Your Thoughts Are Not Original
By: Berend Van Daalen
Tags: Self-awareness, Creativity, Psychology, Writing, Self Improvement

Whenever I have a self-proclaimed epiphany about what topic to write about next, it’s usually short-lived.

More often than not, I will encounter articles that cover similar, if not the exact, same topic or spread the same message. To make matters worse, the pieces are far more eloquently written and contain much better examples and quotes.

As an aspiring writer, it’s a little disheartening and demotivating. After all, writing interesting articles is a competitive landscape as it is. Why would a reader choose your piece over a much more accomplished author?

This thought process is a battle against yourself more than anything else. And the more time you spend fussing about it, the higher the likelihood you will find a reason not to publish or bail on an idea.

To stop doubting the value or quality of your piece, it’s worth exploring where this feeling originates. I’ve come across a few concepts that explain the psychological process that could cause this doubt, namely the Frequency Illusion and Collective Consciousness.

Frequency Illusion

As the premise of this article suggests, this concept has already been studied at length and has been coined the Frequency Illusion by Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky and is more commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

The Frequency Illusion is a result of two well-known psychological processes, selective attention (noticing things that are salient to us, disregarding the rest) and confirmation bias (looking for things that support our hypotheses, disregarding potential counterevidence)

As I’m not too familiar with psychological processes, the quote above didn’t tell me that much. So I dug a little deeper into the components that comprise the frequency illusion.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Selective Attention

Attention refers to how we actively process information in our environment. It’s not only about applying focus on a specific task but also involves ignoring other information and stimuli.

Attention is a limited resource; therefore, we have to be selective about what to focus on.

This explains how we sometimes miss other things that are right in front of us. It wasn’t relevant enough at the time.

The other way around it explains how we suddenly see the same type of vehicle appear everywhere when we’ve just taken a test drive, or that more women seem to be pregnant now that you’ve been thinking about starting a family. In that sense, it highlights those events that are on top of your mind.

Confirmation bias

The second component is what is called Confirmation Bias. This concept influences how we interpret and recall information. We are more inclined to gather evidence that supports and emphasizes our beliefs and to dismiss or fail to seek contradictory evidence.

Now confirmation bias is in itself an interesting to dive into as it plays a role in a variety of highly debated topics ranging from scientific studies to politics, finance, health, religion, etc.

For the sake of this article, I will refrain from elaborating too much and revert to the scope. The point is that as you are writing about a particular topic, you will be more inclined to emphasize aspects that are aligned with the point you’re trying to make.

Collective Consciousness

Apart from the Frequency Illusion, originality is further influenced by what is called Collective Consciousness. This concept, developed by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim refers to the common set of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge within a group or society.

Durkheim concluded that society exists because unique individuals feel a sense of solidarity with each other. The collective consciousness informs our sense of belonging, identity, and behavior.

Within a group, people are bound to come up with similar thought processes as it reaffirms their sense of belonging. That is why you will find a lot of agreeable opinions, open doors, and repetition to stay in line with the homogeneous character of the group.

So what’s the point?

If it’s all been thought out before and we’re so biased based on our attention span and our position in society, why bother stressing about originality?

Well, you probably shouldn’t. Even though an idea is far more likely to have been thought out before deriving your own opinions and conclusions from, it is a worthwhile exercise. That’s the part where you gain understanding and learn about how to apply the learnings to benefit yourself and others.

To paraphrase what the author Mark Manson wrote in his most recent book “Everything is f*cked” and that I find particularly applicable here is:

“Values cannot be changed with reason, only through experience”

Piling on more information will not aid in standing out; sharing your experiences is the added value. Knowledge in itself is useless if you don’t know how to apply it.