggers something, namely thinking it over. And quite simply along the lines of “I know that smell, where have I encountered that before?” and then connecting it with retrospective reflection — that was already a topic of yours this morning too — a retrospective look at where this impulse to reflect actually comes from, through a sensory perception. So for me this is an absolutely extraordinary topic area we’ve touched on here. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much. I personally don’t know whether there are any studies that could back that up — that the sense of smell is somehow more intensely or strongly developed — one would probably need to research that a bit more. What did occur to me directly in this context, though, especially in the context of trauma, for example, is that these flashbacks are often triggered through smell too. That means, if you had an experience where the sense of smell played a role, then it can happen, even after years of therapy and having processed it quite well, that within seconds, when a certain scent appears, this flashback can come right back through smell, and you might freeze or whatever, or find yourself in a shock reaction, or flight, whatever kicks in in that case, that it can be triggered relatively quickly again. So that might be an indication that somewhat supports what you just said. But as I said, I haven’t looked into this myself, and I don’t have any studies to reference right now. One would probably need to check to what extent there’s evidence for such connections. Go ahead, Jürgen, if you know something about that.
Yes, I’d of course like to counter that I’m postulating this as fact — it’s my level of knowledge. And if I remember very specifically why and how it was substantiated for me, it was that smell is apparently the only sense that’s completely fully developed at birth in humans. But as I said, absolutely correct, dear Yasemin, all of that needs to be backed up and verified first. But that’s just what stuck with me. And, as I said, I’ve been able to experience that it creates very strong connections for me, and really gets me thinking, even if it’s just, where does that come from, where do I know that from, what’s connected to that. That’s why I can confirm that for myself too.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, do you have any further thoughts on this, or would you like to add something at any point?
I hope this doesn’t drift off-topic, but I was just thinking about it — the word perception came up a few times, and I just arrived at the realization for myself that these walks I take have essentially a bit of yoga to them — namely, I try to arrive in the now with these walks. In this moment, right now, talking with you, and afterward, when I go about my work, I’m always being called on. No threat arises, but everything requires a response, a decision, or I always have to be mentally engaged with something. And this perceiving — I noticed at some point that I’d unlearned it, unlearned simply perceiving things through perception, like Jürgen described — smells, birdsong, what’s the person across from me wearing? Just not thinking about things occupying me in a professional or private context, but practicing that perception again. And for me, this walk — I stepped away from it, I used to exercise for athletic reasons, because I know it’s important, tried to walk at a certain pace — and now this walk has the task, for me, of simply perceiving things that I don’t perceive in my work routine, when I’m sitting at the PC, and that I’ve simply unlearned perceiving certain sounds, because they get filtered out, because those sounds don’t pose a threat. I hear a police siren, I hear a fire truck too, but other sounds — if you asked me in the evening, what did you hear today, there are so many things I can’t answer, just like we can’t, because it has no relevance for our brain. And it’s really a challenge to go outside, really switch the head off, completely off, and just look left and right like a child, oh, look, what a beautiful yellow, or a beautiful green, or whatever. And consciously perceiving this perception again at all helps me later, in a relaxed state, to get into self-reflection more easily too, and I think a lot of thought processes are interconnected with each other too.
Yes, it’s interesting here too, to look more closely at this term perception in this context. What does that actually mean — if I now get a stimulus and automatic processes are set in motion that then decide what I do with this stimulus, which gets converted into information, then perception is basically already an interpretation by my brain, isn’t it? That means, when we talk about perception, isn’t that actually only what happens after certain initial biochemical processes have already been set in motion? That would be an interesting question too, because we have this feeling that when we say “I perceive something,” “I see something,” or similar, but basically perception is already an interpretation by our brain. Jürgen, you’re giving a thumbs up — would you like to add something here?
Yes, I think, sorry if I keep coming back to this precursor, it’s a really essential impact that gets fed into this process of reflecting and thinking, that I think is largely determined by the experiences we’ve had, what actually gets perceived at all. You often experience this, that you get into situations where other people around us perceive things completely differently, or not at all, as a stimulus. So on one hand, the experiences that our brain, which I now know through your expertise, draws on within fractions of a millisecond, asking, was there ever something like this before, is this something new, or can I apply a certain pattern here? And the second thing, besides experiences, is also the personal disposition at that moment — what emotional, physical, and psychological position or situation am I in at that time? So from the range of well-being all the way to under absolute stress, that certainly has a really essential influence on how much capacity I’m even willing to allocate, once the system is ready, to process this perception in a further process, meaning feeding it into reflection and into thinking. So I found that wonderful, how you laid that out, and I fully agree with it.
