Soundtracks and Spotlights

Our brains are the most fantastic supercomputer on the planet, able to process 11 million bits of information per second subconsciously.

It has one glaring limitation, though: it can only focus on one thing at a time.

For chronic multitaskers, that is bad news because it means that despite our best efforts or how much we “think” we can handle more than one task at a time, we simply can’t. Countless scientific studies that prove that our brain can’t be in two places at once; when we split our attention between tasks, we end up performing more poorly on each than if we’d isolated our efforts.

One of the most important tasks of the brain is to act as a filter. Take a quick glance at the room around you and try to notice everything—every small detail. I’m currently looking at the carpet in my office and noticing that I can see individual carpet strands (if I focus on them) and all the swirling colors of Maurice’s brindle coat. Just in these two examples, there is an unfathomable amount of information — and that’s just what I can see.

Our brains evolved this filtering function to preserve processing power. Because of this, we don’t see a direct feed of reality, but a curated reconstruction.

Put another way, what we see in the world around us is not a direct representation of reality, but rather a picture constructed by our brains based on what it thinks reality is supposed to be.

We mistakenly think that our brains act as an omnipresent camera operator, taking in everything around us with an unbiased viewpoint, capturing all pieces of data to be recalled at a later date.

What is actually happening is that every experience you’ve ever had forms a context filter through which your brain processes new information and constructs the world around you. It takes what you are experiencing, matches it against your past experiences, predicts what makes the most sense, and then constructs a mental image based on those predictions.

This theory, known as predictive coding started taking off the ground in the 1980s and ‘90s, and suggests the neocortex uses specific schemas (mental blueprints) to decide how to construct reality.

Predictive coding explains how we can move around our house in the dark without crashing and bumping into every wall, table, or piece of furniture, and how you can find the light switch. Your brain is predicting it based on a lifetime of data, offloading cognitive load and allowing parts of the brain to run on autopilot.

Our brains also don’t treat all data equally. It acts as a spotlight, illuminating only what we direct it to shine on, consciously or subconsciously. Specifically, this spotlight is an evidence collector, primed to find data in the outside world that validate your internal experience and beliefs.

Have you ever bought a new car and all of a sudden, you are seeing that car everywhere on the road? It’s as if half the world decided to buy the exact same car you did, even if you’d never noticed that many on the road before? Or, you notice that you haven’t seen a license plate from Maine in a while and then you see two in the next 10 minutes. These are examples of your brain finding evidence that supports your decision to buy that car, proving that you made the right choice, or to scan to look for Maine license plates specifically.

MRIs and other brain scan studies from around the world have looked at brain activity in how it collects data, processes information, and makes decisions. Scans show this process is so complex and multidimensional that we still know relatively little about how the brain does it all, but we have observed some pretty weird behaviors.

One study that suggested reading words associated with aging makes participants move more slowly. Another showed that machine learning can predict a person’s choice 11 seconds before they consciously make it.

Moving away from the brain itself, the question becomes can we use this understanding to shape the way our brains process information and begin to see the world differently?

The answer is undoubtedly yes.

How?

By harnessing the power of our thoughts.

I’ve spoken at length in these newsletters about the power of your thoughts, and every great thinker from across time has noted the true power of your mind. Buddha, Jesus, Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Zig Ziglar, and more have all attested to the importance of knowing the mind.

The point is clear: what we think influences what we see in “reality.”

I recently gifted someone the book “Soundtracks” by Jon Acuff. In all honesty, I hadn’t read the book, only did some research into books that could help with the plague of overthinking. Since I gave it as a gift, I decided I should read it too and have been listening to the audio book in the car.

While the book is indeed an excellent antidote to chronic overthinking, it also offers a testament to the power of your thoughts and how they shape your perception of the outside world. Overthinking, or the debilitating rumination on a singular topic, afflicts most of us in some capacity, and it is most severe when we believe that every decision we make holds dire consequences (see last week’s newsletter, “It’s not that serious”).

