Knowledge

In the past week especially, I have witnessed several examples of the advantage of knowledge. When I looked for a graphic for this post I found several with the attached quote: "knowledge is power". But in one's personal well being, I think it more accurately stated that "knowledge is empowering".

Our emotional reactions, if inadequately informed and lacking the balance provided by fact or truth, will certainly look more irrational and thus more stressful and less productive to reaching desired outcomes.  Perhaps the less information we have the more likely we are to be reactive. 

You will already know about many philosophies that support seeking further knowledge. From the Bible "seek and yee shall find".  Or  from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "seek first to understand and then to be understood".

I also find that many of us are very uncomfortable with "unkowns". The lack of needed  information can produce anxiety and this discomfort can prompt us to fill in the void with negative guesses and "worst case scenario" risk management reactions.  Getting even simple facts will often calm this reaction and improve our problem solving and our relationships with others.  This greatly enhances our self control and thus our confidence. 

Emotions, stress reactions, and "facts" are stored as experiential data in different parts of our brain. Taking the time to elicit input from all these various regions takes a few seconds longer, a little more patience. 

So work on your patience and curiosity to keep gathering information and empowering your self and your actions. Remember, it was once well accepted that the earth was flat.

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