How I’m Learning to Think Clearly

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you wanna get some inspirational and mindset tips and tricks, text directly to your phone and you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're gonna talk about how to think more clearly and how your brain is actually lying to you. You know, we like to think and we like to believe that we see the world clearly, that our choices are rational, and that we are making decisions from a rational place that is clearly thought out.

0:54And it's weighed out based off of facts, and we choose them wisely. But most of the time, that's not even close to true. A lot of times, your brain is lying to you, your perception is lying to you, and you're making a quick decision based off of every event that's ever happened to you in your life. What we actually see when we see the world is a filtered version of the world through our past experiences, through our beliefs, through our fears, and through our desires. And I want you to understand this. Your perception is not reality. It is your version of reality. Now, it might be hard for some people understand, but your perception is not absolute reality.

1:39It is your version of reality. So our perception isn't reality. It's a filter that distorts reality based off of what's happened to us in the past, based off of our past history, based off of fears and limiting beliefs and traumas, based off of what you learned as a child, what you were taught by your parents was right and wrong, what you saw them do, what you saw them not do. And if we don't learn to see through this distortion, it's going to hold us back from making the right decisions. And we're going to continue to make bad decisions over and over and over again. And we might mistake emotion for logic.

2:16We might mistake personal beliefs for truth. We might mistake our own assumptions for facts. And this is where thinking clearly and having really good judgment comes in. Judgment doesn't sound like the sexiest topic to talk about, but it really is important because judgment is not just intelligence. It's not just reading books and having book smarts. It's the keen ability to see what is actually in front of you. Not just what you hope is there, but it's the ability to see clearly and the ability to challenge yourself to see things as they are, not as you want them to be or as you want to see them.

2:59And the key word is to challenge and challenge yourself, challenge your own perception to see, is this absolute truth or is this just what I think happened? Well, this is what I think is going on. If you develop this skill set of judgment and of clear thinking, your life will be so much easier. And so the question comes from this, like, how do we train ourself to see the world clearly? It's kind of a weird question, right? How do I train myself to see clearly? I thought I was seeing the world pretty clearly. Another question is like, how do I strip away all of my biases, all of my desires, my emotional filters, so that I can actually make good decisions in front of me?

3:42Okay, so let's dive into it. The first thing that you need to understand is that your mind does lie to you. Your brain is basically a prediction machine. It takes the past and it throws it into the future and tries to make predictions on what could happen in the future. It's constantly guessing and predicting what's going to happen based off of your past experiences, not necessarily based off of what's actually happening right now. And this will really hold you back if you don't see it this way. And I want you to understand, like, for instance, I've had before the business that I have right now, I have had two quote unquote failed businesses in the past.

4:22Now, if I were to look before I started the business that I have now, I've been running for almost 10 years and go, well, you know what? I failed at the other two businesses. I'm probably going to fail at this one. I probably wouldn't have started it. Even if I consciously wanted to start the business and I was like, I really want to start this business, but I'm holding myself back. I'm self-sabotaging. I'm procrastinating. It's usually because my brain is thinking subconsciously, those other two businesses failed. You put so much time and energy and money into them, it's probably going to fail in this one as well.

4:54So your pain that's happened to you in the past will create your fears in the future. And this is why your brain wants to predict the future for you. Your brain is a protection mechanism. That's what it does for you. And so you might assume that things will turn out badly for you because they have before. Or you might have an opportunity pop up. It might be a great opportunity, but you don't trust the opportunity because, not because it's actually risky, but because you had something that you failed at once in the past. And so you see this opportunity and go, I'll probably fail at that as well.

5:26Let me pass on it. Or maybe you hold on to relationships or ideas or identities that no longer serve you anymore because your brain tells you that it's safer to stick with what's familiar than to go out and to face the unknown. Or you might avoid romantic relationships because your last one broke your heart. Even though you consciously want to find love, like you consciously want to really find someone you can settle down with. That's 5 % of your mind, your conscious mind. Your subconscious, which is 95 % of what's going on, is trying to protect you from that pain again. So it's like, no, no, no.

6:05Don't trust that guy. No, no, no. Don't trust him. Nope. He looks a lot like the last one. Oh, red flag, red flag. And so even though you really want to consciously get into a relationship, it can hold you back from getting into one. Do you see the problem? You have to understand that what kept you safe in the past can keep you stuck now. You aren't actually seeing real reality. You're seeing a version of reality, your perception, that is shaped by your history. So how do you break the cycle? You want to start to try to test everything like you're a scientist. Now, obviously, there's some scientists in the world that are paid by really big companies to say what those really big companies want them to say.