Yes, I see it exactly the same way. Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, I don’t know if you’d like to add anything else. Otherwise let’s look a bit further, since this is also a first approach and should also serve as preparation for checking the next rooms or room planning, so to speak. What are actually aspects regarding reflection that carry particular relevance, that should then also be looked at in more depth by us? In the sense of reflection, that fits right back in — we also have our reflection rooms. What exactly does this concretely mean for us? Where are aspects we should look at more closely, so we can accordingly check the planning too? Go ahead, Jürgen.
Sorry, dear Marc, if I jump back in again right now, but it’s a really essential point for me, dear all — terminological clarity, with a view toward the next package, namely thinking, in particular. What — and I’m deliberately posing this as a question — is the difference between reflection and thinking? What are the clear-cut criteria between these two terms, or are they even synonyms? That would be another essential concern of mine I’d like to clarify, one-sidedly. What characterizes reflection as essential defining traits, and what makes it different, if it is different, from thinking? Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc?
I’m noticing something else right now, dear Jürgen — I’ll take up the term perception again, and I just perceived, well, I’d assess you as someone who’s very reflective, very thoughtful, who thinks about a lot of things, and at the same time I now perceive that this is a topic that also occupies you emotionally quite a lot. And there you see, once again, everything we do with communication, or what we discuss, when we get emotionally engaged — I’ve felt that less in other rooms, but now I’m feeling it really strongly. So I have a completely different perception of you as a person, because I notice — and that’s exactly the observation and the perception I’ve just made — what it’s like when something really grabs us, when we say, oh, this topic matters to me, this interests me more, then the rational Jürgen, who can explain terms to me, who — I don’t want to say emotionless, but really quite soberly can explain terms — is suddenly quite, quite different. And that brings me back to perception and reflection — when something occupies us emotionally and we decide, not others, when we, or when Marc decides, what occupies him emotionally and what’s important to me, then that’s maybe the first point that plays a big role in reflection too. And then I’m back inward, with myself, and not outward. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And from that we can derive the next question too — what role do emotions actually play in reflection? We could pick that up here too, I find that nice too. So also this impulse-like interplay of what actually happens on the rational level, and then also looking at it again from this neuroscience perspective, because reflection, and also thinking, thinking-over, thinking, appears to us at first to be very, very rational. And to look more closely here at what proportion is actually really rational. Of course, it can be explained from the process flow. But since it also happens, to some extent, within this automatism Jürgen mentioned earlier — can I actually override it? Meaning, since it happens at very high speed, so that at times I’m not even aware at all of what’s happening in the background, in my brain, unless I engage with it — but even if I know it, in the situation itself there isn’t much time. Sometimes it really is fractions of a second, where the stimulus comes in, gets weighed, and a decision gets made. And we’ve talked about this with decisions before too — we often have the feeling that when we think about our decisions, we made them rationally. But basically, many of our decisions, to a very, very large extent, and this is now scientifically established, happen emotionally and only get rationalized afterward, so to speak. That means we then look for arguments to actually support our first impulse, and the decision we made within seconds. And in neuroscience it’s even so, in that field, that it’s discussed whether decisions might not even be entirely emotional, and that we might sometimes just not want to accept that there’s no rational component at all, so to speak, and that it really is only, afterward, a matter of arguing it through. So it stays exciting to wait for further insights and see whether we can find answers to this from neuroscience. So it’s not conclusively settled, but where there’s a large consensus among neuroscientists is that decisions are predominantly made emotionally. And likewise, the question here would be to what extent these emotions play a role, whether I even have conscious control possibilities over that, influence over it, and how that could then be shaped. So a very, very exciting point too, because, of course, against the backdrop that we keep coming back to the foundation of education and say we basically want to establish self-efficacy, the question arises here of how I can quite consciously co-steer this process too, if not entirely steer it alone, but at least co-steer and co-influence it, or have an influence on it, in order to deliberately and consciously steer desired results in one direction or another, so to take on a share of the steering and not just be at its mercy, to bring these terms into the room, perhaps. What do you think about that, Marc, Jürgen? Go ahead, Jürgen.
Yes, you touched on the point that, for me, constitutes one of the essential distinguishing criteria toward thinking, namely emotion. And I’ll venture yet another distinction, for me a distinction from reflecting toward thinking. Namely, for me, reflection is primarily, or almost exclusively, a conscious looking inward at myself — and specifically, consciously, after the unconscious trigger, a conscious looking-into-myself that’s essentially formed from three influencing factors. And one position among those, quite essentially, is emotion — the emotional status I have, that I personally have, that I connect with the stimulus brought to me, whether I perceive it as good or bad. And the second position is experience — we already brought that up as a result, as a position — a recourse, a reflective recourse to experiences I’ve had that have stuck with me and that I can now process. And the third is, of course, the very situation I’m in at that moment. But a really essential point for me, dear Yasemin, as a distinguishing criterion toward thinking, is that here emotion, whatever we define as emotion — now a bit toward the so-called mysterious gut feeling — that this is a really essential, clear-cut component for distinguishing it from thinking, and the second point is this conscious self-reference. Basically, let me put it this way, how do I think right now, in this moment? Now I’m mixing up terms again, but I hope it’s coming across in the right direction. So primarily this self-reference, as opposed to acting, where I then act quite differently and approach things quite differently conceptually. I hope I’ve expressed myself reasonably well. Sorry.
