Sublime

As Seligman explained to Fortune magazine, the people most likely to succeed are those who combine “reasonable talent with the ability to keep going in the face of defeat.”

In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias:23 seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias:24 seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.

The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it.

• Identity greatly influences our behavior. People tend to align their actions with how they see themselves.

Beyond exploring how individuals differ in that need, Kruglanski has demonstrated that we can manipulate it in order to be more attentive and engaged—and to make sure we complete the correction stage in our judgments.

We make decisions all day long, and many of them are emotionally driven. Rarely do we sift through all the available information to ensure we know every fact. And we don’t need to. It is all about degrees of certainty.

“Committing to a specific plan for a goal may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal but may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits.”