 The brain is the powerhouse of everyone. It processes information and keeps one alert. It also helps one control basic motor functions. The brain is quintessential for human living. According to National Geographic, the human brain is responsible for all of the body functions. The brain is the reason you can smile, recall your name, run to the field, breathe, or even sleep. You can't do without your brain. But despite all this amazing things the brain does, we still decide what we want to do. An average brain can process an infinite amount of information and yet some people are janitors. No offense to janitors but people underutilize their brain all the time. But today's video isn't about conscious decision people make that underutilize their brain. It is about subconscious mistakes that people make all the time. 1. You embrace stereotypes more than you do logic. Is there a people group you assume should have in a particular way or should be in a particular position? Jews for example. Why do people assume that because some top American billionaires are Jews? Therefore being wealthy is a Jewish thing. According to the Atlantic, a recent study shows that smart people are actually more at risk of stereotyping others. It doesn't make sense that smart people will fall for stereotypes but they do. A whole lot. The next time you want to say black men are strong. Think again, stereotypes are so common people can barely tell the difference. Why are old women weak? Because they are old. But then there are weak young people too. There are some very feet old women who would survive a one mile sprint while you couldn't last 200 meters. The default subconscious brain setting appears to be to store information and categorize them. Over time you come to accept some things without questioning them and that's when stereotypes come to stay. An average Asian is not smarter than the average black man. Life is now black and blue like that but they would prefer it that way so that they wouldn't have to rationalize it too much. It is actually a convenient and efficient way of storing information but not the best. Start to take time to reflect daily on how you perceive things. Some men think women are snobs and that when they are leading a team they tend to be emotional. This too is false. But stereotypes beg to differ. 2. You surround yourself with information that confirms your beliefs. People gravitate towards things that are familiar and align with their beliefs. According to the Fast Company, we tend to like people who think like us. If we agree with someone's beliefs, we're more likely to be friends with them. While this makes sense, it means that we subconsciously begin to ignore or dismiss anything that threatens our worldviews since we surround ourselves with people and information that confirm what we already think. This is called confirmation bias. Have you ever made friends with someone who disagreed with everything you stood for? This hardly happens so no trouble if your answer is no. The more familiar a thing or person is, the more we will tend to accept it. But experience has shown that the things we think are right are sometimes very wrong. But then, since almost everyone is plagued with this problem, how do you trust other people's opinions? In the end, you can't always tell what is right because your perspective is limited. You can, however, do your best by giving each action you take some thought. That way, you don't make mistakes in haste. To further buttress the point earlier, in 2009, a study at Ohio State University showed that we will spend 36% more time reading an essay if it aligns with our opinions, just like you watching this video right now. If you didn't align with some degree with what I'm saying, you would have stopped watching some minutes back, but you're here. Confront your beliefs from time to time, even if it's uncomfortable. It is the only way to avoid confirmation bias. People who reinvented themselves and became extremely successful usually had to reinvent themselves. Think about it, if you hold the same views around money now as you held last year, why would your income increase? If you change it to something better, however, it is likely that before the year is over, you will have twice or more of what you had. 3. You predict futuristic events based on the previously established pattern. Do you try to predict people or events? Do you know that you're wrong most of the time? People are very dynamic. There are literally 100 reasons why someone could have been late to class. Don't waste your time predicting why. Even if it were a coin and you were flipping the coin with a friend and going for heads, each time you flip, there is a 50% chance it will show either a head or a tail. It doesn't matter how many times you flip it. The probability will remain positive that it will be in their favor. In gambling, this is very present. According to the Fast Company, the gameless fallacy is a glitch in our thinking. Once again, we're proving to be logical creatures. The problem occurs when we place too much weight on past events and confuse our memory with how the world actually works, believing that they will have an effect on future outcomes. Or in the case of heads or tails. Anyway, since past events make absolutely no difference to the odds, the belief that a result will replicate itself is called the positive expectation bias. This can make a person spend all their savings gambling on an ad that is clearly impossible to reach simply because they believe that luck rather than probability will make them win. Don't be like these people. To prevent the temptation, don't even gamble at all. Even if it's a dollar. If you do and lose it, you may feel drawn to try again, since it's just a dollar. But when you win, even if it's $100, the chances that you will stop are very slim. 4. You rationalize purchases you don't want. This is one of the reasons it is best to stay away from certain things we see during sales. If you don't have any planned purchase, people have the tendency to buy things they don't actually want and then rationalize it later. A smart thing to do is rationalize first before buying. But it doesn't always work that way. When you enter a store, they usually have agents who come to ask you what you want and so on. They may also point out different options. You may then end up buying something even if you don't want it because you feel it will make the agent feel bad if you don't. If you don't want this to happen at every point, you can ask for directions. Tell them what you want specifically and go get it yourself or live it if they don't have it. That way, you won't feel emotionally obliged to buy because the agent will feel bad if you don't. A trick to avoiding rationalizing after purchase is to rationalize before purchase. Don't be in a hurry. It's your money and the store needs your money more than you need their product. 5. You make decisions based on the anchoring effect. People generally don't like feeling like they lost out on something. If you present people with options and then subsequently add or remove something from one of the other options, people will tend to go for the untouched option. The human mind is quite irrational. Rather than making a decision based on pure value for investment, time, money, and the like, we factor in comparative value. That is, how much value an option offers when compared to another option. This doesn't make a lot of sense, but that is how a lot of people operate. The Economist once created an ad subscription to test how the anchoring effect affects people's decisions. The Economist split their web version for $59, the print version for $125, and gave the option to subscribe to both the print and web version for $125. It was pretty clear that the useless option was here. But when then arrails, an American Israeli professor of psychology gave this form to 100 MIT students and asked them which option they would choose. 84% chose the cummer deal for $125, only 16% chose the cheaper web only option, and nobody chose the print only option for $125. The cummer dex clearly did not have more value because the content is the same whether in print or online, and the web version was cheaper. But because they didn't want to feel like they missed out on a bigger opportunity, they went for the cummer dex which was more expensive with no additional value. 6. You rationalize wrong or bad decisions made until they feel right. A lot of people deal this. Stop rationalizing bad choices. A relationship can be good because you entered into it. It is good when you and the person you are with is very happy in the relationship. If this is not the case, rationalizing it will only prolong your suffering. 7. You believe your memories more than facts. Have you ever had a vividly childhood memory, this approved by your parents? It is not something pleasant. One of the fallible aspects of people is that they tend to believe what they can remember. But our memories are not always accurate. This is because we can have false memories. If you want something to happen so badly, you can actually create images to fill it in when it never happened. Here is an example. If a man always pays his doctor before treatment comes on a particular day and is allowed in without paying, the man may actually remember paying the doctor. This is because it is what he does all the time. It can create the false memory that has no basis on facts.