Click on the mini-image below to listen on the page. Or, tune in through your favorite podcast service available through the “Subscribe” button.
You buy a new car and suddenly you notice that everyone else seems to have your car too. Yet, the year before you may not even have known that your particular car existed.
Once you decided that you wanted to believe something, your brain went to work for you gathering evidence – showing you that it was possible, serving up examples of where it already existed, and giving you further proof that whatever you wanted was possible, ok, correct, or whatever applies for that given belief.
But, this works in both directions. The ability of our brain to serve up evidence also means it can find it for things that may not be helping us move forward in productive ways.
Don’t try to over analyze this for now. Just take time to notice how amazing your brain is at gathering evidence to support a belief you want, and then you can decide whether or not you are ok with the results.
Listen to this episode and more from the Move Your Desk podcast at https://pod.co/move-your-desk. Available through all major subscription services.
Episode 82 Show Notes
Episode 82 Transcript
This is Rebecca Clark Episode 82 Gathering Evidence This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Hello, friends. I hope you’re doing well in the United States were experiencing that turnover from fall toe winter in some places and the bodies having to get used to cold weather and determining what jacket thickness toe, where because we think that it’s not too cold. And then you get out there in the wind and the snow and it starts to feel colder, and I’m on an extended visit to Utah to see some family. So I’m seeing these beautiful mountains covered with red trees with snow intermingled with it, and it’s just this great panoramic view. But over this last week or so, a lot of people have had heightened emotions and lots of different thoughts about elections. And so, I thought, is a perfect time to talk about gathering evidence because this is something that, as I do my life work and learn more about our rain and how we act and how we feel the gathering evidence concept keeps coming up because our brains love to serve us up a lot of thoughts. And within those thoughts there certain thoughts that we allow ourselves to take hold of a little more than others. And those thoughts get repeated a lot and become a belief. And that process of becoming a belief and making a belief even stronger is this process where the brain latches on to an idea and it starts to notice it everywhere. And we all hear about this. You know, we talk about when you’re looking for a new car and you’ve decided you want a red Toyota Camry that suddenly it seems like the whole world purchased a red Toyota Camry because you’re heightened awareness. You’re looking for it, you’re searching for it, and then you see it everywhere. When two weeks before, you could have been questioned about this and said, a red Toyota Camry doesn’t even exist. But once you’ve decided that’s what you want, then all of a sudden you see it everywhere, or if that’s something you hope for, suddenly you see this thing everywhere, and that’s how our brain can help us in many ways, right? We decide we want something or that we desire something, and suddenly we start to see evidence of it being around or the possibilities, and that can really help us out and serve us in many ways toward getting what we want. But this can also work against us, right? Especially if there’s some kind of thinking that becomes a belief that we’re not worthy or that were not enough for that. We need to change something up, or that someone else needs to change something in their lives to accommodate us. And then suddenly our brain goes toe work on gathering all of this evidence, we can get pretty strong beliefs and emotions from these things. And so, for example, with the election, I’m amazed at how many people I spoke with that weren’t actually voting for a particular candidate. They were voting against another one. And then there were people that were saying, Well, I didn’t like this one at first, but I decided that for all these reasons, I’m going to vote for them, even though if you’re on the outside looking in, you’d be like, Why did that person choose that person? It seems to go against most things they think. But as the person will talk, you start to realize, Oh, they didn’t really want to do this. But then they thought, Well, maybe I have to for some reason. Like maybe they have to be loyal to their party. Or maybe they were voting against the other person, so they found ways and evidence for themselves, like Okay, you’re okay. You’re you’re making the right decision. This is really what you want to dio Because of this reason, because of this other reason because of this other reason, Yeah, you can go ahead and do this and you can justify yourself and making these choices. And so it’s sometimes fascinating to watch from a political perspective and sometimes not fascinating it all for me because I have chosen to be fairly neutral on some of these things because I’m working on other areas of my life right now. But realizing that in these other areas of my life I am doing the same thing, right, serving myself up evidence, gathering evidence, trying to notice how could I make this possible? Why is this not possible and constraining and expanding myself as I realize that that’s what’s going on in my head. Some of the things that people share with me is I talk with them. Are comments like it’s easier to find a job if you have a job. It’s easier to earn money during Cove it. If you already had an online business, they already had money in the family, so they had a head start to their career business college buying a house and the list goes on. Notice how all of those air just thoughts, right? Because all of these things may or may not be true, depending on who you talk Teoh, right, because everybody has different situations going on. But we continue to gather evidence and search for it once we decide to entertain the possibility about something. So I just wanted to encourage you today to pay attention when you are making excuses or when you’re trying to justify something, or when you are trying to change something and notice how you seek for examples, you seek for evidence to support your point of view and ask yourself why you’re not seeking evidence to support the opposite of whatever you’re trying to prove and see If somewhere in that process you discover new things about yourself or others that may be different than you initially thought. Because you’re so busy gathering evidence about something. Okay, my friends, this was just a short episode today, but I really wanted to share it with you. Have a great week. Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, Sign up for a weekly nudge at move your desk dot com. See you next Monday.