Something I realized is that in some cases, learned blankness is due to overly generalized beliefs that were created in us when we were kids. For example - "I am not a doctor or physical therapist so I need to go to them to fix my body."

The best way that I guard

1. Write down a list of all that is supremely important in your life and make sure you have studied everything about those things. If you do this often enough, the first thing you do when faced with a problem is to read up about it and send off questions to leading people who work in that area. (Essentially the solution given at the end of the article - ie deep dive into the problem.)

2. Get rid of the term "Expert" from your vocabulary. Experts know a lot about their particular field but usually only when studied in laboratory settings or in contexts different from yours. Dont blindly hand over your life to someone just because he has applied the label "expert" to himself.

Some people will bring up the example of a surgeon being a better person to trust than your own research when going in for a surgery. But I would counter that you can research the different surgery methods and options from different surgeons and this could be very important. An example is whether to use titanium screws versus using biologically disintegrating screws for ACL reconstruction. Most surgeons only use one of the 2 methods so you would have to study the pros and cons and decide for yourself.

A friend of mine has had 2 ACL reconstructions, and it was only on the 2nd surgery that he even knew that there were 2 options because he went to a different surgeon who used titanium instead of the bio-degrading ones.

1. If theres a problem in your life, apply the five why's system. Ie ask at 5 different levels why this problem is occurring.

Are there any other methods that could be applied to this list?

-Vivek