Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Can you even think at all without experience — however small? Dr. Yasemin Yazan, Marc, Sabine and Jürgen explore how travel, encounters and deliberately chosen environments reshape thinking, why “experience” gets weaponized as political framing, and whether a pilot and an airline CEO actually need the same kind of experience at all…
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 I wish you. Today we continue with thinking and experience. What role does experience play in thinking? That’s the question we want to engage with more intensively today, and in this sense you’re all warmly invited to join and bring in various impulses, thoughts, your own experience values. Just a quick reminder again that we record the room the entire time. That means, anyone who joins is automatically agreeing that the room is not just recorded, but that the whole thing is also published. And we have three small room rules. A profile picture where you’re recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in the bio. And anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, can of course also use the chat today again, to bring in various questions, thoughts. We’ll pick that up over the course of time, provided it hasn’t already been answered, or fits in well. Yes, and with that we want to open the round today, thinking and experience. What role does experience play in thinking? I’ll mute myself briefly and see who’d like to open the room with me again this morning. A very good morning, dear Marc. What are your thoughts on the topic?
Good morning to the group. First of all I’d like to start with a correction. I didn’t have the opportunity to correct myself yesterday, and specifically Sabine said I’d researched well, and the impression arose that I said 95 percent of our thinking consists of beliefs. I expressed myself ambiguously there. I wanted to say, 95 percent of what we do takes place in the subconscious. To what extent and how much beliefs play a role in that, I didn’t research, but it’s important to me to pay attention to such small things, because the same thing happens to me too, that we define and use words incorrectly. So I didn’t research that 95 percent of our thinking consists of beliefs, but simply that 95 percent takes place in the subconscious. But there too, dear Yasemin, you said yesterday that it’s such a thing with the percentages, that it actually doesn’t matter whether it’s 90 or 95, but simply about becoming aware of it. And I’d also like to start with a repetition. I heard a really, really great interview with Gerald Hüther, the German neurobiologist, last week. And that fits with the saying I always say, namely “we see what we want to see.” And he simply formulated it even more beautifully, the way you always manage to do too, dear Yasemin. The world doesn’t simply stand opposite us. It arises in our consciousness and through our consciousness, through the perspective we choose. And so that has something to do with thinking and experience again too. That was the start for now.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And especially for the correction too. And you also said it again. So I think what’s important in this context is not to hold onto these individual values, so to speak, but actually just to pick up again, supportingly, that a certain share does indeed arise from these beliefs, so to speak. And that fits quite well again with today’s topic too, with regard to what you just connected directly, that our world, our perception, so to speak, arises in our consciousness. So that docks onto various aspects. And one aspect of that are the experience values we’ve made over time. So on one hand we talked about beliefs yesterday, today it’s about this aspect of our own experiences we make, and what role that plays in this context. And from that we form, so to speak, basically the image of the world we live in, the perception we move in. And so I find that totally exciting. Do you have concrete examples, thoughts, various other aspects, where you’d like to build on again, dear Marc?
Yes, I’d like — I don’t know if this has come up in these days already. We talked about thinking, and I’d like to bring in a term that’s really, really important for me personally, namely analytical and critical thinking. We also always say questioning, or the analytical and critical thinking, because it occurred to me yesterday, experiences do influence our thinking, and if experiences influence our thinking, then experiences also influence our beliefs over time, and if we’re now together with people — that starts with the news we watch, if we’re around people who are only negatively disposed for certain reasons, then maybe we think negatively too. And I’d told you there was a point in my life where everything went wrong, really everything, 100 percent, where I also made the decision to change the group of people too, so to choose a completely different place. Not because they weren’t nice people — we still have contact and I like them. But I tried to reprogram my brain. That includes sensory impressions. That includes complete relearning. So I started a completely new life and was grateful that I was allowed and able to do that, and decided to start this new life in a new city too. Because if I’m in the same environment, so in the same bubble, I also only ever make the same experiences. And I can only make new experiences and think anew if I meet new people, if I’m forced — forced is the wrong word — but if I simply get new impulses, I don’t know these impulses in advance. So I also let that come at me a bit. And these experiences, we’ve had this topic before too, these experiences of course also lead, depending on which bubble we move in, to us either being foreigner-friendly or hostile. If you have parents like me, my mother, she was born in Budapest, then you’re basically much more open. I lived in London for a year, and I love it — I miss it so much — when I see multiculturalism in the subway. Chinese, Africans, Americans, Australians, I don’t know what. It’s a crowd of different people. I get a flood of sensory impressions and have a laughing face. In Cologne or in Hürth, where I live, someone stands out then, when they’re dressed differently. That doesn’t happen in London. I notice the difference then too, touched by it. In Cologne, in Hürth, if someone walks by really dressed, I don’t know, African — sometimes they’re very, very colorfully dressed with flowers. If they walk past me, I turn around, because that’s like a unicorn in Hürth. In London I don’t notice that, because I only see unicorns. And that makes this city so exciting and great for me personally too. And yes, experience influences our thinking. And that’s why, to summarize again, we can also steer which experiences we want to make. Experience isn’t a coincidence, but we can steer ourselves which experience I’d like to make, and am I ready to open myself to new things.