6:46That's not the type of scientist I'm talking about. A good scientist doesn't believe what they want to be true. What they do is they test it. And they try to, and this is the key part, they try to disprove their own ideas. Not confirm them. they want to try to disprove their ideas. If they can't disprove their own ideas, then their idea must have been true. So that is what you must do. And I think everyone in this world needs to hear this. Just because you think something and you believe something does not make it true. And so you have to think like cognitive behavioral therapy. They say test the validity of your thoughts.

7:27You need to get better at challenging yourself versus blindly just believing in yourself, in your thoughts, in your emotions, in your feelings. Most people I understand do the opposite. For years, I did the opposite. They only look for the information that confirms what they already believe. That's the thing that's really crazy about this world. That's what's really causing so many people to go on one side or the other side, is that they're only looking for the information that confirms what they already believe. It's called confirmation bias. Versus going, well, I believe this. Let me have a conversation with someone who believes something completely different.

8:06And we will do it all of the time. If you think, for instance, your boss is unfair, then you'll only notice the moments that prove that he's unfair. And you'll ignore all of the times where he's been reasonable or been great. If you believe that you're bad with money, You'll focus on every financial mistake that you've made. You'll ignore all of the times where you handled things well. If you feel like you'll never be successful, you will filter out any evidence of past success. If you don't think that you can trust yourself, you'll filter out all of the moments where you did something that was trustworthy.

8:39So if you want to think clear, if you want clearer judgment, you must learn to question everything, even your own thoughts, and especially your own beliefs. So next time you're convinced that something's true, just take a step back and just try to play devil's advocate for a second. Try to debate yourself and say, okay, well, if I think that this is true, what evidence would actually prove me wrong? What evidence would prove me wrong? If you can't answer it, you're probably not searching for the truth. You're searching for validation. So turn it into a game. Make it more fun. Have fun with it.

9:17Play devil's advocate. All right, this is what I absolutely believe to be true. Let me try to just see if I can prove myself false. What evidence would actually prove me to be wrong? If you do this, you'll start to notice that a lot of the things that you think are truth and you believe in aren't standing on solid ground. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. The second thing you need to understand is your desires, what you want, actually clouds your reality as well. One of your biggest blind spots that we have just as people that doesn't come from ignorance. It comes from attachment.

9:53Attachment to ideas, attachment to beliefs, attachment to people, attachment to outcomes, attachment to what you want. You know, you want a relationship to work. So you ignore all of the red flags and you start thinking about, oh my gosh, but he's got so much potential, right? Or you want an investment to succeed. So you downplay all of the risks and you're like, yes, this is definitely going to work and you get yourself into a riskier situation. Or you want to be right. So you dismiss any new information that contradicts you in any sort of way. Desire distorts reality as well. So you aren't seeing things as they actually are.

10:32You're seeing them as you wish they were. And so many people do this in relationships, as I just said. Most people don't want to be alone. They don't want to be alone. So they pretend that all of the red flags don't exist. No, those aren't. Well, they downplay them. Oh, it's not that big of a deal. No, he's just texting another person. Oh, no, she's just a friend. Whatever it might be, all of these red flags that could exist, right? Not saying that, you know, people can't have friends. But I'm just saying there might be a lot of red flags that are happening. And what they do is because they don't want to be alone, they try to convince themselves that love should be hard.

11:06Oh, this should be really hard. It should be stressful. Versus actually like really seeing it as it is because desire distorts reality. So one of the most powerful mental shifts that you can make is to detach yourself from the outcome. Detach from what you want just long enough to try to see things as they are. You know, ask yourself stuff like, if I had no personal stake, what would I advise one of my friends to do? You know, if my friend came to me and said, this is what my boyfriend's doing, what kind of advice would I give them? Not my own. Not my own boyfriend. Not my own girlfriend. whatever it is that you might add, what advice would I give them?

11:45Instead of asking something like, you know, how can I make this work? Maybe you should ask yourself, should I be even working on this in the first place? Instead of asking, what do I want to be true? Ask what is true, regardless of how I feel about it. See, the clearer that you can see reality, the better that your decisions will be. And this is a big, big point. The better decisions that you make will come from seeing things more clearly. You make better decisions the more clearly that you see things. And it's like an example of, let's say that I give you a bow and arrow and I say, okay, I want you to go ahead and hit that target.

12:26And then I give you a pair of dirty glasses. I take a pair of glasses and I rub them in the ground and I get a bunch of drone on them. I say, okay, go ahead and try to hit that target. Well, through distorted glasses, it's going to be really hard to hit that target because I don't see it as wide. don't see it clearly. But if you just take the glasses off, it's going to be much easier for you to hit that target. Why? Because you're not distorting it with those glasses. You're able to see it more clearly. It's the same thing here. The more clearly that you can see, the better that you will shoot.

