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How Your Brain is Lying to You About Pretty Much Everything
But it’s possible to retrain it — with some effort.
We are used to relying on our brains. To know what to think, to remember crucial information, to let us know how we should behave. Our brains are enormously complex machines that absorb and analyze information at a tremendous rate, spitting out the crucial findings in a way we can instinctively understand.
They’re also super flawed.
Your memories which you recall with crystal-clear accuracy? They’re mistaken, missing in spots you don’t see, or made-up altogether.
Those fight-or-flight feelings you’re having? They’re a throwback to a more stressful time, where there were only ever two solutions to a problem — to run or to battle. Nowadays? Those feelings will just give you more grief.
That conversation you had with a coworker, where you accidentally insulted them and now you’re staying up late, convinced that they hate you? They don’t even remember it. If anything, they’re worried about how you perceived them.
In short, although we trust our brains when it comes to forming opinions, making choices, or even our day-to-day actions, they’re really, really unreliable. The problems start when we treat them as infallible, objective sources…