Yes, thank you so much, and that’s a really great point you’re addressing, namely steering experiences and thereby also taking influence on thinking. And there are two aspects here. You also started introductorily with beliefs, so to speak. That means it goes in both directions. So on one hand the beliefs can play a role, so to speak, that even if I make new experiences or repeated experiences in some way — we briefly picked that up yesterday — that can lead to, even though I have a different experience, based on the beliefs, so to speak, that not necessarily contributing to something changing in the thinking, but that it, for example, gets perceived as an exception, even if it occurs more often, because the underlying belief behind it says something different. And on the other hand, and that’s the aspect you just addressed again, if I know that and steer here accordingly, then I do have the possibility to, for example, check or act differently here. And especially with aspects like, for example, when we’re afraid of something, the best thing against fear of something is to go through the fear, as they say so nicely. That means, that can, for example, also be a traumatic experience or similar. So let’s say, you’ve driven around for a while without a car accident, no idea, and then suddenly have a car accident, a bigger one, and then you don’t quite trust yourself to get back into the car, and then you’ve had a negative experience. And if you wait too long, then that keeps growing, and gets blown up in perception, so to speak too. But if you get back into the car relatively quickly, and go through this fear relatively quickly, and gather positive experiences again, then you basically don’t unlearn what you experienced as a negative experience, but you’re able to overlay the experience with positive experiences again, so to speak, and thereby reduce this fear again, for example. And so, that’s just one example now, I picked that out of traffic, that can also be something like fear of public speaking or other things, but in very many places, where we recognize certain connections, and then we have the possibility to actually make positive experiences here, to take influence on thinking again through positive new experiences we make, and then also on behavior through that. Marc, would you like to add to that again here?
Yes, and gladly. Where do we get experiences from? Experiences relate to experiences, encounters, and people who encounter us. And my main point of experience, one of the biggest points where I draw experience, is travel. Many people go under in vacation. I use the word vacation — that doesn’t exist for me. For me that’s an adventure trip and an experience trip. And I’m looking forward, dear Yasemin, when we get to the topic of thinking and creativity. I’ll just claim for myself that it’s hard to be creative, as a creative person, if I now produce something, so in the fashion area or elsewhere. If I don’t travel, if I just stay in my office, then I already need an insane imagination, like Camus maybe had. But for me, the experience I gather traveling, by having my eyes open and by really seeing things, so observing industry-neutral things, where I think, wow, you haven’t seen that before. And that also means openness again. And vacation or travel doesn’t mean looking forward to warm weather. We now have warm weather in Germany too, or good food. I also get good food in Germany. But really with open eyes, like a child, gathering impulses. And not just looking industry-specifically, but I find it totally exciting how individual industries change. But that’ll become such a room, I’ve already prepared that, I’m totally looking forward to the room when we get to the topic of thinking and creativity, because travel is such a special gift and experience, and travel also led to me surviving Covid, because if I hadn’t traveled, I wouldn’t have seen many things in Great Britain, and I don’t know if I would have survived Covid without the London trip, because through the experience, I don’t know, without London I found new products there, for example.
