A Mason's Work

Analysis is where the ARAA process becomes genuinely difficult, not because the work is complicated, but because the mind produces several convincing counterfeits that feel like insight without delivering any. Brian names these directly and explains what makes each one so seductive and so useless. Self-judgment looks like honest reckoning. Rationalization looks like acceptance. Rumination looks li

Show Notes

Analysis is where the ARAA process becomes genuinely difficult, not because the work is complicated, but because the mind produces several convincing counterfeits that feel like insight without delivering any. Brian names these directly and explains what makes each one so seductive and so useless. Self-judgment looks like honest reckoning. Rationalization looks like acceptance. Rumination looks like thoroughness. None of them move anything forward.
The key discipline in analysis is removing identity from the equation as much as possible. When your sense of who you are is on the line, you cannot examine the data objectively because too much depends on the outcome. Brian reframes the goal of this phase as finding the gap between who you believe yourself to be and how you are actually behaving, because that gap is almost always where the mislead is rooted. It is not about being a bad person. It is about an unresolved conflict that keeps generating the same avoidance behavior.
  • Why self-judgment masquerades as honest analysis and makes the underlying problem worse
  • How rationalization reinforces avoidance by making current behavior seem acceptable
  • The difference between rumination and genuine analysis
  • Why identity investment corrupts the analysis process
  • How to identify the identity-behavior gap that sits underneath most self-deceptions
  • What the analysis phase is actually trying to hand off to the action phase
Done well, analysis does not produce a verdict about your character. It produces a specific, workable gap that you can actually do something about.
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Creators and Guests

Host
Brian Mattocks
Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] Today's episode is going to be really tough and it's going to be really tough because
[00:08] we're going to start looking at the data that we get back when we've found out that we lied
[00:16] to ourselves in some way or another, some mislead, some misdirect, some extroversion
[00:21] of the way the world works that justifies our internal behavior of not moving or not
[00:26] solving the problem or whatever. The analysis phase is really quite dangerous for lack of a
[00:39] better way to say it. And the danger is that you don't do it correctly. There's a couple of key
[00:49] risks. And when I say correctly, I quite literally mean that there are some outcomes here that feel
[00:55] super satisfying, but are just kicking the can down the lane. So there's a right way and wrong
[01:01] way to go about this. Anything that essentially doesn't move your understanding forward productively
[01:08] is effectively the wrong way to do it. So when you jump to judgment, for example, when you look at
[01:16] the situation where perhaps you are lying to yourself in some capacity or another, and you
[01:21] start to use that, use your performance or use the situation to beat yourself up, that is basically
[01:32] judgment wearing the Sherlock Holmes outfit, right? That is like masquerading analysis as a beating,
[01:41] right? You don't want to do that, obviously, because it's super bad for you. And the more you beat
[01:47] yourself up, the worse you get, the deeper the avoidance goes. And over time, as that sort of
[01:53] edifies into your behavior set, you won't even be able to see that you're lying to yourself anymore.
[01:59] And it'll kind of go back into the woodwork. The second meaningful challenge in the analysis phase
[02:07] is a rationalization where you rationalize and justify the things that you're doing, the position that you
[02:16] have that essentially further allows it to not change. Where you look at the situation and you go,
[02:22] well, that is what it is. That's exactly what happened. And I wouldn't do anything different.
[02:29] That's just rationalizing. You're just taking what you've done and making it okay.
[02:35] When we meaningfully begin the analysis process from data about what's going on in the world,
[02:41] we have to move to a completely different place where in many ways your identity is not involved.
[02:49] Okay. If your identity is involved in analysis phase, you're not going to fix anything because
[02:53] you've got too much writing on the line, as it were. When we want to move to this place where we're
[03:02] trying to figure out what's going on, you're going to bring all of that data into the examining.
[03:07] And you're going to look for some of the themes that maybe you're going to look at these themes
[03:14] you've noted in that reflection phase, some stuff that kept showing up some stuff like,
[03:20] Hey, every time somebody brought this up in conversation, or every time I was confronted
[03:24] with this type of situation, I performed this misdirect, or I told myself this story to justify
[03:32] in action or whatever. This is where that analysis gets to happen. Now, independent of the two kind of
[03:42] false analyses are another set of risks as well. And that is overuse and underuse. So overuse of analysis
[03:55] is rumination, where you essentially will sit there and go over the same territory over and over and over
[04:00] again, looking for a different result. You'll add more nuance, the story will get richer, but
[04:05] not really meaningfully change at all. That's kind of a meaningful abuse of the analysis process.
[04:14] And underuse is like the, you know, the first pattern that comes up, you kind of just, well,
[04:20] yeah, I guess that's it. Peace, I'm out. It feels like progress. And then six months later,
[04:25] you find yourself in the exact same position. So when we're looking at these behaviors that we have,
[04:31] these challenges we're trying to overcome, where we have essentially told ourselves something that
[04:35] isn't true, what we're trying to find is underneath that, what is the thing that we are either avoiding,
[04:48] right? What's the, what's the discomfort? What's the truth there? Sometimes it's, what would this say
[04:54] about me if I, if this were true? Or sometimes it's, um, what would this mean if I genuinely acted in
[05:01] this way? More often than not, when you start looking at these things, there are questions about
[05:08] who we are as people. There's a, uh, unresolved ambiguity about where behavior is versus who we think
[05:18] we are. It's a identity behavior conflict in a lot of cases. We have options in those situations.
[05:26] And we'll talk about those a little bit more in the action phase tomorrow, but in this analysis phase,
[05:32] look for that gap, look for what is the thing that we're trying to, to essentially justify,
[05:41] legitimize or make okay by virtue of this lie that we tell ourselves or this misdirect.
[05:49] There is where the seed of the work for tomorrow will come from.
[05:53] Thank you.