We are made of concepts, values, beliefs, thoughts and motivations. all of them have something in common, they all can be put into words. this also implies that most of our reality is made of words.
There is also something quasy magical about this, because in the same way that our reality is made of words, it so happens the other way around, our words influence enormously the way in which we perceive our reality.
I already touched on this in previous essays so I won’t deepen much here today, but is worth moving your attention to the fact that if we can shape our reality with words, then we can do so with questions.
Questions work for us in a seemingly magical way because we so happen to have an automatic mechanism that searches for patterns and solutions to our problem, simply put, will automatically and in the background, search for answers to that very question we ask.
This is known as the reticular activating system and is a double edged sword, which means that it does work as much in your favour as it does against you.
mostly, we have this mechanism tuned into “prove me right all the time” mode, that is, you think and expect X and by thinking and lingering about the same thing, then your reticular activating system (RAS from now own) will find details around you that will “prove” to yourself that you were in fact right. The real issue here is that you get hung in a detail that proves you right, but dismisses a mountain of evidence that proves you wrong.
RAS works day and night, right before you are aware of the world around you, this means that this is one of the cognitive mechanisms that colours and distorts our reality, in other words, is your pragmatic experience, and sometimes, you gotta be careful and take it into consideration.

So how are the questions related to our RAS?

thanks for asking, I was just about to talk about it!
it so happens that our RAS is, let’s say, a slave to our attention. If you put your attention to conspiration theories in YouTube, your RAS will work to throw at you everything in your environment that is related with that, if you on the other hand, put your attention to how to grow your business and ask yourself what can you do to grow your business and what problems can you solve and so on, you will see opportunities all around you.
It’s worth saying that personal experiments have shown that it takes about 2 seconds to tune your RAS into something, but this effect will soon fade if you don’t feed it again with what you want it to work with.
Self inquiry is literally the process of asking yourself questions, rich questions, to tune your RAS into “find the answer” mode, this has been done since before Socrates was around and is the basis of critical thinking and pretty much any type of cognitive therapy. What questions can you ask yourself to unlock the stuck states in which you might find yourself? Do you often find yourself in these types of situations? If so, what are your motivations to do the things that lead to this situation? Do you see any patterns?
and as always, thanks for reading.

Essay 4/30 of #30ideas30days

This mini lecture is part of the “30 ideas in 30 days” challenge, Want to know more? The idea is simple:

• Confront the dreadful blank page and write a personal, unique idea of > 300 – 400 words.
• Share it in any medium that you can.
• Add the Hashtag #30ideas30days
• Share your results at the end.
• Enjoy your ability to overcome your obstacles.