Yes, we’ll definitely get to this aspect of creative thinking separately again. With regard to the experience, the examples you just picked up, things like travel, that makes clear too that the diversity of experience also plays a role in thinking, or in having influence on thinking, so to speak. That means, I can indeed have experiences in certain areas and a lot of it, or also have diverse experience in different areas. If we also connect back to the fact that especially with regard to our neural network that plays a really essential role too, both in how old we get, how mentally fit we stay and so on, the better this neural network is developed, so to speak, and that it also has something to do with how much we learn in different areas, and how we activate this neural network again, so to speak, so ensure that the strands stay elongated and don’t shorten again after 24 hours. Then it also becomes clear here again, also here in this context, that this neural network plays a role in experience too. That means, the more we enlarge the network in various directions through different experience values we have, in different fields and areas, the more we can then of course also draw on that, in quotation marks, in this thinking. And there we have this keyword again that I’d like to pick up again, expanding horizons. The thinking — that’s what we’d talked about yesterday, among other things, that if I stay within my horizon, in my own, in my own bubble, then it becomes difficult to spin the threads outward, so to speak, and be able to dock somewhere. That means, with experience it ultimately also plays a really essential role that I try not just to stay in my area, where I know my way around well, where I’ve maybe made experiences so far, but to expand these experiences too, to be able to expand my horizon of thinking too. What do you say to that, Marc?
Yes, I fully agree with you a hundred percent. And I’d like — because that’s currently occupying me, so please excuse me, but it fits our topic. You just addressed activating neural network. And my father is currently very, very strongly affected by dementia. And my father achieved everything in his profession that you can achieve. I personally have a problem with the word workaholic. So if there’s only work, and I can tell you why too. There is — these are also just assumptions, always just assumptions — I’ve observed several people who invested so much time in their work, so much time, I mean also the weekend, worked through 24 hours, 22 hours, and who then in retirement age had all foundations, life foundations, withdrawn from them. And my father is an incredibly intelligent man, to whom I owe very, very much. And at the same time he didn’t — in the private area, so he didn’t manage to build up another network, didn’t manage to withdraw for other things. I’ve observed very, very much, also with people who were in a similar situation, that if you have the attitude that everyone else is stupid — that’s not meant arrogantly, but I’m not interested in news, I’m not interested in books, I’m actually not interested in anything anymore — work gone, life foundation gone. And so I also started for myself, since I’m also more or less a loner, you might not believe it, but my only social contacts, besides my partner and my customers, are here at Deep Talk. And I’ll really force myself, and I do that too…
Can you repeat that, dear Marc? You just weren’t audible for a moment.
I’ll force myself — that was the last thing we heard. I make an effort, I really have to make an effort. I’m a loner, I really have to make an effort. I no longer forget birthdays now. I call other people. That has no professional background, but simply, I want to hear other stories, I want to get other impulses, I want to have other experiences. And the main reason is that I’ve found, if you’re a workaholic, if the profession gets withdrawn, if the working world breaks away once, there’s no more reason to talk with these people, because there’s no more common ground. And for me, personally, part of thought hygiene now includes knowing a Yasemin, having contact with a Sabine and with a Jürgen, with whom I want to talk about completely different things. Because I don’t want to get into the situation of saying at some point, I don’t work anymore, I don’t do anything anymore. What do I do all day now? I don’t have anyone anymore. I can’t exchange with anyone. And what you said, this neural network, that gets activated by very, very different impulses. And I said this week already, man is not an island. But for that to be so, you also have to do something for it. That’s sometimes hard. But these social contacts with you, and also through this effort — it’s not a compulsion, I enjoy it — but this making myself aware that man is not an island, and that you have to do something for that,
that helps me a lot, and leaves me with a really, really good feeling every time after a contact.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so, so much. And I’d like to use the opportunity again to invite the others too, so we can maybe get various, further different perspectives on this too. So thinking and experience, what role does experience play in thinking, is the question we’re engaging with today, and the more of you join, the more perspectives we get too. Maybe you have further examples, further experiences you’ve made yourselves in this context, or other trains of thought, or also aspects where you maybe see certain things differently, so definitely also opening up new, different perspectives on the topic. And I’d like to briefly repeat that we record the room the entire time, and the whole thing also gets published, that means anyone who joins is automatically agreeing to that. Then we have three small room rules. A profile picture where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in the bio. And anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, can also gladly bring in a few thoughts or questions via the chat. Sabine, a very good morning. What are your thoughts on the topic? Are you… can you hear me?
Now we can hear you, yes.
Exactly, for me it was just… I had to just step out of the WiFi, because there was an interruption on your end just now.
