#psychological distance

Solomon's Paradox: Why You Give Great Advice to Others but Not Yourself

This piece explores Solomon's paradox — the well-documented tendency to reason more clearly about other people's problems than our own, because our own struggles are tangled up with fear, personal history, and ego. It explains how creating psychological distance from a situation restores clarity, and offers a simple writing exercise: retell your problem in the third person, then ask what you'd tell a friend facing it. The core takeaway is that wisdom isn't missing, it's just blocked by closeness, and a small shift in perspective can reveal the obvious answer you already know.