Lately I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting and raising my awareness around how people use their minds to process events and information that comes at them in their day-to-day life.

Many of us are under the illusion that the information that our mind processed represents reality.  Meaning, we believe that our mind’s representation of the world out there is the “true” and “real” representation of what happened.  When we encounter someone that differs in opinion, we automatically think that they are delusional.  It’s hard to accept that our mind is the one that has an unrealistic representation of reality.

Our Minds Play Tricks On Us

Let’s start with something very simple.  There is no trickery here, just something unusual you may learn about your mind.  Count the number of times that you see the letter “F” in the following statement:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…

Ok, once you’ve got the number leave a comment with your guess after reading the rest of the article.

Our Minds Distort Things

I was watching a show on TV today which had a cooking competition between four regular people that were selected to compete on the show.  Each contestant brought a recipe from home and cooked it for a panel of judges.

After the contestants finished cooking their dishes, they went in front the panel of judges and listened to their feedback.

It was really interesting to hear the judges make their comments, and to hear how the contestants heard those comments.  Meaning, the judges made a bunch of statements, and then the camera crew interviewed the contestants a few minutes later in the back room to ask them what the judges said.

The first contestant went in front of the judges, and the judges said three or four positive things about the dish and two or three negative things about the dish.  When the camera crew asked the contestant what the judges said, he basically said that they made some positive comments and that’s all he could hope for.

The second contestant went in front of the judges, and once again the judges said three or four positive things about the dish and made a couple of negative comments as well.  When the camera crew asked this contestant what the judges said, he basically said that the judges were not the right people to judge his food because they aren’t the typical type of people he cooks for.  In other words, he wouldn’t accept any criticism.  It wasn’t his food that wasn’t cooked right, it was the judges who were wrong.

The third contestant went in front of the judges and in this instance they basically gave her half a dozen positive comments, and the only criticism they told her was that the steak could have been cooked a little bit less, but it tasted really good either way.  This was the best feedback the judges gave out of everyone, but guess what happened when the camera crew asked her what the judges said?  When the camera crew asked, all she said was that the judges told her that the steak was overcooked.  She completely discounted all the positive feedback she got, and her mind focused strictly on the one single semi-negative comment they gave her.

There was a second round to the competition and I watched to see if the contestants would have the same reactions.  Sure enough, each one of them reacted the same way.  The first guy was happy to get any positive feedback, just like the first time around.  The second guy blamed the judges for his mistakes, claiming that their palettes must be wrong.  The third lady once again got lots of positive feedback, and one piece of slight criticism and all she focused on was the negative thing.

Incidentally, she ended up winning the competition too.

If you ever get a chance to watch something like this on TV, listen very carefully to what a judge says and then listen to how people interpret what judges say.  It’s very revealing when you hear something like that.

You see, our minds are capable of distorting the sensory input that we get to match the mind’s pre-conceived notions.  If you start to pay attention to how other people’s minds distort reality it may shine a light on your own mind as you may be doing the same thing.

Our Minds Make Excuses

One of the great things of working with a mentor one-on-one is that a good mentor will hear the excuses our minds create for us even when we can’t hear them.  In reality, I would venture a guess that we can’t hear 98% of the excuses we make because we are stuck within our own minds.

Just last week I was on a call with a mentor of mine and he caught me several times making excuses that weren’t true.  Once I am aware of what I’m saying, I don’t buy the excuses either but in most cases we can’t even hear them.  They just come out of mouths and we don’t second guess them.

As a mentor, it’s so easy to hear that with my students.  Now, I’m not saying that the excuses they make aren’t valid.  In some cases they are very valid, but that’s not the point.  The point is that in almost all cases they aren’t even aware that they are making an excuse.  By using specific follow up questions I can usually determine with a lot of accuracy whether it’s an excuse that’s valid or if it’s just a hidden fear.

What About Your Mind?

If you raise your awareness to this by listening to and watching other people you’ll be amazed at how people’s minds filter out or distort information.  By seeing it in others, you’ll eventually start seeing it in yourself.

How do you react when someone criticizes you?  Do you make excuses?  Do you filter things out?

How do you react when someone praises you?  Do you make excuses?  Do you filter things out?

How do you react when someone wants to teach you something?  Do you listen?  Do you filter?  Do you only accept things you already believe to be true?

How do you react when someone asks you a question?  Do you answer accurately?  Do you answer ambiguously?

You Are Not Your Mind

One of the biggest reasons I find people defending their minds even when deep down they know they are wrong, is because a lot of people believe that they are their minds.  You are not your mind.  You are a being that is far greater than your mind.

By truly realizing that, the need to defend your mind lessens because you no longer feel like you’re defending your whole being.  I know people who are so disconnected from who they really are, thinking instead that they are their mind, that they never ever admit being wrong in an argument and won’t ever question their minds in private.

Try This Test

Here’s a really cool way to catch your mind lying to you.  If you keep a daily journal, this exercise will be even easier for you.  If you don’t keep a daily journal, start a journal today and write your thoughts in it for a couple of weeks.  Once you’ve got a few weeks of “data” in your journal, go back a few weeks and read some of the things you’ve written.

While you’re reading, ask yourself questions like “Is this true?”  and “Was I right about this?” and “Is there another way I could have seen this?”

See, your current thoughts are hard to argue with because you’re emotionally attached to them.  However, when you read older journal entries, from at least several weeks back the emotional attachment to those thoughts usually lessens.  You are then much more realistically able to see flaws in your thinking.

Look for words such as “should”, “must”, “never” and “always” and question their validity.  For example, if a couple of weeks ago you were trying to learn some kind of new skill and you wrote in your journal “I’ll never learn this”, was that an accurate statement?  Were you in fact able to learn that skill?  Was it really impossible for you?

Another way to test your mind is to record some of your conversations.  I used to record some of my calls with my mentor (with his permission) and when I heard them back a few months later I was totally able to pick up places where my mind wasn’t being very accurate.

Why Would You Want to Question Your Mind?

So what’s the point of questioning your mind anyways?  So what if you do find flaws and inaccuracies in your thinking?  Does it mean that you should ditch your mind and just think you’re stupid or wrong all the time? No.

The whole point of not fully trusting everything your mind throws at you is for the purpose of refinement.  By seeing where your mind went wrong, you can refine it and make it a more accurate interpreter of reality.  When we are kids we take it for granted that we don’t know everything.  We listen to our parents, teachers and others and we don’t get very upset when we learn something new or when our understanding of reality is corrected.

However, as adults we often get into rigid ways of thinking, believing that we are right and everyone else is wrong.  When someone challenges our thinking we defend our minds to the death, instead of even considering the possibility that the other person might have a point.

Constantly defending your mind, your beliefs, your point of view can be very tiring, even exhausting.  It’s much easier to accept and even expect that our minds are not always accurate.  In fact, I don’t think there is a human being on this planet who is always right, so why pretend?