Yes, thank you, Marc. You’ve pulled me onto the stage briefly now. But I can’t stay long, because I have an appointment at half past eight, but… first of all, to briefly agree with you. I agree a lot with the idea that you sometimes just have to give yourself a bit of a kick in the butt to step out of your own bubble. And afterward you’re actually quite surprised that you were positively inspired. I can say exactly this experience now, for example, with our exchange student. I was approached very negatively by the family about this, how do I get the idea to now take a child for a year. You have enough to do, you’re out and about a lot, why do you want to tie yourself down with something like that? And I said, I simply want to give something back. It’s okay, I’ll do it. Then I got teased in the direction of, you and your exchange student, watch out you don’t make a full daily schedule out of that. Now he’s been with us for two weeks. Well, with the German, that’s not quite working yet. We currently have this German-English mix here. We have new cultural surprises every day, whether it’s about the food. But we’ve also had the experience, if you communicate correctly, you also get the correct answer, because you just assume with your own children, if I throw out the chunk, they’ll also understand what I mean. That’s not quite it either. Now just the last step is still missing a bit, but I think, Yasemin, you’ve got that planned anyway. You also have to get from experience into doing. Yes, great topic. I just thought about it — can I actually think without experience? Don’t I always have to make some experience to keep thinking, however small the experience may be? But I think both are almost intertwined with each other.
A wonderful question, thank you so, so much. Yes, a nice example with the student, with the exchange student at this point too, this maybe always having to overcome yourself again, or also asking yourself the question, what might also be something where I can gather new experiences? And there we’re then in the implementation, directly at doing, or acting accordingly. We’ll get to this overarching topic, and we’ll look at that more closely then too. And for today really exclusively thinking and experience, so to speak. And we’re already connecting to various points now too, I find that wonderful at this point. And yes, Marc, I’d like to pass the question on to you gladly. Can I actually think without experience, even if it might be ever so small? What do you say to that?
I think, I’ll say another saying again, we see what we want to see. I can think without experience. At the same time experience is important, because experience also helps us. Experience also promotes gut feeling. And I’ll quote Andreas Wollermann and brought another example with a smiling face. If we make decisions for the future with the experience of the past that we’ve made — that would then be our gut feeling — we have exactly one of the situations we now have, because the generation that’s now becoming grandma and grandpa, those are my parents, they had the experience, boy, learn a lot, that’s how you should do it. If you learn, you can study. And if you study, you can go to a big company. And if you go to a big company, then you can always earn a lot of money, can buy a house, can stay in your place forever, then you can have a good life. That doesn’t fit anymore at all. This experience model is currently collapsing. The big companies might go away, and we already had this topic, just as an example, if you also pass on the experience of our parents, if we pass that on to our children, if you study, then you’ll do well, and as I said, nothing against studying, I find education really, really important, we had that topic too — but the parents then also said, when you came home — that was once a topic — you drop out, dad, I’m dropping the studies. What are you doing? Are you crazy? No, I just don’t feel like it anymore. I’m founding a company now. We have a garage, I’m building something now. Then I’ll just assume that 80 to 90 percent of parents still throw their hands over their heads. Those are also experience values of the parents, and that’s correct, because we see what they want. Who then say, boy, don’t do such crap. Who knows if that goes well? Who knows if a product is even needed at all? And that’s why my basic answer is always to the thinking. Not the thinking alone, but analytical and critical thinking. And that’s why encounters with other people are so important, that we get out of our bubble and then can also tread new paths. Whether those are always right or so, you say it so nicely, we can only understand and consider the past from the future anyway.
Yes, this aspect is interesting. Can I actually think at all without experience, even if the experience is ever so small? So it may well be that I’ve had experiences in another area, which leads to some thinking taking place, so to speak, thinking happening. And possibly I have no experience in this particular area, but in other areas some experiences that, for example, lead to prior assumptions or similar accordingly. But somewhere there has to be a point, so to speak, where I dock. And there I’m simply curious now what Jürgen says to that. A very good morning, dear Jürgen.
