Tag: I am right

Is your Mind your Master? or Are You the Master of your Mind?

Why am I asking the question about who is the Master; You or your Mind?

Because it is important. Our brain is absolutely amazing at learning, think of all the patterns laid down in a lifetime, all those things that  can just be done automatically now, without consciously paying attention. Dressing, eating, washing,  walking, running,  riding a bike, balancing, swimming, changing gear in a car, speaking, reading, understanding language, knitting, sewing, playing an instrument, writing, etc. This is incredibly efficient and it is why the brain learns patterns, because to learn means you need to pay conscious attention and that takes energy, glucose. The brain uses  about 20% of the body’s energy supply, so the more it can do without constantly paying attention the better 🙂

Beliefs and the Child Brain

So what? Well, as per the slide above, there are a lot of things the brain learns as  a child, shoulds, musts, have tos, ought tos, for example that may, or may not, be helpful in later adult life. We learn beliefs about ourselves, for example “I’m not good enough! Be Perfect, Please everybody.” Of course if you hold a belief (A lens through which you perceive reality) you will always  have evidence to back it up, because I am right in this belief  and ‘look, see the evidence’ about me being not good enough! Hence low self esteem is perpetuated until!

Until what? Until you wake up and begin to think about this belief, to observe it. See it for what it really is:-

  • Something you learned
  • Taught to you by others
  • Useful at the time of learning, because it kept you safe

By doing this you begin the journey to becoming the master of your mind

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato – Socrates)

At this point, just begin to notice the beliefs. I will cover how to begin a process of change in a later post called “Feel the Fear and do it anyway”

  • What beliefs (lenses) have you formed about yourself? (Write them down) Look at them and really think about:-
  • When you learned them?
  • Where you learned them? From whom? (Note this may not be easy to do. It is worth it)
  • Are they useful now?

Continue reading “Is your Mind your Master? or Are You the Master of your Mind?”

A point of view is just a view from a point!

Points of view are interesting, in that we defend them sometimes as if our life was depending on that point of view being the absolute ‘truth’.

What’s going on?

Well in the picture above, Black Beret on the left has a belief  and remember the definition of a belief as (a lens through which we perceive reality) that there are Four, that’s what he believes, backed up by what he sees, the ‘evidence’. Oh and of course he has the common belief we all have, ‘I am right’. Now look at the perspective (point of view) that No Beret (his brother 🙂 ) holds. His belief, his lens, tells him there are Three and  he has the ‘evidence’ to back it up and of course he has the belief ‘I am right’ also. Oh dear!

It would actually all be fine if our brains did not care about disagreement and just played “yeah whatever” and sometimes it does.

It just does not care!

And sometimes it does!

What is making the difference?

Caring.. If I am invested in the point of view and by that I mean, it is important for me, it means something to me.

There is something else however:-

When you disagree with me,  my brain perceives that as an attack, a threat.

Then, what happens? I will cover this in much more detail in a future post, for now though, just be aware of how the brain developed. I will use the concept of the Triune Brain  proposed by Neurologist Dr Paul Maclean, for simplicity here (you will find, not all Neurologists hold the same point of view as Paul 🙂 ) However it is useful to talk briefly about what is going on when there is disagreement.

At a simple level, the reptilian brain ‘perceives’ the disagreement as an attack, (and by the way in any situation, this part of the brain gets control first, to keep us safe).  The amygdala then,  get control and put the brain in fight / flight/ freeze mode. This releases Adrenalin (to prepare us for the ‘fight’) the rational brain (pre-frontal Cortex) is also shut down, so we do not have access to superior executive powers of thinking.  All that is ‘running’ in the Brain is “my life is in danger – I must win this fight!!”  And  by the way we also cease to listen to what the others are saying, we are just listening for a gap to get our point of view articulated more!  Sometimes we  don’t even wait for the gap, we just talk and nobody’s listening !!  That I’m sure, you have seen many times with points of view, in politics for example 🙂

Let me finish here with two points of view on a mountain, Ben Nevis in Scotland. Both are talking about the same mountain.

“Come on, let’s amble up this wee hill”

“No way, that’s an enormous challenge”

  • How might you work with points of view differently now?
  • How might you respond rather than defend or attack or both?
  • Would holding differing points of view perhaps be a good time to practice the Pause?

Beliefs & Evidence

An interesting thought, once you form a belief about something, you will always find evidence to back it up, otherwise it would be stupid to be holding the belief. (A caveat here is  the world of science, where discipline and conditioning says, that you start with the evidence and then work from that to build support for a hypothesis).

For most of us though, we develop ways of looking at evidence so that our belief is preserved, we filter out what does not fit and filter in, if you like, more of what supports the belief (it is not seeing is believing, it is believing is seeing!) Remember my definition of a belief, as a lens through which we perceive reality 🙂

This insight is in my view, fundamental to becoming the real you. Beliefs that we currently hold  about ourselves, will need to change, on the journey to becoming the real you. 🙂

Let me give an example that may strike a chord. In school, in front of the class, the teacher says “you’re hopeless at maths, you’ll never be able to get this, will you?” Your reaction may be a polar response of, I’ll show her and you set your intent to become brilliant at maths actually, or you say to yourself, “she’s right I am useless” and then you begin gathering the evidence to prove it. Each time you get a wrong answer or low mark in an exam it’s just proving to you that you are right in your belief that you are rubbish at maths. You never really ‘see’ the fact that some of what you are doing is good!

Whether you believe you can or you can’t do something, you are right! Because, as I have said in a previous post, the biggest belief we all have is I am right! 🙂

What is the belief about yourself, that holds you back the most?

When did you ‘learn’ it?

How old were you?

What if you learned a belief now that really helped you ?

What would that be?

What is a belief?

A very interesting question I came upon, several years ago. What is a belief?

Beliefs are a major driver of our thinking and behaviour.

When beliefs, for example, political, are in alignment then we link with others who are similar.

In a previous post, I talked about a belief we all hold, learned , in my view, early in life viz. “I am right”

You may notice this in politics 🙂

I have a definition of a belief ( See here ) and it is right of course 🙂 I’m interested in yours.

Please add your answer in comments below

What is a belief? Not what you do with them, or how they ‘shape’ thinking and behaviour, or how they get expressed, just simply:-

What is a belief?