Your brain is all talk. When the brain thinks something, you KNOW it’s true. But often, it isn’t.
Our minds chatter: you won’t receive that financial windfall, cousin Betty will have success with her new relationship, and your friend Tim shouldn’t start that business. We’re captivated and listen with complete acceptance. Your brain knows . . . right?
What others tell us or we read in an article, we filter for truth and believability. Cults remove that filter; what the leader says is accepted and acted upon in ignorance. Similarly, when we believe all our thoughts, we follow like cultists of the brain.
Examine your thoughts before acting on them. Think your ideas and assumptions through before deciding. That is where the brain excels.
You use your mind to decide; it doesn’t get to choose for you.
A lot of talk for a little action
Have you stood at the roulette wheel ready to dump your entire stack on red because somehow you know red five is coming? Even if it’s not five, an obscure and unlikely scenario, it’s definitely red. So you’re going to play it safe, betting on the sure outcome. If not sure, at least 98%.
After all, you knew red would hit the last two spins, and it did. Red is hot. Red is certain. And you know it’s coming again, most likely on five.
You’ve solved the universe’s intricate dance, and to you, the fates whisper how they will spin their threads.
Enter black thirteen, and roulette is a dumb game anyway.
False prophet
Roulette is not alone as a false prophecy conjured by our brains. Our mind jumps from thing to thing, confident in its assessment of each. That bird overhead is going to poop on me. The car behind me is going to swerve off the road and hit me. I’m going to throw this football over them mountains.
Remember a time you’ve walked alone down a dark street alerted to every creak. Each noise gave certainty to the materialization of an assailant. Our minds act like we’re characters in a Kill Bill movie instead of taking out the trash in the dark because we procrastinated doing it earlier.
But you throw the trash in the can and hurry back anyway. You speedwalk past the scary house or duck for cover from the bird overhead. Despite its inaccuracy, the mind manages to get us to believe and follow it.
I can’t believe what I just thought
That we can’t believe our minds’ predictions, we don’t know what will happen, is vital to understand.
It’s the reason that investors and gamblers set portfolio maximums. For example, no opportunity can use more than a certain percentage of funds. Then when a can’t miss opportunity can’t miss crashing and burning, you aren’t ruined.
Despite what your mind tells you, you don’t, and shouldn’t, have to operate like what it says is right. Instead, call into question the believability of your mind.
Operate on what is true, not what you think. Remember, your brain is all talk.
Free thoughts
Hold up your thoughts and examine them the same way you do outside information.
Because your mind says this person you come across at night will harm you doesn’t mean you should scream and run. It’s your mind thinking about the scenario and has no bearing on what will come to pass. Jumping into fear or anger is more likely to lead to an adverse outcome than if you examined your thoughts and continued as you were. It doesn’t know, despite its suggestions to the contrary.
Look at your mind’s track record. When you put your night’s gambling allowance on black because your mind determined that was best, did it know? How about that person it told you was fantastic but turned out to be a total dud? All those hours it spent telling you about those things, was it accurate; was it even helpful?
Despite what your mind may claim to know, the odds in roulette of red or black are less than 50%. The odds of a particular number coming up is still what they are. And the odds your brain doesn’t talk about its incorrect prediction next time it’s talking about the future are pretty good.
The mind knows something
Your mind and its thoughts have their place. It’s fabulous at rationally working through problems to make decisions. The issue is we allow its predictions to dominate our life and actions.
Your brain is suited poorly for things that aren’t problems to be solved. For example, what you should do for work or making a negative association of someone in a Yankees hat. They’re probably a perfectly good person despite their poor taste in sports franchises.
For many of us, the mind involves itself in everything. Stop bringing the brain into situations it doesn’t belong.
Use your mind, don’t obey
Your brain is valuable. But it’s a tool, and putting it in the driver’s seat makes you a passenger on the train of your thoughts instead of the conductor.
Another conductor analogy: If your life was a symphony, would you orchestrate or pick an instrument to play under the direction of your mind? We often agree to play a tune even if we don’t enjoy its harmony.
Examine your thoughts. Do not blindly accept them. Your brain is all talk, but it is we who act.