Good morning, dear ones. Yes, that was exactly the trigger I was almost waiting for. Dear Sabine, your question, if experiences influence thinking, can you then simply blank out these experiences? And I’d say, if I had to say it in one sentence, I’d say, you’re honestly trying to, and specifically, in my opinion, especially in the scientific context, to make a more or less abstract way of thinking — for me this term is causally connected to this question — an abstract thinking a topic, to develop further scientifically. So this conscious detaching of influencing quantities from the past, a thinking beyond the here and now into scenarios that as far as possible exclude these influences you know about from experience. I think that, especially in the field I work in, economics, there are indeed very good model variants and scenarios and techniques you can learn to get quite close to this abstract thinking. But I think two essential positions counteract that from the outset. And namely, one is — we had this topic a long time ago already in the environment of science, scientific work, objectivity — just the question, which question science asks to start a scenario. Just the question already gives a direction. An orientation, simply based on the selection of what I even ask. And the second point, which for me, for our today’s topic, is really important, in the area of experiences, is that, this is my opinion now, not only experiences influence what we think, but also influence how we think. And so I said at the beginning, you’re honestly trying to pursue as abstract a thinking as possible, especially in the scientific context. But I think we more or less unconsciously import from our experiences also very many, let’s call them beliefs, unconscious bias, theoretics, so presets, into the way we think. And that shows in the model variants, which then get sold externally as objective, detached from influencing quantities. That basically counteracts these approaches for exactly this reason, because they have a prior-experience-determined influencing quantity that gets incorporated and brought into this thinking. That’s my opinion on that. In summa summarum, abstract thinking in 100 percent form, in my view, a really big question mark. I don’t want to exclude it, but from my experiential environment barely achievable. Thanks for listening.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and especially the docking in the scientific context I find really exciting as an example here. Maybe you have another example for the way we think. So not just what we think, but also the way. Maybe you have more examples, or one example, that we can pick up, to maybe make that more illustrative too. Maybe you can briefly think about whether something concrete occurs to you about that too. Gladly, Jürgen.
Yes, I’ll gladly dig that up. So I’ve been, in the past, I’m also now a strong proponent of the scenario method. And without going into detail too much, but one of the basic orientations or basic forms, basic structures of the scenario method says that you need to build a positive scenario, a negative scenario, and from that a guiding strategy, a guiding scenario is then derived, under fertilization respectively of the positive and the negative. So quite clearly with regard to the evaluation. But already the first step, dear Yasemin, that’s an example of where I also brought in my experiences, is quite trivial. Namely, what I see as positive and what I see as a negative scenario. Positive or negative, I see from my experiential environment. That doesn’t have to be your experiential environment. That’s, for me, right at the start, with the approach of the model, basically just like a scientist who asks a question — no, quite evaluation-free asking a question — the way, and with which content, he asks the question actually already gives a direction. I hope I could sufficiently meet your question or your request.
Yes, absolutely wonderful, thank you so, so much. And I’m happy about what you picked up too, because scenario thinking will also come separately as a room. And we also have constructive and destructive thinking next week. How can constructive and destructive thinking be distinguished? Exactly with this thinking approach, who actually determines what’s constructive or destructive, for example. And there we had this positive and negative scenario now at this point, and it fits wonderfully in there too. That means exactly here we’ll also build the bridges, so to speak. So I’m really looking forward to that too, that then, with these rooms, the first interweavings already become obvious, that we can pick up here. Marc, would you maybe like to add here again too?
Currently, and very gladly, yes. I’d like to bring the word experience now into connection with framing, influencing, and specifically consciously — that keeps confronting us, and especially recently very much in politics, that the topic of experience is consciously used to influence us, in my opinion to frame us, and I’ll tell you now which example I see for that. This context keeps coming up, saying, if someone has no experience, then they can’t think the right thing, they lack experience after all, so they’re not allowed to do this job, because they don’t have this experience, and that gets used as framing as a really, really strong tool, where everyone says, he’s right, if he has no experience, he’s not allowed to do that. Then examples get drawn on, and I understand that too, for example a pilot. If I were to fly away tomorrow for business, and Jürgen would tell me, hey Marc, the pilot, that’s a totally nice guy, but he’s never flown before, he has no experience, but also no knowledge, would I get on that plane and wish him good luck? I’d get off immediately, cancel my trip, and of course not get on a plane where the pilot has no knowledge and no experience. The other question now is, if we see the big picture, does the head of this airline, does he have to be able to fly himself, to successfully lead an airline? I think, no, he needs completely different things. You said something really great last week, dear Yasemin, if we’re only surrounded by experts, only by experience, then I also only act within the scope of my guardrails. And for me, the head of an airline doesn’t need to be able to fly. The pilot does, very much so. Let me think about that a bit more now. Various interesting connections.
Jürgen, would you like to add here again too?
