One of the most natural inclinations people have is self-justification. Do something odd or questionable? No worries: your brain will happily develop some narrative about why it's perfectly reasonable or at least not your fault. This narrative can be particularly sticky if you're justifying some trait that you never consciously adopted but seemed to be always present. Of course, a good counterpoint is trying to live with other people. Then it's in your face that they think or behave differently, and if you're behaving well you are forced to question your narrative. Or if you're behaving badly you try to impose your narrative on them. What I didn't properly question about myself for many years was my attitude to money. I have all the instincts of a miser: accumulating money, obsessively optimising for 'bargains', and evaluating every purchase in terms of long term value, as if I were trying to achieve some kind of high score at the end of my life. Intelle...