The brain is a magnificent and powerful tool. It is responsible for so much in our life yet nearly everyone takes it for granted. To most people the brain is just another organ that does it's job with minimal fuss. To be fair, it does do an awesome job with such a mammoth task list - breathing, pumping blood, controlling our organs and nervous system, and other autonomous actions like walking, talking, and eating.

The human brain will answer every question it is asked and it will try to prove itself right.

All that stuff (and a lot more) is all taken care of automatically by our brain so that we do not even have think about it. Sounds great doesn't it? Well yes it is pretty good, and it is this characteristic that allows us to acquire new information easily, but it also exposes two fatal flaws - the human brain will answer every question it is asked and it will try to prove itself right.

Read that sentence again. No matter what the situation, no matter what the question, and no matter what the variables, the brain will always come up with at least one answer. Then it will find some evidence to prove that answer right. Let's look at why that is such a problem.

Fatal Flaw 1: The Brain Answers Everything

The issue here is that people ask their brain the wrong questions. Not only do they waste the potential of this wonderful resource, they actually use it to impose false restrictions in their life by asking the wrong questions.

If our brain answers anything we ask it imagine what happens if we start asking negative questions. Suppose we were having a bad day and we asked "What else will go wrong today?" Our brain would start compiling a long laundry list of all possible things that could happen in the day that would be considered "wrong". All this is done without us even realising it but the end result is a long list of possible negatives which leads us to the second major flaw.

Fatal Flaw 2: The Brain Likes To Be Right

The brain is such a wonderful data-processing tool (it receives millions of inputs every second) that it is constantly analysing and comparing information against it's predetermined hypotheses. When a new theory is postulated, the brain attempts to find any information that proves it, including cross-checking information from it's past experiences.

I hope you can see the problem here. If we have asked our self a negative question ("What else can go wrong today?") and our brain has provided a list of possible outcomes then it becomes fixated on finding information to prove that list. So now, we are pointing our most powerful resource in the wrong direction and it is going to use all it's power to achieve what it deems is a successful outcome (i.e. being right), even if that means a negative outcome for us.

Conclusion: Start Asking Positive Questions!

The easiest way to turn this negative cycle around is to start asking yourself positive questions. Ask yourself what good things can occur, or what people like about you, or what makes you successful, and you will discover a whole range of brilliant answers that you never even considered. As a benefit, your brain will be focused on proving those positive theories to you that your life will suddenly be full of opportunities that you would have otherwise missed. This is known as the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, which is worth an entire article on its own.

For now all you need to remember is that positive questions lead to positive answers which lead to positive opportunities.

Image: Boaz Yiftach