Yes, thank you so much, Marc, would you like to follow up on this too?
Yes, this is really exciting. I watched a documentary last night, and the topic of cyber came up too. And what I didn’t know — I really didn’t know this — and it connects to this thinking thing Jürgen said. Experience isn’t always applicable to the future. And the Russians were the first to launch a satellite into space. And the Americans — that was the development of the internet, actually, the start of the internet, really, because the Americans said, this can’t be, we’re losing our edge as an economic nation, this must never happen again. And back then President Eisenhower — a big commission was formed, and funds were freed up, and President Eisenhower said, I want us to think now about what we can do, what we can counter this with. And the scientists were explicitly told not to fall back on their experience, not on their situation, results don’t matter — just think about what could be done. And that then contributed to the invention and development of the internet. So I didn’t know that background. And what Jürgen just said, about experience and about emotion — that’s also a point, for me, of why an objective discussion between us humans is so difficult. And the key word there is control, dear Yasemin. That’s going to be a really exciting topic, because we always eventually fall back on our experiences, which are individual, fall back on our emotions, which are also individual for each person, and fall back on our situation, which is also individual for each person. And really bringing that to a result-oriented or solution-oriented objective conclusion, I think that’s the biggest challenge in the encounter between two people.
Yes, and the exciting thing is that, on one hand, certain processes and sequences can be explained quite trivially, and yet, because there are different influences, different constellations and so on, a certain complexity emerges from that again, which then in turn limits predictability accordingly. So that maybe also makes clear why it’s so difficult, even when you “understand” certain backgrounds, because the constellations keep changing again and again. It becomes clear that it’s an interplay of various factors influencing things here. We can look at the process or the sequence, and afterward view and explain it rationally. But the moment it comes down to, so to speak, how can I now, for example, override an automatism or something — it becomes difficult, so to speak, to move into predictability, because I always have new constellations, new situations, new encounters with people, with whatever, with new senses, sensory perceptions and so on, new constellations, where it’s never automatically given that if I input A, B comes out, or that it can be planned that B will come out. Instead, it’s always, maybe from the process flow, the same or a comparable one, but nevertheless not predictable in the result — that’s how you could put it. Would anyone else like to add something before we move into today’s closing round? Go ahead, Jürgen.
Yes, you raised a point there that, in my view, complicates this whole overarching theme further and makes it more complex — hopefully not complicated. Namely, that among these individual building blocks the question needs to be clarified, is there a sequential order? Is there, in the sense of a necessary predecessor, that then leads reflection to thinking, or are there always recursive loops? And let me take up this example — now I’ll venture into Marc’s example competence — by saying, we’re both sitting in a car, dear Marc, and I see a sunset while driving. And this trigger, this visual trigger, triggers a reflection in me. And it draws on the gut, so to speak, and draws on experiences and events from years back, and generates the statement, look, Marc, how wonderful this is, I remember, that was the absolute drama 20 years ago, and then Marc says — please don’t take this badly, dear Marc — but then Marc next to you says, let’s rather look for a restaurant at some point, because I’m starving. That’s, for me, I hope this comes across, exactly this difference between “I reflected, I went into my innermost self” and, in doing so, excluded the needs of the fact that someone is sitting next to me who’s hungry, which I should have thought of. Maybe I should have just said, I know you’re hungry, but this sunset is still beautiful. That was just an initial example I wanted to bring up. Thanks again for that.
Oh, lovely, wonderful. And above all, that reminds me of a very comparable situation yesterday evening, where we were shopping for our son, and he was hungry, and was so relieved when the shopping was finally over for him, so we could finally fill his stomach and satisfy his hunger. So, wonderful, a lovely example, thank you so much for that.
Yes, then let’s move, after this shared entry into the topic so to speak, into the closing round, to hold onto a few highlights for you and then start tomorrow with the individual room topics. Marc.
