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The one kind of explanation most likely to make you want to give up is an assumption that no matter what you do, you cannot win. This is defeatism. It means you expect defeat. It means you accept defeat and decide there is nothing you can do to change things.

That kind of thinking takes the fight out of you, and if you ever had a chance to change things, it is now lost — only because of what happened in your mind.

But from now on, you will know how to prevent defeatism from destroying your determination. You will have the know-how to find it where it lurks in your mind, and crush it before it causes you to give up.

Defeatist thinking means you assume you can’t improve the situation. It is an assumption; never a fact. And you are not replacing that assumption with another assumption. This is not an effort to convince yourself of a positive thought. You are merely leaving the question where it really is: You don’t know. When you truly don’t know, it is foolish to assume you’re helpless. It is unnecessary and self-defeating to decide something cannot be done.

During the Civil War, the situation seemed hopeless several times to the North, even though, of course, the North eventually won. But if you read the newspapers of the day, written by Northerners and published in Union newspapers, you might easily be persuaded to think there was no possible way the North would win. Lots of writers who ardently and desperately wanted the North to win nevertheless expressed their absolute certainty of losing. They were demoralized.

For example, an ardent Northern patriot, Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “We have to fight for a boundry — that is all now left to us.” In other words, winning the Civil War against the South was a lost cause. All that the North could hope for was to draw a boundry and let the Southerners form their own seperate government.

“I can understand the awful reluctance with which you can be brought to contemplate a divided nation. But there is no help for it,” Medill wrote, “…complete success has become a moral impossibility.”

Medill’s demoralization was not his alone. During several trying periods, it was shared by a majority of people in the North. So many setbacks (combined with the explanations people made of those setbacks) had most Northerners convinced the war could not be won by the North.

Their certainty was premature, as we now know. Their pessimism was overdone, as it usually is.

When Admiral Byrd was a boy in the wrestling match, he assumed he would lose, and he gave up. But what brought him back to life was his realization he might be mistaken about that.

If he went a step further and assumed he could win, that would have been positive thinking, which has its place. But anti-defeatism is more sure and more basic, it doesn’t require trying to convince yourself of something you are not convinced of, and always should be your first step.

The reality is, people often give up on something and decide it can’t be accomplished when it really can. They assume the situation is hopeless when it actually isn’t. And so dreams go unfulfilled. Goals are forgotten. Relationships fall apart. Finances crumble. Kids are left without guidance. And so on.

The things you have in your heart — the things you really want to accomplish — can probably be accomplished. But you have to prevent your mind from reflexively making the assumption it is hopeless.

The making of a defeatist assumption is almost always reflexive, meaning you don’t make it consciously. Here’s how it happens: You hit a setback and you feel like you’ve been kicked in the gut. In self-defense, your mind concludes the goal is impossible. It’s a natural reaction, almost a reflex. That’s defeatism. And the assumptions behind it are almost always wrong.

If a goal is sufficiently important to you, a setback will certainly make you feel bad, no matter who you are or how many times you’ve read this book. But the way you explain the setback to yourself will then bring you back quickly and help you recover from the blow, or it will keep you feeling bad, or even make you feel worse and worse.

In other words, the way you explain the setback to yourself will determine how quickly your determination comes back, and if it comes back at all.

How do you keep from giving up? How do you keep from selling out? How do you keep from letting your feeling of motivation die? This is a question of the ages. And now you know the answer.

This applies to any goal you have. If your marriage is on the rocks, the way you’re explaining this setback will determine whether you’ve reached an important turning point in your relationship, or the beginning of the end.

People who make good explanations of setbacks are more likely to exercise and less likely to smoke. Why? Because they are more persistent. They are less likely to feel defeated so they are less likely to give up on what they want. The way they explain setbacks gives them a sense that their actions make a difference — which is a fact poor explanations conceal. Good explanations prevent them from making the mistake of deciding that something (like a smoking habit) cannot be changed.
If something is changeable or preventable, it makes a big difference whether you believe it is or believe it isn’t.

For example, if you have frequent, negative shouting matches with your teenager, this is a setback. Things are not turning out like you want. So you will explain it. Let’s say you decide, “That’s just the way teenagers are.”

Is that a good explanation? Well, it’s better than, “I can’t make anything work,” but no, it is not a good explanation. Why? Because it implies that the situation can’t change until your kid is an adult. And that may not be true. It is a way of “accepting” the situation without feeling too bad about it. But it doesn’t help you accomplish your goal — having a good relationship with your teen.

