I've reduced this article to mentioning only three ways the average person's brain is dumbing them down, simply for the sake of keeping it to a more digestible size. There are many hundreds of thoughts people have from day to day that are effectively shackling their own mind, and therefore dramatically reducing the power of their own will to affect the world around them.
One of the ways I learned how to get around my own bad habit patterns, and alter my life for the better, was by removing the most major obstacles to my success--my own ineffective thought patterns.
It's something that so many people go through life never considering. They often are in a state of getting from one moment to the next, surviving from one day to the next, but they've forgotten that they possess one of the most powerful tools in the world: a mind that can turn in on itself and watch itself in order to study itself.
In short, humans possess what a friend of mine recently called "awareness of awareness", which is why we sit above the rest of the animal kingdom. It is the foundational reason that we can build skyscrapers, write poetry, engage in economic transactions, recreate our personalities, philosophize, build cars... and the list goes on.
What so many humans are doing, however, is living in a state of mental imprisonment, and it's not just from negative beliefs/outlooks either. It's not simply that they move and live with contradictions in their worldviews, though that is a huge contributor to ineffectiveness, unhappiness, and generally feeling unfulfilled/unsuccessful.
What I am referring to, and what I discovered about myself and others that was the greatest obstacle to my own success, was my day-to-day THOUGHT HABITS.
First, think of the human brain for a second like a giant computer (it kind of is, anyway), which is processing reality through light speed Question & Answer thought habits. My eyes observe reality around me, and without my conscious brain needing to do any work, my subconscious brain is answering the all the questions of "What is that?" and "What does that do?" about the things my eyes are perceiving. My brain is answering the question of what I am looking at and perceiving at such a rapid speed, I don't need to consciously think "What is that thing in front of me?", my subconscious brain already tells me it's a table, or a chair, or the sun's rays, or trees, or a mountain or a cat, etc.
As a newborn, I would have not known these things, so my brain would have had to work harder to answer the questions of "what". Now, my brain is doing it automatically--answering a staggering number of subconscious questions every hour. That is the "mental computation" that every person is doing 24/7.
Now that I've established that thought experiment, let's move to the conscious brain. We think many thousands of things a day, whether we say them aloud or not. But let's consider something very important here. If our brain is fundamentally thinking in question and answer format (if you take some time to think on this more deeply, you'll see that), can there be bad or good questions?
Can there be questions our brain asks which have illogical or incorrect assumptions built into them?
Can there be leading questions that trap us by leading straight toward terrible answers?
The answer to this is: absolutely.
I found that there were dozens of them, the more I examined my own thought patterns. And the more I found them, the more I did my best to start asking better questions in my thoughts, and doing so with conscious effort.
Why?
Because my brain is always trying to give me answers to things, so if I ask bad questions, I get bad answers, and I mentally lock my mind in a cage away from a million other possibilities. If I ask smarter questions, or questions that leave a thousand more possible answers, it gives my brain far more 'answers' to potentially choose from, including better ones. Here are three common questions (or habits of thought) that are limiting, self-defeating, or seriously leading, as well as an explanation of why they are and why they shackle people's minds, and therefore keep those individuals locked in a certain way of living or being.
Dumb Question #1: "Why do these things always happen to me?!"
This is a thought that has probably been thought by a billion people billions of times, after multiple experiences/circumstances in life occur that are painful, stressful or unsatisfactory in some way. What is wrong with this question? What kind of answer does it lead to? What does it assume that is trapping the thinker?
The first step here is to look at what the question assumes.
The active word "do" affirms to the psyche that negative things ACTIVELY, PRESENTLY occur in this person's life.
Yet a simple examination of the lives of multiple people can demonstrate that what is a bad thing for one is not that bad for another, or even seen as a good, which is a matter of what? PERSPECTIVE. This question has already assumed the event occurring is only negative or undesirable, and has already shut out the opportunity for a SHIFT in PERSPECTIVE that might transform a negative occurrence into a positive one.