Gladly, and back to the origin of Marc’s remarks, namely again about the term experience. I think that this term, I always say, I’m of the opinion that this term has a foolish occupation. And specifically, if we say this person has a lot of experience, then that associates, from our view, that they’ve experienced a lot in a very specific situation. We know in most cases — and that’s the example from Marc — but we don’t know, and that’s the difference to Marc, we don’t know what they made of these countless experiences, how they brought them in for themselves, for their employees, for their social environment, in a positive or negative form. Because experiencing, and that, I don’t know anymore, I think Marc also said it at the beginning, with regard to an alleged definition, what is experiencing at all, is basically actually a being in a situation. Situation, I experience something. But the decisive thing for me is what I make of this experiencing. And there the next stage splits off, exactly in this question we can also switch off, switch off our experience in thinking. It splits off into this sub-area. I can consciously absorb this experienced thing for myself, recognize it — I have to recognize it, that’s a good experience — and also internalize it. But I can also reject it as null and say, yes nice, that I saw this city now, but I actually shouldn’t have had to. Someone else next to me might say, really great, example London, so many hip people, that’s for me an experience marker I never want to know again. So the decisive thing for me is, of course, the starting point, the experiencing, the being in a situation, but really important for our thinking is what we make of it. And there we’re back at the second point where this branches off for me, that I say, yes, I’m of the opinion, not the conviction, the opinion, that you can consciously steer that, that I can consciously reject or accept something as an experience value. But there are definitely very many influencing factors happening in the unconscious that still process this experience, namely with regard to our — and now we’re back at our topic — receptivenesses based on unconscious bias or heuristics, without me noticing. Thanks that I could bring that in too, dear ones.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and now it also gets more complex and exciting again. You remember these learning processes we talked about, with the various memories, so to speak, so the senses we take in from outside, which get converted and then passed on accordingly, passing through various — the ultra-short-term memory, the working memory, and the long-term memory. And with the ultra-short-term memory the first decision is basically already made, whether it gets processed further or not, of course in exchange with the working memory and the long-term memory. And that of course now also plays a really special role. So I’ll lift what you just said, so to speak, onto another level now, to illustrate it again. That means, we basically have an experience we make. And
now the ultra-short-term memory decides, in comparison with working memory and long-term memory. An evaluation gets made on one hand and compared, what information do I have already stored, so to speak, also in long-term memory. And based on that it’s decided what happens with this information that came in, what gets done with it. And here we have this directly, both the unconscious bias as well as the prior experience, which plays a really essential role in this context. Because on one hand it can now bounce off. So it can be that I had stored experiences before that lead to the ultra-short-term memory coming to the result, this has no relevance for me, and blocks it, so to speak, directly. And there we’re exactly at what I said earlier, with the — also, for example, if I have certain beliefs that are anchored, and I maybe have a new experience I make that’s actually opposite to what I’ve so far stored as an experience treasure, so to speak, then that gets dismissed, so to speak, as an exception or whatever, gets directly bounced off, in quotation marks. Even though I possibly repeatedly make this experience, but it just doesn’t fit with what’s stored with us in long-term memory. On the other hand, though, I can — and there we’re at this active steering process — if I know how that functions and runs in the background, I can of course also counteract that to a certain degree. Certain processes are just so subconscious that I don’t even realize that at all. But at least whenever I notice that something isn’t getting through or similar, I can steer that to a degree, by, for example, quite consciously putting myself in a context, quite consciously getting to know people or cultures, where I notice I have some kind of aversion, for example. Or I have certain fears in the context of something I’d like to try out, but somehow don’t dare to. And here then really quite consciously actually switching on the thinking, so to speak, and quite deliberately acting accordingly here too. And something like scenario thinking can also be used here, in the sense of, for example, what are the various scenarios that could occur if I did this or that? So in the positive sense, in the negative sense, and so on. And what’s the most likely case? Etc. And so we now have all these docking points here again too. Marc, Jürgen, would someone like to add to that again?
Gladly, Marc. Yes, I’d like to repeat again, namely, experience shapes personality and a person’s understanding of the world. So experience shapes understanding and how we see the world. Experiences arise through personal encounters, through learning, through travel, and many, many other sources. And the point I simply made was about the pilot, and about why a head of an airline has to be able to fly. If I’m now an excellent mathematician, but afraid to go outside, then my experience is limited. Then I’m the best man in the room who can calculate something. But then I’ll lack the experience of learning, of traveling, and other sources. And what we don’t know — probably nobody can directly judge that — which experience is explicitly necessary to be able to solve a task? And there I’m simply of the opinion, and I can’t prove it scientifically, but I’m of the opinion that a certain profession doesn’t exclude that the person, so these sources from which this person drew the experience, which I don’t know. And I also don’t know in the end, and can’t prove scientifically either, which experience is the most important experience to solve a task, whether in politics or in business, to complete satisfaction. You’ll probably always only be able to say that in retrospect. And that’s the dangerous thing, and the framing. It was just important to me in the room that I keep noticing this currently, especially in society, in dealing with each other, that thinking is so complex, and we’re addressing feelings, emotions. And someone just did it in three sentences, someone has no experience, so someone is incapable and can’t do a certain activity as a business leader or as a politician. And you’d still have to question, which experience does this person have? Do I know all the experiences? Do they need that — the critical question is, do they need this experience to be able to solve it? Couldn’t it be that there are people on the team who can solve experiences, who are really total experts in that? But for us humans it’s always easier if we wish that a person, whether now as a business leader or as a politician, has made all experiences themselves, so personal encounters, learning trips, and all other sources known. But the critical question would just be, do they really have to know all the sources to be able to make a good decision? Or can they also, if they can reflect — maybe it’s enough that someone can reflect and think well, can share the experience with a Yasemin and say, dear Yasemin, you’ve convinced me, I’m ready to open myself, I’m ready to overwrite the information and the experiences I’ve made so far. So I’m an open person, so the question is, can an open person possibly make better decisions than a person who insists on their experience, which isn’t wrong, because experiences are never wrong, because we see what we want to see.
