Only 1% people reach this level of Thinking: So, this is the very first time I am about to say something. I am not very comfortable speaking. Usually, I just sing.
I would like to begin with one of your beautiful quotes:
“Only because of the mind, you and I are different. If there is no mind, we are one.”
When I first heard this, I could not help but connect it with music.
In physics, there is a fascinating concept called string theory, which suggests that at the deepest level of creation, everything in the universe is a vibration. Every particle, every form, and every existence is simply a different vibration within the same fundamental reality.
Music is a bridge between the individual and the infinite
If everything is a vibration, then music is not merely entertainment. Music is a bridge between the individual and the infinite.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude.
I am not the mind, intellect, ego, or consciousness,
Not the ears, tongue, nose, or eyes.
I am not the sky, earth, fire, air,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
I am not the life breath, nor the five vital airs,
Not the seven elements, nor the five sheaths.
I am neither speech, hands, feet, nor the organs of procreation or excretion,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
I have no hatred, greed, delusion, or arrogance,
Neither pride nor jealousy do I possess.
I am not dharma, nor wealth, nor desire, nor liberation,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
Neither virtue nor sin, neither pleasure nor pain,
No sacred chants, pilgrimages, scriptures, nor rituals.
I am neither the enjoyed nor the enjoyer,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
No fear of death, no distinction of caste,
I have no father, mother, or birth.
I am neither a relative nor a friend,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
I am beyond attributes, formless,
Everywhere and in every sense organ.
I am not attached, nor am I free,
I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
Predict your next thought for the next 5 seconds
By the end of this post, you will not experience any of the thoughts that will come to your mind like before and if you think that I am exaggerating then let’s do just one experiment.
Predict your next thought for the next 5 seconds. What will that be? What topic will it be on? When will it come? Maybe you won’t be able to do it. Because you don’t decide thoughts. You just notice them and if thoughts are coming to your mind without permission then a question arises who is watching them.
This question seems as simple as it is dangerous because if you go out to find its answer honestly then the foundation of your identity can be shaken.
The biggest problem in your life is not your thoughts
We grow up believing from childhood that what we think is what we are. If the mind says I am a loser then we accept it. If the mind says that people are judging me, then we believe it without any evidence. If the mind says I can’t do this, then we give up even before trying.
But what if I say that the biggest problem in your life is not your thoughts. Rather, it is that you accept them as your own without verifying them. And because of this one mistake people ruin relationships. They lose crores. They choose wrong careers. And sometimes they live their entire lives living a story that their mind has written. Reality did not.
This is not a motivational thing. This is exactly the same thing that philosophers were trying to understand about two and a half thousand years ago. Ancient Greece Athens was a city where debates took place in every street. Every man thought he had the answers. But among them all there was one man who instead of giving answers, only asked questions. His name was Socrates. He would ask someone, why do you believe this? If he got the answer, he would ask again and then give proof of it. If you were wrong, then gradually people started realizing that most of their beliefs were based on assumptions and not facts.
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I know that I know nothing
And after this journey, Socrates said the line which is still considered one of the most powerful definitions of human intelligence. I know that I know nothing. This was not weakness. This was awareness. Because only the person who sees his ignorance truly starts learning. That is why ‘Know Theself’ was written on the entrance of the Temple of Apollo. Today, people think of this quote as motivation. But at that time it meant observe your thoughts. Observe your beliefs. And first of all, observe how often your mind unnecessarily convinces you that it is always right.
Your brain cannot see reality directly
Surprisingly, almost 2400 years later, neuroscience also reached the same conclusion. But this time it was not philosophy but MRI machines that were speaking. And what he discovered is probably the most important turning point in this post. Your brain cannot see reality directly. It makes a prediction of reality every second and then compares that prediction with information coming from outside. Meaning, many times you don’t see the world as it is. You see the world as your brain expects it to. That is why two people, after seeing the same incident, draw completely different conclusions.
