Tools for a Mental Blackbelt
Note: For readers especially pressed for time, key takeaways and action steps for this post are provided at the end.
In schools today, kids study a small number of subjects—math, reading, social studies, science, etc.—in large part to learn how to think; in the future, learning to think itself will be more the focus, which will in turn support kids in more rapidly learning new subjects and skills.
This shift will be the result of a confluence of factors: the reality of instant access to an infinite amount of information, continued advances in brain science, and the way our rapidly changing world prioritizes the ability to efficiently learn new things.
In the meantime, we can bridge the gap by exposing our kids to great thinking tools, including mental models, mindset shifts, and other powerful concepts for developing their minds.
Think of these mental resources like the different moves that a martial arts student learns on his or her way on up to earning a black belt.
The mental maneuver I am sharing today serves as a good example of what I am suggesting. It was taught to me by Ted Braun, a great teacher in a graduate writing program I was part of years ago, and it has served me well for decades since.
What is so compelling about it is that it is a simple concept that, once learned, opens us up to a world of self-teaching, rather than just relying on others to tell us what we need to know. As such, it is very much form the teach-a-man/woman-to-fish school of learning.
While Ted taught it to me, credit for the idea actually goes to Akira Kurosawa, the celebrated Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa shared the idea in his memoir, Something Like an Autobiography, in which he chronicles his life, including his upbringing (which included a progressive education) and how he developed into a famous screenwriter and director.
He explained that, as he would read great books and watch movies, he would pause to ask himself: what am I feeling and how is that happening (what elements in the story are working to result in the feeling)?
Why these two questions are such a revelation and together hold the potential for driving so much mental development may not immediately be clear, so please bear with me.
To begin with, this entire essay could have focused on the power of the first question: what am I feeling?
We might assume that it is obvious, that we just always know and don’t need to prompt ourselves, but the reality is that we are more often caught up in the throes of life and don’t reflect on how we are reacting to life. To the point that Americans spend billions of dollars every year to sit across from mental health professionals, many of whom share the same go-to therapeutic move, asking: and how does that make you feel?
Good insights about life can come from that first question, from simply reminding ourselves to reflect on what we are feeling, but Kurosawa didn’t stop there.
The young aspiring filmmaker not only asked what he was feeling in response to different stories, but he then analyzed how the variables—the plot, character, setting, etc.—all worked together to create the emotion he was having.
Kurosawa was learning—educating himself—by reverse-engineering how stories worked. He was using his analysis of his own emotional experience in the same way that an Apple competitor will someday take apart the i-Phone XXII to understand the new hologram functionality.
Hopefully, the teach-to-fish aspect of this insight is coming across. With that simple framework, those two questions, Kurosawa had what he needed to analyze and learn from all effective stories, rather than relying on a teacher to tell him what to think.
The usefulness of this way of thinking goes beyond understanding fiction. We can all learn a great deal about the way life works by being able to step back, ask ourselves what we are feeling, and then analyze the factors that seem to have resulted in the emotion we are having.
Teaching this technique to kids to help them develop their own understanding of the way stories work can start with the first question, whether they are reading The Giver or watching Black Adam.
(You can also help their understanding along by pointing out that we are usually experiencing competing emotions: we are hoping one thing for the hero while fearing something else, which is another great Ted Braun lesson, another that applies to life itself: hope and fear are our among our most primal emotions.)
If the first question proves productive—if they are able to identify the feelings they are having—then you might move onto analyzing the mechanics. Just why are we feeling the way we are? What factors combined together to push your buttons in the way they did?
My former teacher was a virtuoso at showing great films to students in class and explaining how the stories worked, even explaining how we could watch Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and empathize with the film’s sociopath anti-hero, Travis Bickle. (The mechanics include how viewers are introduced to Bickle by witnessing his awkwardness, isolation, and private pain early in the film.)
But Ted Braun’s most impactful act of teaching for me was sharing Kurosawa’s mental move. What am I feeling and how am I being made to feel that way? Questions that would help his students to teach themselves—not just about fiction, but also about life itself, helping us navigate our lives in ways that might more likely result in the emotions we desire.
Life is filled with lots of potent thought jujitsu that we can learn on the way to earning our mental black belts, but these questions are a good place to start.
Want proof? Just pause to reflect on your emotions and thoughts as you read this far; you likely have what you need to analyze what factors account for the aspects of the essay that are successful, as well as to understand those unfortunate aspects of the essay that could have been improved upon (now where were you when I needed you).
Take-aways, caveats, details, fine print
Teaching kids how to best use their minds will be an increasing focus of education in the future.
We can help our kids now by focusing on these skills, introducing them to mental models, mindset shifts, and other tools.
The filmmaker Akira Kurosawa used one such tool to educate himself in understanding how stories and storytelling worked.
As he read books or watched movies, Kurosawa would simply ask himself what he was feeling and then analyze the elements that resulted in that feeling.
We can teach our kids to ask themselves these questions as a way of developing their own understanding of the mechanics of stories.
The skill they develop can go be used beyond understanding stories and help them develop the skill of reflecting on their emotional states and how they came to be.