Dear Jürgen, thank you for your example. And through reflection I’ve really transformed, and gained new tools for control, because if I were sitting in your car now — not a few years ago, but right now — the question would immediately arise for me, what does that mean for Jürgen, what does he connect with that, why is that important to him, and the answer wouldn’t come from me anymore, “let’s go eat,” but I’d be aware that you connect something to that, that it holds a certain importance for you. But I only have that because I’ve managed to reflect, and I respect that you arrive at completely different perceptions, and for that you first have to understand the processes, the process flows, the structures. And I always come back, on this topic — I’m sure I’ll mention it a few more times — to pilots, not just being the pilot of your own life, but also a pilot in an airplane. And when pilots board the plane in the morning, they’ve done it a hundred times already, but they always, always, always go through it — a pilot could have 15 years of experience and he still has his checklist with him and says, is the landing gear, is this, is that, going through a checklist. And this checklist, I try, in my mind, when I get into stressful situations, to try to call up my checklist in my head, and then, what’s causing the stress, can I think of something else, is the situation really that bad, can I get out of the situation, and so on and so on. And I hope we’ll discuss that as a topic in this room at some point too, and that means not just structuring the process, but pausing, pressing a stop button, and with these abilities and these tools, we’re no longer just a plaything of our emotions, but become masters of our senses again, and can then make new, and hopefully wise, decisions again.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and that’s maybe already a really, really important pointer with this stop button you just mentioned. So the automatisms do run, but how might I manage exactly, through certain aspects, to find this stop button — to go to a meta-level, for example, to observe in the situation, and so on. And there we’re directly back in the middle of this reflecting, so to speak. And interrupting this automatism that’s happening, so to speak, pausing it, or however you want to put it, in order to, perhaps, within the processes taking place, through a particular kind of observation, steer new results, altered results, desired results, or however you want to describe it, in another direction. Then we’re back in the steering, so to speak. Jürgen.
Yes, heartfelt thanks first, again, for this room and the topic you took up, dear Yasemin. And let me, personally, align myself with what Marc said in his second-to-last contribution, that this topic touches him emotionally. It’s indeed true, it’s a topic close to my heart, because it touches my two meta-levels, or my two guiding mottos, that I’ve carried around with me for many years now, essentially cornerstones of my thinking and my attempt at action. And these two guiding mottos are, on one hand, “I doubt,” therefore I think, and the second saying builds on that and says, “I think,” therefore I am. And that’s why, since we’ve taken up this topic as our overarching theme, it covers an incredible range, a meta-level that touches all of us, sustainably, in our being, in our consciousness, and also partly in our subconscious. And if we manage, and I firmly believe we will, to generate insights for one person or another there, I think that’s a really essential contribution we can make. And I’m really looking forward to that. Thank you again for this room, and a lovely day to you all.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, you wanted to add something.
Yes, I want to say one more point that’s really important to me, directed now toward whoever’s listening. I hope this doesn’t sound too esoteric to you. If I had sat in on this room three or four years ago — because a lot of terms come up here that go in a philosophical direction — I would have thought, what kind of chakra room, or crazy people, is this, and I would have dismissed it, and probably left this room after maybe eight minutes at the latest. I can only ask you, follow these topics, or let yourselves engage with new topics. This topic of reflection didn’t just change me, it really moved me forward in life and professionally too. That was really important for me to add, so that after this opening room, no impression sticks around like, well, I know it’s very, very hard to follow some of the terminology. This room really challenged me too. And I can only say, I’m wide awake, because for me this is both emotionally stimulating and exhausting. I didn’t have coffee this morning and now I’m fully awake. Thank you for letting me share this room with you.
Yes, great, thank you so much. And now it’s high time for your coffee, dear Marc. I think really lovely, valuable aspects came together to start this first approach. We’ll now review one room or another, or the room planning, and based on that, we’ll add supplements too. We’ve planned corresponding buffers, in terms of days too. And then at some point, probably late tonight I’d guess, we’ll start announcing the rooms accordingly, so you’re warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at 8am too. Don’t be surprised, and I won’t make any announcement today for tomorrow’s room, only once our planning is complete, so to speak. So just check back in. In any case, we’ll be live again tomorrow at 8am German time here in Deep Talk with the first topic under the overarching theme of reflection, to get started and, as always, the goal is to keep breaking down the complexity into individual, specific room topics, in order to then re-establish the connections and expand on that afterward. And this time we have a very special situation, as was mentioned several times today — looking at this process chain of reflection, thinking, and acting. And we haven’t taken the overarching theme as one single overarching theme, but broken it down into three parts, reflection, thinking, acting, so that, after we’ve looked at each overarching theme separately — and of course we’ll keep coming back to the connections, as you’ve already seen today, it’s inevitable that we’ll establish the linkage in one place or another along the way — but that we’ll then do this bringing-together again, after we’ve looked at each overarching theme separately. So, this time, a bigger block awaits us again, and I think it’s also really important to look at this from various perspectives accordingly, to keep taking new insights from the rooms together, to hold onto interim results, in order to then bring the overarching themes back together and pick them up again in the linkage. So I’m really looking forward to it. With that, I wish you well, and we’ll hear each other tomorrow at 8am in Deep Talk. Ciao, ciao!