12:55The more clear that you can see, the better decisions that you will make in your life. So next time you make a decision, write down what you want to happen. And then write down what you would do if you had zero attachment to the outcome. And then compare the two. Okay, this is what I want. And this right here is, you know, if I had zero attachment to it, what I think, you know, if I had zero attachment to it, this is what I would do. And then compare the two and see if there's a gap between them. If there's a gap between them, that's where your judgment's probably clouded. Okay. The third thing that you need to understand is that your identity traps you into staying stuck as well.

13:33So most people don't think freely. We think through a lens of our own personal identity. If you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, you know I am obsessed with the identity that we have of who we think we are. So like if you define yourself as a hard worker, it might be easy for you to work hard, but it might be really hard for you to consider that there might be easier ways of doing things. You might refuse to consider an easier way. You might be refusing smarter ways to get things done because you're tied to your worth being something that you struggle with. Oh, I struggle, I struggle, I work hard, and that's what makes you valuable to yourself.

14:11Or, you know, if you hold strongly to a political belief, you might defend it even when you're presented with clear contradictions. There's many people in the world doing this right now. Because changing your mind and admitting that you were wrong, or admitting that, you know, your friends group basically were wrong, would feel like betrayal. because you identify with that political party. This is who I am. This is what I believe in. That's one of the most dangerous things that you can say. If you believe yourself as somebody who never quits, you might hold onto things way too long, even when you should have let go of them a while ago because your ego hates change.

14:53Your ego likes to say, this is who I am. This is what I believe. And this is what I'm going to be forever. It would rather be wrong and consistent than correct and uncertain. Let me say that again for you to really understand. Your ego would much rather for you to be wrong, inconsistent, than correct and uncertain. If you never question who you are, you will never grow. If you want better judgment, you must learn to shed your identity when necessary. It doesn't mean that you become an empty shell that meditates all day long and has no beliefs. It means that you learn to loosely identify with things.

15:31Like you hold on to your identity loosely and you're okay with being fluid and changing your identity a little bit. And you can update it when reality shows you something clearly and demands, hey, yeah, you should probably update that about yourself. You need a system update. And that allows you to see things more clearly instead of saying like, you know, imagine if you just had a computer and you're like, no, I'm going to use it forever and I'm never going to do the update. You're not going to be running programs very well in the next three to five years. 10 years, your computer is probably not going to work with any of the programs.

16:03If you want a computer to work well, you need to update it so that it can hold and use all of the new updates that are coming through, all the new softwares, everything. So you have to be willing to update your beliefs, your thoughts, your truths. Be willing to be wrong. The faster that you can make admissions to being some sort of mistake, the faster you're going to grow. So you have to stop defending ideas just because they're familiar. Think about this. If all of your beliefs fit neatly into a little box in a single label, then you're not thinking clearly. You're just following the masses. You're following what you're told to do.

16:43You're following what you're told to believe. You're following what you're told to think. And so you have to pick one belief that you hold strongly and then try arguing against it. As if you're trying to prove somebody else. Like you have somebody sitting here and you're trying to prove to them that you are wrong. See if you could do it. What do you notice? Does it make you uncomfortable? Does it feel like it's impossible? If so, you've probably found one of your identity traps. So that's the thing that you need to understand about it. And then I just want you to understand when you look at your seeing things clearly, to see things clearly is a practice.

17:21It's not a talent. Clear thinking isn't something that you're born with. It's something that you must train yourself to do. It's a skill set. And the skill set of thinking clearly is one of the most important skill sets you can build in your life. Every day you have a choice. You can see things clearly as they are, or you can just see them as you wish that they were. And so you've got to be able to question your assumptions and your beliefs. Most people don't do this. They go through life making the same mistakes, falling into the same ways of self-sabotage every single time, trapped by the same illusions, and they wonder why nothing changes.

17:59But you, you can train yourself to see things in reality as they actually are. And once you do that, your decisions on what to do will improve exponentially. Your life will improve and it'll open up a whole world to you that you never really imagined because now you're seeing things you never saw before because your perception was distorting reality in front of you. And so I have a challenge for you for one week. I want you to just challenge some of your thoughts and beliefs and see what comes up. See if you can get good at debating yourself. Because clarity is a skill. And once you develop it, everything starts to change.

18:37So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a huge, huge favor. Share it on your Instagram stories right now and tag me in it. Rob Dial, Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way, leave you every single episode. make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.