Your explanations determine whether you will try again or not. Making a mistaken explanation like, “That’s the way teens are,” can kill your motivation to try again.

Sales is a good testing ground for this stuff. Salespeople hit lots of setbacks and the setbacks are important — too many setbacks and you can’t pay your mortgage! That’s serious.

MetLife Insurance Company used to hire five thousand salespeople a year, spend time and money training them, and by the end of the first year, half of them quit. Most of those who didn’t quit sold less and less, and by the fourth year, eighty percent of them had quit. This was typical of the entire insurance-sales industry, and it was a tragic waste of training expenses and a tragedy of human failure and suffering.

MetLife wanted to do something about it. Martin Seligman set up a series of experiments and here’s what he found out: Those who made the fewest mistakes in their thinking (when they explained their setbacks to themselves) were the most likely to do well. They made a lot more sales and they were much less likely to become demoralized and quit.

Think about that. In a job full of setbacks, strong explanations won the race by a mile. The salespeople in the habit of explaining setbacks with minimum mistakes were more successful and less demoralized — they did better and they felt better.

Good explanations did more than simply make them persistent. When a salesperson makes fewer mistakes in her explanations, she stops feeling so disheartened by setbacks. So setbacks themselves become less of a big deal. She then frets less about upcoming sales presentations. If a sales call doesn’t turn out well, she now knows it won’t be a catastrophe. So she has less anxiety before a sales call, and less demoralization after a rejection. This makes it easier to make the next call. This makes success more likely.

The antivirus for the mind won’t take care of everything — it is not the end-all, be-all for feeling better and getting more done. It is only one of the tools.

The other four tools in this book will help you go far beyond merely protecting yourself from demoralization. But if you fully understand the antivirus for the mind and put it into practice, you can immunize yourself against many unnecessary negative feelings. This will make the achievement of your goals easier and more fun.

a case in point

To see how the antivirus for the mind works on a specific problem, a team of researchers took thirty-three people with panic disorder who averaged five panic attacks per week per person.

Sixteen of them had weekly sessions with a therapist who provided emotional support. Seventeen of them had weekly sessions with a cognitive therapist who taught them to check their explanations for mistakes.

For instance, when a man felt chest pain, he was taught to question his explanations. His first explanation of chest pain might be, “I am having a heart attack.” And that thought basically scared him into a panic attack. This is a common side-effect of negative thoughts: A self-feeding loop. In other words, a negative thought making a negative emotion, and the negative emotion causing more negative thoughts, which causes even more intense negative emotions. In his case, a feeling in his chest scares him (because of his explanation of it) and so his heart beats harder, which he can feel, which scares him even more, etc.

The man’s cognitive therapist coached him to question his explanation and remind himself that when these feelings occurred in the past, they had never amounted to anything.

He was also coached to come up with more likely causes than the first thought that came to mind (that it’s a heart attack). It was more likely to be heartburn, for example.

In other words, he learned to doubt his automatic, habitual, negative assumptions. He learned to recognize the mistakes in his thinking. He learned that his first explanation is not the only one possible and not necessarily the best one.

At the end of two months, twelve of the cognitive-therapy people (the explanation-checkers) were totally free of panic attacks. Only four of the emotionally-supported people were free of attacks.

Among those who still had panic attacks, the explanation-check people averaged one attack a week. The emotional-support people averaged three per week.

The researchers did a one-year follow-up. The success rate had not diminished in that time. Arguing with their own negative, pessimistic thoughts dramatically changed their lives.

Hundreds of similar studies show the same results on a huge variety of negative feelings.

Similar effects to cognitive therapy can be achieved on your own using paper and pen. As a matter of fact, that’s often the most effective technique cognitive therapists assign as “homework.” It is not difficult to do.

Read next: The Basic Technique For Lifting Yourself Out Of Any Negative Emotion

Tags: science of determination by Adam Khan
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The negative thoughts you have and your (occasionally) mistaken explanations of setbacks seem completely natural. The explanations do not appear in your mind as “A Possible Explanation For This Setback.” You just sort of “know” what caused the setback, usually without giving it another thought.

Your explanations feel natural, but remember this: They only feel natural because you’ve been thinking that way for a long time. Your explanations are familiar. When you change your explanations, when you remove some of the mistakes in your thinking, they will not feel as natural at first because — and only because — they are unfamiliar. But after awhile, they will feel as natural as anything.