The question then proceeds to identify the NEGATIVE experience as something that always happens "to" the person. This is one of the most dangerous words to your own personal happiness and goals. This assigns 'bad' experiences to your identity in a permanent fashion, because your brain has already decided these things always happen.
Because the brain has now reaffirmed that negative experiences actively and routinely happen to the person, and will continue to, this limits the brain only to answers of why, and since it is in a negative state already, those answers are usually self-defeating: "Because I don't deserve good things", or "because I'm stupid", or "because I'm not smart/capable/worthy", etc.
In truth, the stupidity in that person's brain was in asking that kind of question to begin with.
Here are better questions to ponder:
Is there a way to see this event as having value to me, even if it doesn't feel good right now?
How can I do something differently, that might change my path and alter my experience?
Is there a way to solve this issue permanently, and can I find those who have solved this already in order to learn from them?
Dumb Question #2: "Why do I always do that?"
This refers to the person who finds that they have a bad habit they struggle to defeat, whether it's forgetfulness, always being late for work, saying hurtful things they don't mean, eating poorly, etc... bad habits are not in shortage among humans.
Again we see that the active word "do" is attached to the person ("I"), and solidified as a permanent in the word "always". Like the previous question, this locks the person in a state of being they already do not like or enjoy, by assuming it is still occurring and always will. I stopped asking this particular question about my eating habits over six years ago, because I realized it was keeping me stuck in the state of identifying as the person I DID NOT want to be.
Instead I started asking:
"What are some good habits I can start to incorporate in my life?"
"Where are good examples of fit and healthy people and what habits of theirs should I learn?"
"What can I do differently starting today?"
Dumb Question #3: "Why are people so stupid?" (Oh, the irony...)
By now your brain is catching on enough that I'm sure you can pick this apart on your own.
The problem with this question lies mostly with the horrendous generalization combined with a very relative term that is almost never clearly defined when the question comes up in the person's brain.
The terrible generalization here is "people". There are over 7 BILLION humans on planet earth. Which people are stupid? The brain isn't taking the time to ask that, and because it isn't, it will simply include ALL people in the question and reinforce the thinker's focus on noticing whatever it arbitrarily decides is stupid in others. That person will continue to see more and more stupid people. It has assumed "people" (anyone and potentially everyone) just ARE "stupid", and will therefore be subconsciously looking for every instance of that in reality. This is a 'great' way to miss all the brilliance in every day humans, and it's also a 'great' way to end up miserable, since the person has their own mind convinced everyone else is in some way stupid, but often assumes their own exclusion from that. Even worse, the person is subconsciously reinforcing the potential fact that they are included in the assumption "people are stupid", and therefore may have locked themselves in as "just another stupid person".
You get smarter by asking better questions, but how do you know you might have had a dumb question enter your brain? How do you know what questions are trapping you and what ones might be better? Like this question fails to do, it helps to start looking at what YOU MEAN by your own words, and what your assumptions are in your questions.
This sounds simple to me now, but I have a practice at it that I have refined for years. I know it may be brand new mental training to many.
In that final question mentioned, one might start with asking "What do I mean by 'stupid'?", then perhaps follow up with, "Which people can I point to, that I have personal knowledge of, that fall into that category repeatedly and reliably?"
And even better,
"Even if I see people doing something/thinking something I personally think is stupid, in what ways are they intelligent, and are there ways they are more intelligent than I am, or ways in which my own definition of 'stupid' applies to me?"
OR
"How could I guide them into better thinking/being, and have I already worked on my own areas of what I define as 'stupidity'?"
And still another,
"Why am I concerned with this to begin with?"
See where this goes? See how the questions can lead to actual helpful knowledge, either about yourself or reality?
See how the question can move from assuming something limiting/untrue about reality, to actively defining reality for yourself? Questions can either lead you into lots of potentially great answers and knowledge, or they can mentally shut off knowledge and answers, which then shuts off amazing life possibilities you never guessed you might reach.
Your brain, as well as the brains of others, is a powerful tool. Stop telling it what it can't do, before giving it a chance to find that it can (which is what dumb/leading/assumptive questions do).
Ask smarter questions, get better answers, change your life.