“The brain is essentially a computer.”  -Stephen Hawking

I learned an old phrase from programming: garbage in, garbage out. “When the app ain’t workin’, the code needs correctin’.”

Our minds work much the same way.

When I ask, ‘Why am I so stupid!?’, my brain pulls up possible evidence to reinforce reasons to feel dumb and even defeated.

You’re not dumb, but the brain doesn’t know that. It’s just feeding back results to the query you requested. We tend to find what we look for.

You know how police catch bad guys? They look for’ em.

Suppose I ask you to look around the room you’re in right now and find as many red objects as you can. Next I take you in to another room to have you write down as many of the blue objects you noticed. Would you struggle because you’re stupid – or because you were looking for the something else?

Look for what’s going right. Ask questions to help someone discover their own strength. Celebrate what people do well by saying so. That goes for self-talk, too.

‘Why am I so lucky?’ – for example – brings to mind memories of opportunities and experiences that reinforce what’s going good in your life and the dopamine hit will want more of that. You’ll build new neural pathways in your brain and get better results.

The same is true in how we speak to others.

When a parent says, ‘How could you be so stupid?’ or ‘What in the world were you thinking?’, it reinforces seeds of self-doubt and shame.

Creative questions like, ‘What did you learn from this?’ or ‘What would you do differently next time?’ let them work out their own shit with dignity.

And maybe we start working out ours as well.

Who is one person you need to look for the good in? What good do you see in them? Share your response below. Until next time…

Cheers,

Mark