A student comes out of the exam hall and says The paper was impossible. The other person, after looking at the same paper, says it was normal. The reality was the same but the prediction was different. Neuroscientists call this model predictive processing. Your brain doesn’t record reality like a camera. He is a prediction machine. Guess first. Then it collects evidence and then gives you an experience. This system is brilliant for survival. But not always perfect for objective truth. That’s why when you see a rope in the woods and mistake it for a snake, your brain reacts first. Verify later. Speed comes before accuracy. But because of this system, our biggest psychological mistakes in modern life also happen.
You form a first impression of a person and then look at every new one through that lens. Once you identify yourself as average, your brain only collects evidence that supports that identity. That’s why your biggest enemy is not the world. These are your brain’s predictions. And whenever there is a conflict between prediction and reality. A region of the brain gets activated. Anterior cingulate cortex. Think of it as your brain’s internal referee. It keeps monitoring every second. Did what I expected happen? If there is no response, it generates an error signal. But seeing the signal and accepting it are two different things. Most people don’t change their opinion even after seeing the error. Why?
Because Brain likes feeling right more than being right. This was proved by a strange incident of 1995. A man named Meth Lollar went to rob a bank. By applying lemon juice to his face, he was sure that lemon juice would confuse the cameras like invisible ink. After a few hours, the police arrested him on the basis of CCTV footage. As soon as he was arrested, he said in surprise, but I said the juice. It wasn’t just stupidity. This incident forced psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to conduct a research.
The result was shocking. The less knowledge a person has about a subject, the more confident he is in his abilities and as knowledge increases, the certainty decreases as the complexity becomes apparent. That’s why Bert Russell wrote, The Trouble with the World Is That the Foolish Are [ __ ] Shore While the Intelligent Are Full of Doubt. This is not doubt weakness. Sometimes it’s proof of awareness. But overconfidence is not the biggest trap of our brain. There is another illusion that silently manipulates your decisions every day.
The brain doesn’t look for proof. The brain seeks confirmation.
Imagine you’ve decided that someone is an agent. Now if he helps you 10 times, you might not even notice. But the day he behaved rudely. Your brain agent will speak. See I was already right. Psychology calls this confirmation bias. The brain doesn’t look for proof. The brain seeks confirmation. That’s why Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” And this is where metacognition begins. Intelligence doesn’t mean thinking too much. Intelligence means grasping your own thinking. Question it and change it if necessary. And the first system for building this ability is so simple that people underestimate its power. But if you genuinely master just this one system, your decisions can change permanently.
The Observer Mind
This system is called The Observer Mind. Observer Mind. This may sound like a meditation technique. But in reality, this is the hidden ability of every high performer. An experienced sniper doesn’t pull the trigger just because he sees the target. First he looks at the wind, looks at the distance, controls his heart beat, then takes a decision. A surgeon doesn’t panic in the middle of an operation. A chess grandmaster doesn’t make the first move. A Hostage Negotiator doesn’t give the first answer. There is one thing common among all these. Observation before reaction. And because of this observation, their prefrontal cortex is able to override the emotional impulse. Let’s do an experiment. Don’t try to stop your thoughts for the next 15 seconds. Just let them come. One thought will come and another will replace it.
Then the third one. Now ask yourself just one question. If I could see these thoughts. So who is watching them? In this one second your perspective starts changing. Because for the first time you realize that you are not a thought. You are an observer of thought. And this realization is also described by psychologists as cognitive diffusion. Don’t destroy thought. Break your identity with him. Instead of I am a failure. The thought of failure has arisen in my brain. Instead of feeling anxious, my nervous system is perceiving threat. It doesn’t just change the wording. It creates distance between you and your thoughts. Viktor Frankl wrote Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space. In that space is a power to choose our response. That space is the observer mind.
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Thought Labeling
But just observing is not enough. If you cannot identify the emotion, how will you regulate it? That’s why system to thought labeling comes into play. UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman observed that when people just name their emotions accurately. If it’s anxiety, it’s shame, it’s frustration, then emotional reactivity starts to decrease and the prefrontal cortex gets more effectively engaged. So next time you get angry, don’t say I’m very angry. Just saying Interesting. The anger response is activated in my brain. This small sentence separates your identity from your emotion. And when the identity is separated, control starts coming back.
