“Your brain is a liar. It makes assumptions not rooted in fact, draws conclusions that are more about fear than any kind of logical argument, and has insights often manipulated by the media and other compelling stories.” Christine Fonseca
If we are aware of the 2,000-3,000 thoughts we have each hour, we can choose whether we want to believe the thought and whether we want to allow that thought to influence our words and our actions. Meditating slows us down enough, so we are aware that we have thoughts.
Right now, your eyes and ears are telling a biased story to your brain, which then tells you another biased story, and each stop along the way in this game of telephone gets you a little further away from reality.
Think about it. How often do you tell yourself, “If I just get this, then I will be happy?” When you get it are you happy, or do you need something else? You may tell yourself, “Eating this chocolate or ice cream will make me feel better.” Sure, it tastes good while it lasts, but afterward you feel guilty for indulging, and even worse when you look at the scale. So you think it makes you feel better, and maybe it does for a few minutes, but in the long run it makes you feel worse.
Body Smarter than Mind
The body is smarter than the mind. But we trust our minds more than our bodies. WE have been taught to trust our minds, be rational, think things through. Even though that thinking may be justifying that emotion that we have, we are really good at that.
For example, a new driver is thinking about how far they must turn the wheel, so they over correct. Once you know how to drive and you let your body take over, your body knows exactly how far to turn the wheel and when without using the thinking mind.
When I do balance exercises, if I start thinking about it, I overcorrect and I fall out. But if I trust my body and tell myself, “The body knows how to balance.” I can stay a lot longer.
The Truths Our Body Tells Us
Our body can be our messenger if we listen to it. We have all had the feeling in our body that tells us we are forgetting something. We stop for a few seconds to think what it might be. When it does not come to mind immediately, we ignore the feeling in our body and go on our way only to remember when we are halfway to our destination.
We often ignore the feeling in our body that tells us we are about to do something unskillful or something that we will regret. Like when you go for the bag of M&M’s or a second helping of desert. Our body tells us don’t, but our mind tells us it will be OK just this one time. Except just this one time tends to happen every day or maybe every hour. Our mind incorrectly thinks we will get a reward, and that we will not get a punishment. But that is not true.
When we have an injury, our body is telling us to stop and rest. That is what most animals do. But our mind tells us to power through it. And when we do we make the injury worse.
Reflection
Think back to a time when someone asked you to do something that you didn’t want to do. How did that feel in your body?
How about a time when you were making a bad decision? How did that feel in your body?
Ways We Lie
Habits
One way our minds lie to us is with our habits. We think we are going to be rewarded for doing something that we often do. We may have been rewarded for it at some point in time,but we never updated the information in our brain. So your brain tells you you are going to get rewards that no longer exist. And it doesn’t tell you about the new discomforts you are going to encounter.
The irony is that we are more comfortable with familiar, outdated data, so we trust it. We trust things we have seen over and over again, more than things we have just seen once or twice. I saw that in my diet Pepsi habit, which I have talked about. I thought I was getting comfort and connection. And I really wasn’t, I was getting just the opposite.
You may want to read Judson Brewer’s The Craving Mind, to learn about the theory that awareness allows you to get up-to-date and accurate information so that you could trust the new data that is coming in, rather than dismissing them as erroneous. The new data coming in was that I could not be comfortable in a meeting after drinking a diet Pepsi as I was going to have to go to the bathroom.
“We need to give our brains new information to establish that the value they had learned in the past is now outdated.” Judson Brewer
Our brain is not intentionally lying to us. It is just working on outdated information. But it is telling us something that is actually not true. If we pay attention to the results of the behavior over and over, we can jolt our brain out of autopilot. The autopilot of reaching for chocolate, the autopilot of lashing out, or whatever we do on autopilot. We need to be mindful and pay attention so we can update the data our minds are using.
“No matter what you name it, if you want to change it, you have to rub your brain’s little orbitofrontal cortex nose in its own poop so that it clearly smells how stinky it is. That’s how your brain learns.” Judson Brewer
Resolutions and Goals
Habits are not the only thing our brains lie to us about. They also tell us how difficult it will be for us to do things that are good for us. Our brains overestimate the work, discomfort or pain and underestimate the benefits. Think about how often you renege on your New Years Resolutions.
Avoiding Conflict
Sometimes we tell ourselves lies to minimize or avoid conflict. How many times have you been asked by a friend to do a favor that you really didn’t have the time or energy to do? But you lied to yourself saying it is only a little thing, I can handle it. Or you told yourself you would lose their friendship if you didn’t help.
Our Persona
We often create a persona of who we think people want us to be. This requires creating a mask and keeping that mask in place. I can attest that over time keeping the mask in place is exhausting.
One of the masks I created and carried through much of my life was to be a do-it-all and know-it-all. My inner critic told me I had to do this so people would like me. Wrong. When you are a know-it-all and do-it-all, you are so busy doing, you don’t have time to create relationships. And you make people feel useless and stupid.
Staying Safe
We all have lies we tell ourselves to stay safe. My inner critic told me to hold friends at arm’s length. If I let them get to know the real me, they would reject me. My inner critic told me that lie for almost 50 years. The truth is that when you keep people at arm’s length, you don’t develop close friendships and you feel rejected by the people you would like to be friends with because they feel rejected by you.
Memories
The most dangerous bias we have is our memory of the past. We think our memory of the past is reality. But our brains are not video recorders, they take photos, not videos. We fill in the spaces between the photographs to make up our stories of the past. We concoct what we think happened. When we are believing the stories of our past, we are believing in a figment of our imagination.
“It’s a little more like a Wikipedia page. You can go in there and change it, and so can other people.” Elizabeth Loftus
To help us recognize our lies, let’s look at some of the ways we lie to ourselves:
- The Sky Is Falling: We make problems more significant than they are, imagining that the absolute worst thing is about to occur.
- Black and White Thinking: There is no in-between, things are either great or lousy.
- Negative Narrative: You label yourself in harshly negative ways, focusing on small aspects of self that contribute to your negative narrative.
- Negative Mental Filter: You only recall negative outcomes, events or interactions thathave happened during your life and shut out anything positive that occurred.
- Mind Reading: When we make quick assumptions and conclude that someone is thinking something negative about us, without demonstrable evidence.
- Victim’s Mentality: You blame other people for everything that happens, never taking responsibility.
- Over-Generalization: Because you encountered one challenge or negative outcome, you assume this will always happen in the future.
- Emotional Reasoning: When I felt like this is the past, this happened. I am feeling like that now so this will happen again.
- ‘Should’ Statements: We confuse what others expect or want from us with our true needs and wants.
The key is to realize that just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you have to believe it—much less act on it. Practicing mindfulness allows us to become aware of the thought that pops into our head. We can see that many of our thoughts are figments of our imagination. They are stories that we made up So we can ask ourselves, “Is this image or sound bite reality? You will find that some of the thoughts you believed to be true, were in fact lies.