Yes, I find that quite interesting in this respect. We’d probably have to open up a separate room for that at some point too, something like professional experience, or something we look at specially. But especially in our time it’s discussed very, very much and very often in various fields of activity and professional fields, what role experience plays. And often we tend to say, the person who’s in a professional field, no matter which one, so certain techniques clearly have to be learned and so on and so forth, and also needs a certain experience. And especially with job postings or such, you see that basically, quite pointedly said, that actually everything possible is supposed to be present. Best case, the person is quite young, has a lot of experience, and has already experienced everything possible. And that doesn’t really fit with a realistic image of a person at a young age, in quotation marks, who can’t have already experienced that much, so to speak, in quotation marks. And really always questioning again here too, whether that’s always so fitting. Because per se we’d all directly nod along to that, no matter whether we’re talking about a pilot, talking about a lawyer, talking about a doctor, and so on. It needs a certain experience in this field. But how much of that is, in quotation marks, actually learned technique, which then, for example, gets learned within the framework of training, to deal with certain situations, whether that’s now a flight simulation. That feels damn real for our brain too. So it can’t distinguish whether that’s now sitting in an airplane or in such a simulator, so to speak. So that’s already very, very comparable to the real situation, because our brain can’t distinguish that. And at the same time, though, there are always areas where we transfer that, in quotation marks, and maybe sometimes also question it too little critically, in quotation marks. Or, well, maybe the experience also has to come from somewhere, in quotation marks, and it’s not life experience without technique that then works — with technique I now mean the learned methods and so on, depending on the professional field — but both are necessary, that means on one hand within the framework of training it has to be ensured that not just technique gets learned, but also that experience can be gathered. But without each other that doesn’t really work at this point. And someone — let me pick up the coaching field here now — someone who exclusively only has life experience, but can’t show experience in dealing with the techniques, they still won’t become a good coach. That’s why my very personal view at this point. But that’s a really, really exciting topic, I find. But let’s just leave that standing for now, and I’ll see whether we ever have the opportunity to maybe pick up this topic separately too, against the background of professional experience, independent of thinking, so to speak. If you want, you can gladly add briefly here too, but then we’ll also return, so to speak, to thinking and experience. Jürgen, Marc, would you like to add something to that? Gladly Jürgen and then Marc.
Yes, the topic is — sorry if there’s now an afterthought, has developed in another direction now — I actually wanted to give feedback on your second-to-last statement, and thank you again explicitly for the transition into the functioning of the various thinking, or memory processes. And for me the initial that popped up was, what can we do, we ourselves first of all, to correct, under certain circumstances, these conscious dangers, influences of experience on our thinking, what we think and how we think. And there I wanted to gladly pick up life, take a connection to our previous overarching topic, namely really essentially reflection, this going into yourself, and in this case as a purpose, under certain circumstances, to develop new perspectives, to question old positions, and what’s the necessary precondition for that? The precondition for that is knowledge. I first have to know what power these experiences can actually have over me. And then we’re back at this topic of education. And so, that’s what I wanted to give as feedback to your remarks, because it was a great trigger for me to form this meta-level to our today’s topic. Thank you.
Yes, great. Thank you so, so much. Marc?
I’ll go into that, I’ll connect immediately, dear Jürgen. And a sentence occurs to me again that I already said this week. But you really have to think about that for a long time. Do you think your experiences, or do your experiences think you? And then we’re back at reflecting and critical thinking.