Error Journal
Now the System Three error journal. Elite fighter pilots don’t just write down what happened after every mission. He writes what he thought at that time because mistakes do not happen in actions. The mistake lies in the thinking process that led to the action chosen. Write just three lines every night. What did I assume? What was the reality? And where was my thinking biased? After just one month, the source code of your brain will start opening up before you. Perhaps you consider every criticism an insult. Perhaps you always make quick decisions under pressure. Perhaps you imagine failure before every new task. And once you see a pattern, breaking it is only a matter of time. But experts don’t just record their mistakes. They also test the future. And that is the next level of metacognition.
Prediction Logging
Prediction logging is not about looking into the future. To measure your confidence about the future. Imagine you think the interview will go badly or you’re sure this business idea will be 100% successful. Most people make predictions and then forget them. But metacognition says write prediction. Also write how confident I am. 80% 90% or just guessing. Then when the results come back to that page. Gradually you will notice that you are unnecessarily overconfident in some situations and unnecessarily underestimate yourself in some. Intelligence doesn’t mean always being right. Intelligence means knowing how often you are wrong. That’s why legendary investor Warren Buffett doesn’t just look at opportunities before every decision. He also questions his assumptions because it’s not hard to beat the market. It is difficult to defeat your ego.
The Outside View
Now comes System Five the outside view. Imagine for a second that your current problem happened to your best friend. Would you give him the same advice you are giving yourself? Probably not. Because when the problem is ours, ego, fear and emotions come in between. But when someone else faces the same problem, the brain becomes more rational. Many psychologists use this technique in the name of self-distancing. And research repeatedly suggests that a third-person perspective can improve decision quality. Next time you have to take a big decision in life. Just ask a question. If my friend were in my place, what would I say to him? Sometimes your clarity is hidden in that one answer.
The Inversion Method
Now System Six The Inversion Method. One of Charlie Munger’s favorite thinking strategies. Most people ask how to become successful? But Munger used to ask how failure would be guaranteed? If you want to be healthy then don’t just think about gym. Also think about what habits ruin your body. If you want a good relationship, don’t just think about love. Also think about what breaks trust. Sometimes the quickest shortcut to success is to eliminate the causes of failure.
Scheduled Thinking
And the last system is probably the most practical, scheduled thinking. Overthinking cannot be stopped by force. Daniel Wegner’s research showed that the thoughts you try to force out of your mind come back again and again. So don’t fight with your brain. Give him a schedule. Fix just 15 minutes every day just to think. Whenever any unnecessary thought comes to your mind during the day, say it to yourself. Its time is 8:00 pm. Gradually the brain learns that not every random thought will get immediate attention. And it is at this point that metacognition becomes habit from knowledge. But perhaps the biggest illusion is still to come.
The opposite of intelligence is autopilot
People think that the opposite of intelligence is stupidity. In reality, the opposite of intelligence is autopilot. And the day you come out of auto pilot, the direction of your life will start changing. Because a person makes his life through decisions, and decisions are of the same quality as the quality with which he observes his thinking. 2400 years ago, Socrates left just two words. Know Thyself. Perhaps even he did not know at that time that thousands of years later, neuroscience would prove his point in laboratories. Your greatest enemy is not the world. You don’t even have a past.
You don’t even have a future. Your biggest enemy is the story your brain tells you every day without evidence. And the day you stop blindly believing that story, that’s the day your freedom begins. Metacognition doesn’t make you smarter. It teaches you to see your own stupidity and ironically that is the beginning of real intelligence. From today onwards, whenever any strong emotion comes, whenever you feel like taking any impulsive decision, whenever your brain says, you cannot do it.
Just stop for a second and ask yourself. Is this reality speaking or is it just my brain making predictions? Maybe because of this one question your next decision and maybe your whole life will take a different direction if you want to understand the hidden mechanisms of your brain in this way. Don’t miss these posts because the most dangerous breeding ground is not the one with closed gates. The most dangerous thing is the one you never realize.
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Summery
About The Author
Hemant Singh
Hello friends, I am Hemant, Technical Writer & Co-Founder of Education Learn Academy. Talking about education, I am a student. I enjoy learning things related to new technology and teaching others. I request you that you keep supporting us in this way and we will continue to provide new information for you. :)
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