3 Steps To Making Better Decisions By Silencing Your Assumptions
Assumptions create blind spots that prevent you from seeing the truth.
Your mind is plagued with biases, beliefs, and programming that have occurred throughout your life. It’s these automatic answers that lead to the worst outcomes. As a result, the mind becomes a manipulative enemy pushing you down the wrong path.
It doesn’t have to be that way:
Our Brain Rewards Assumptions
Assumptions are beliefs that you believe are true regardless of the facts.
Take people who believe the earth is flat as an example. We ignore information that is inconsistent with our beliefs. We’re pulled to what we believe is true based on our years of mental programming.
When we hear information that supports our assumptions, “the brain activates two areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with other rewards, like food and money,” writes Stephen Shapiro.
We seek out information that supports our beliefs because our brain receives “a reinforcing boost when we find it.” “Even when we’re 99% wrong, our brain seeks the 1%.”
No matter how strong your confirmation biases are, you can work past them.