Wonderful, thank you so, so much. Yes, I don’t know, I just looked into the chat, I don’t know if I had audio dropouts or whether that was just pauses I made while speaking, honestly. Either way, I’ll gladly check again whether there’s maybe something with the network today. Thanks for the feedback via chat in any case. Yes, then let’s gladly use the opportunity, dear ones, to actually go into wrapping up at this point. I think that’s a really, really good point. Now we’ve nicely brought together the aspects we’ve gathered, and can gladly say again what our highlight from the room today is, and then I can gladly announce the room for tomorrow too. Marc.
There are simply so many topics and impulses that came up that I can’t summarize it, but it’s really important to me — I’ve said this before too — with thinking and experience, because both are complex, that we also have to know — Jürgen just said something really great — get a toolset in hand, that we can also take something away, and this analytical thinking and critical thinking, those are also first just sentences, but if you don’t know how it works, and what personally helped me, what always helped Marc, were really simple questions I never asked myself before until I turned 50: why do I think what I think, and can I also think something else? I never thought about why I think what I think, because my decisions were always right. I felt that. That came from the subconscious. And actually first calling that from unconscious bias into consciousness, saying, why do I think what I think, and is that right, and can I also think something else? If you just remember these three small points, that’s where incredibly much started for me, opening new worlds, even though these new worlds were always there. I just didn’t see them, because in the past I only saw what I want to see, and that was still so, and these simple techniques just helped me now to simply open a new door, and that also requires openness again.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Jürgen.
Yes, let me first heartily thank Marc today, that he’s actually always the show opener, and with his remarks, which I appreciate especially because they’re taken from life, gives a direction that keeps proving true, thanks also to your moderation, leading to a very fruitful and very result-rich togetherness. My heartfelt thanks for that first of all. I’ve secured for myself, as a consideration position from that, I said or I asked, decisive is what the experience makes of us, or what we make of the experience. And there I wrote down two terms for myself, which I also find quite interesting. Namely, on one hand it can be opinions, but on the other hand it can also be convictions. And just these three delimitations, I think, would be worth another room. But that’s my outpouring for today now. Dear ones, heartfelt thanks for that. I now have something to reflect on again, and that’ll probably fill most of the day. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so, so much. I also found that quite a lot came together again today, especially again with the bridges we could build, both picked up from the past, so to speak, as well as in preparation for what’s coming in further rooms. So it’ll stay exciting, and I’m really looking forward to it too. Tomorrow we’ll look specifically at thinking and learning again. How do thinking and learning relate? And maybe we can pick up aspects like neuroplasticity and similar here too. So here too gladly join with various thoughts and impulses, and see how the room develops tomorrow. We’ve already done quite a bit on the topic of learning, with reflection and now with thinking too. And that we now, so to speak, look tomorrow too, against the background of this whole base we’ve already built for ourselves, then also dock onto various directions again, and be able to hold onto further intermediate insights for ourselves too, and see how the whole thing then develops further accordingly. And so I’m looking forward to welcoming you again tomorrow morning at 8am here. If you have time and desire, gladly join, and also a warm invitation again to the others in the room who are listening along. Well, yes, on one hand, the more perspectives we have, the more exciting the whole thing becomes in the exchange too, and richer in insight, and on the other hand, gladly prepare for it too. So you also have, against the background that you know which topics are coming up, definitely also the possibility to maybe research one thing or another a bit online, think about it in advance, or also just spontaneously join, because with us there’s first of all no right or wrong, but we pick up the points and then work our way along in exchange, so to speak, and sometimes questions come up, sometimes not all questions get answered, we just let those sink in and such. So in this sense I think this is a nice room, where we can really develop one thing or another here in exchange. And the more perspectives we have, the more we can also develop docked onto that. Don’t think along the lines of, what I’d say now isn’t that important, in quotation marks. Because we’ve often experienced this situation, that one person said something, which then brought up some memories for the other person, etc., so that examples then got picked up that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of beforehand, but were then incredibly enriching for this exchange, to then also, against the background of the reflection we’re doing together here, hold onto intermediate insights accordingly in exchange with each other, and not that someone would now, so to speak, have to answer any questions or similar. So I’m simply happy if we can motivate here too, so to speak, that we’re also allowed to get to know new further faces on the stage, and we very often have people in the room where we see that it’s always often the same people, but where we have no feeling at all for who’s actually behind that, who’s hiding behind that, so that we can get to know you better too. In this sense, I wish you well, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow, to the topic of thinking and learning. Until then, ciao!