The author describes a study he conducted on the use of positive affirmations. In this study, he partnered with Mike Peasley, PhD. to ask 10,000 participants to recite an anti-overthinking affirmation in the mirror twice a day for 30 days. Among their findings was that participants who recited the affirmation more than 20 times saw a 48% decrease in overthinking and an 4X increase in productivity.

The reason that positive affirmations work is not because they possess some kind of ethereal magic, but because they prime your brain to look for evidence in the outside world.

Your brain is constantly looking for validation for your beliefs. And if there’s anything your brain hates, it hates being wrong.

If you believe that you are a lazy individual, your brain will collect evidence that proves without a shadow of a doubt that you are lazy. If you are looking for evidence that you are a failure, or that you are alone, or that the world is a cruel place, you will surely find it.

It isn’t always our ‘fault’ that we focus on the negative. Our brains are masters at proving they were right all along because the cognitive dissonance of being wrong makes our brains squirm around. We are also primed to more vividly remember negative experiences and information. Our brains react more strongly to negative thoughts, emotions, and experiences that by now we are evolutionarily biased to see any perceived threats to our safety and wellbeing. Throw in high-octane external sources, like social media and the news, and it’s no wonder we are all raged up.

This applies just as much to our society as it does to us as individuals. It’s easy to point out the flaw in our greater society, but the finger should ultimately be pointed inwards.

Cue Michael Jackson: “If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change.” (complete with an unnecessary key change)

Leaving world peace aside for a moment, at a more intimate level, you don’t have to be a victim of noise and you can change the way you see the world, which is to say to change your reality.

The solution is simple.

Change the filter.

Look for evidence that proves how kind and generous you are; look for evidence that shows that you value your health and take steps to care for your body; look for evidence that proves that you are safe, happy, and secure.

Instead of choosing to look for evidence of narratives that are not helpful or kind to you, choose narratives that reinforce who you want to be and look for evidence of those.

This is the central premise of Acuff’s book. He calls these thoughts that keep us from moving forward in life “broken soundtracks” and one solution is to replace them with a better soundtrack.

Acuff makes it clear that this doesn’t mean we lie to ourselves or bury our heads in the sand. Our brains are pretty good at knowing when they’re being lied to. Rather than replace broken sound tracks with something wildly untrue. The point is to look for evidence in your life that proves whatever you want to believe is true. If you want to believe that you are a happy person, look for evidence that proves you are a happy person. If you want to be a mindful leader, one who leads with clarity, precision, purpose, and creativity, look for evidence that you are that person.

If you aren’t seeing any, here’s where things get fun, you make evidence.

You take actions that do support that identity and then, guess what, you’ve found some evidence!

That’s how you truly transform your life: By creating evidence that you are becoming the person who intend to be.

One of my favorite takeaways from Soundtracks is the filter through which the author suggests we pass each of our thoughts to determine if it is a broken soundtrack. We examine the thought and ask three simple questions:

1. Is it true?

2. Is it helpful?

3. Is it kind?

This trifecta is pretty efficient at identifying broken soundtracks that don’t serve us or what we are trying to accomplish. It also provides a model for creating new soundtracks that can help us.

Mastering your life begins with mastering your thoughts.

Mastering your thoughts begins by mastering the ability to hear your thoughts.

Mastering the ability to hear your thoughts begins by mastering the ability to control the dials.

One final nugget of wisdom Jon Acuff gives us is that broken soundtracks, or these unhelpful thoughts, never truly go away. Or, at least it takes them a long time to disappear almost entirely. Instead of trying to get rid of them completely, we should learn how to adjust the dials — turn the volume down for thoughts we recognize are unhelpful and turn the volume up for thoughts that are helpful.

If I could suggest my own soundtrack for you to try out, it would be this:

My life is beautiful.

What will you look for in your life this week?

Until next time, live uninterrupted.
~Coleman