Is Your Brain Lying to You? | Sahana T | TEDxThe NGP School Coimbatore

[00:00:01][music] >> Raise your hand if you ever thought someone was judging you only to find out they weren't even thinking about you.

[00:00:16]Or if you thought you were going to fail an exam but ended up doing just fine the next day.

[00:00:22]Or if you stayed up late thinking about a problem that completely solved itself the next day. [snorts] If your hand is raised, congratulations.

[00:00:34]You have a fully functioning brain that has been lying to you your entire life.

[00:00:42]We like to think that our brains are some smart supercomputers that take decisions to keep us happy.

[00:00:50]But that's not really true.

[00:00:53]Science says that your brain chooses what to focus on, deletes the boring parts, and often makes problems seem bigger than they actually are.

[00:01:05]Reality isn't what you see. It's what your brain thinks it sees.

[00:01:11]Take your eyes for example.

[00:01:13]Neuroscientists often use a test called change blindness.

[00:01:19]Let's start with a quick game.

[00:01:21]I want to show you an image on the screen and then flash a blank page for a millisecond.

[00:01:27]After that, I'll show you the same image but with an object completely deleted.

[00:01:32]Let's see if you can find it out.

[00:01:34]As the two images keep switching back and forth, you may realize that your brain finds it extremely difficult to find out the missing piece.

[00:01:44]But why?

[00:01:47]Here's the object that's actually disappearing.

[00:01:51]It seems so obvious now, isn't it?

[00:01:55]So why couldn't you notice it before?

[00:01:58]Right now, stick your thumb at your arm's length. Look at your thumbnail.

[00:02:04]That's the only point that's in high definition focus by your brain.

[00:02:09]Your eyes process around 10 million bits of data every second, but your brain only processes a small fraction of it.

[00:02:19]The rest is all just a blurry guess.

[00:02:22]And it does this for one simple purpose.

[00:02:26]Your brain was never made to keep you happy or joyful.

[00:02:30]It was meant to keep you alive.

[00:02:34]Let's go back a few hundred thousand years. Imagine a group of cavemen sitting around a pond.

[00:02:41]And then there's a sharp rustling sound in one of the bushes.

[00:02:45]One caveman assumes a lethal predator and begins running away.

[00:02:50]Another caveman thinks it's just the wind and brushes it off.

[00:02:56]If the first caveman was wrong, no big deal. He just lost a bit of energy, but he lives to see the light of day again.

[00:03:06]But, if the second caveman was wrong, it becomes a catastrophic evolutionary dead end.

[00:03:13]So, by natural selection, we're all the direct descendants of the first caveman.

[00:03:20]We are all children of paranoid, hyper-vigilant over-thinkers.

[00:03:27]This is what psychologists like to call the negativity bias.

[00:03:31]Let's say you finish a difficult project and get home.

[00:03:35]Five people tell you, "Wow, that was a mesmerizing performance." And then one person says, "It was terrible. I think you busted it."

[00:03:45]Which one do you think about when you're trying to fall asleep at 1:00 a.m.?

[00:03:50]Do you ever overthink? Not really.

[00:03:56]There was this one time when I sent a message to someone who was really important to me. I wanted them to respect me, so I over-analyzed my message so much.

[00:04:07]And then I hit send.

[00:04:10]Then 1 hour passed, then 3, then a day, and they still didn't look at my message.

[00:04:17]And then my brain went to work. Maybe you sounded too needy. Maybe you offended them. By the second day, my brain had constructed a whole courtroom case against me with absolutely no evidence.

[00:04:31]That's when I realized we actually suffer more in our own in our own imagination than we do in reality.

[00:04:42]And then they finally replied, "Sorry, my phone was broken." That's it.

[00:04:50]We see this phenomenon of overthinking every day in how we work.

[00:04:56]We think procrastination is a character flaw. We beat ourselves up for it and call it laziness.

[00:05:03]But that's not really true.

[00:05:06]Procrastination is actually a neurological defense mechanism.

[00:05:11]Whenever you look at a huge textbook or a difficult project, your brain measures the mental and emotional stress coming with it.

[00:05:21]It wants to save you from all that strain, so it begins lying to you.

[00:05:27]"Hey, you're tired. Instead of doing all this, let's go sleep for a while, or let's go scroll on social media for just 5 minutes."

[00:05:37]It's trying to save you from a predator that doesn't even exist.

[00:05:44]And whenever we reach any point of exhaustion, we take a step back and say, [clears throat] "I have no energy left."

[00:05:52]David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL and athlete, says, "Whenever you think you've reached your potential, whether emotionally, mentally, or physically, you've only reached about 40% of your true capability.

[00:06:09]The rest 60% of your limit is locked away in a hidden reserve of strength that's guarded by a brain that's constantly lying to you."

[00:06:21]We've seen athletes crumble to their finish line.

[00:06:25]Have you ever wondered why?

[00:06:28]It's because their brain is saving them from something that could potentially harm their health status.

[00:06:36]There was this one psychological study called the Asch paradigm, where five to six people were made to sit in a room, and then one participant entered the room.

[00:06:49]These six people were actually secret actors.

[00:06:54]They were made to lie to the participant.

[00:06:58]They were shown a target line and were asked to match it with the other lines based on their length.

[00:07:06]As you can see, the target line matches line C the most.

[00:07:11]But one by one, the actors stood up and confidently said it was line A.

[00:07:17]One-third of the time, the participant went through a neurological conflict.

[00:07:23]They looked at the line that was clearly shorter, rejected the evidence, and said it was line A just to match with the group.

[00:07:34]So, how do we live in a world where our brain is constantly lying to us?

[00:07:39]How do [clears throat] we play a game where the dealer is constantly cheating.

[00:07:44]It's by understanding this simple truth.

[00:07:49]You can't think your way into a new way of acting, but you can act your way into a new way of thinking.

[00:07:58]Let me repeat myself.

[00:08:00]You can't think your way into a new way of acting, but you can act your way into a new way of thinking.

[00:08:10]You must make your brain believe you.

[00:08:15]There was this one time in one of my sister's college classes where her professor told the entire class to assume they were ill for the rest of the day.

[00:08:26]He told them, "If you think of something strong enough, you might actually make it happen."

[00:08:33]One guy took it really serious. So, he began making his brain believe it.

[00:08:38]And then, before the afternoon, within 3 hours, he had gotten so sick that they had to call an ambulance.

[00:08:45]Okay, whether these symptoms were due to anxiety, expectation, doesn't really matter.

[00:08:52]One idea, one suggestion was able to change the way he thought of everything happening inside his body.

[00:09:00]His brain started searching for a proof of something it already decided to believe.

[00:09:08]Everyday you're given two streams of information.

[00:09:12]One is the fantasies that are based on evolutionary fears, and other is the facts that are based on today's reality.

[00:09:20]Your brain's greatest ability is lying to you and keeping you comfortable, but your greatest responsibility is deciding whether it's right.

[00:09:31]Because the lies will always sound like the truth when it speaks in your own voice.

[00:09:38]Your potential is not hidden behind your limits.

[00:09:41]It's hidden behind the lies that created them.