The assumptions that flit through our minds with the greatest of ease and make us feel demoralized are common assumptions like these:

I blew my diet because I’m a pig with no willpower.
I didn’t exercise this week because I’m lazy.
I need to face the fact that I’ll never be able to do this.
That’s the way the economy is going; it’s getting harder and harder to make a living.
I’m a loser.
There aren’t enough hours in the day.
I don’t have enough motivation.
I don’t have enough self-discipline.
I’m too old.
Nothing can be done about it.
Everything is a hassle.
Nothing comes easy.

These statements are demoralizing. Do the statements contain mistakes or don’t they? We’ll find out soon enough. But I cannot emphasize enough we’re not talking about “looking on the bright side” or trying to cover ugly reality with pretty thoughts. The fundamental point we are making is that if you think a situation is hopeless and you believe you can’t do anything about it, you should look carefully at that assumption because it is usually wrong. This idea is powerful and effective, and it works with everyday setbacks as well as major disasters.

Read next: Disaster At Sea

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The best way to improve your explanations of setbacks is simply to search for mistakes in your explanations as they arise in your mind.

Our minds work automatically for the most part — interpreting, concluding, deciding, judging — and it serves us well. We would get bogged down if we tried to analyze every explanation we made. So we’re not going to even try to do that. It is completely unnecessary. When things are going well and you feel good, let the good times roll.

But when things are not working — when things don’t turn out as you hoped, when your mood goes south, when you want to give up on your goal — search for mistakes!

The easiest way to find mistakes is to write down your demoralizing thoughts and argue with those thoughts on paper. Consider yourself personally challenged by those demoralizing statements and defend yourself. Imagine your least favorite person said those statements and find something wrong with those statements. Find everything wrong with them you can.

Decide right now who your least favorite person is. If you have more than one in mind, just choose one.

Now use a mental image of that person when you’re arguing with your thoughts. Imagine that person explaining your setbacks to you (with sneering derision).

The best way to do this is on paper. Writing your explanations down on paper makes them tangible and gives you something to work with. It is much easier than trying to do it in your head.

When a setback occurs, write down something you think caused the setback. For example, imagine a proposal of yours has been rejected. You write down what you think caused the setback. In this case, you think, “Nobody likes my ideas.” In other words, you think your proposal was rejected because nobody likes your ideas.

Now argue with that sentence (on paper). Imagine your least favorite person said to you, “Nobody likes your ideas!” Now look for mistakes in that explanation. You might write something like this: Nobody? That might be an exaggeration. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. I really haven’t tried everybody, and besides, it might not be the ideas, it might be the presentation, which could be changed, and so on.

After arguing with your thoughts this way, you can see that really only sometimes people don’t like your ideas. That is a more accurate appraisal of the real situation. And it is not so devastating or upsetting as the thought, “Nobody likes my ideas.”

So you have made your explanation of the setback more accurate and less upsetting.

Being less upset won’t make you ecstatic or jumping for joy, but that is not our purpose here. The aim is to remove demoralization that shouldn’t be there. The aim is to take away a feeling of defeat that is false, unjustifiable, and unreasonable.

Feeling demoralized is debilitating — it handicaps you, so the only time you should ever let yourself feel that way is when you really are defeated. Right now, you often feel demoralized mistakenly. We’re going to fix that. It might not make you happy, but it will make you feel bad less often and it will make you more powerful (more capable of accomplishing what you want).

three little snags

It sounds pretty easy to argue with demoralizing thoughts, but three problems tend to come up when you try. First, negative feelings seem to arise on their own without any thoughts causing them. That, however, is an illusion.

In fact, your negative feelings were preceded by a thought such as, “Nobody likes my ideas.” That explanation usually zips through your mind so quickly and so automatically, you don’t notice it. All you notice is the effect: The resulting feelings.

The speed and invisibility of your own thoughts is a problem. You have a difficult time arguing with a thought you don’t even know you’re thinking.

The reason you don’t know what you’re thinking when you explain a setback is that some thoughts are so well-practiced — you have thought them so many times — that the thinking goes on in the background of your mind. You explain certain categories of setback with certain well-practiced explanations, and then you feel a certain way, and all without even realizing it. As far as you know, the setback itself made you feel bad. It seems obvious that anyone would feel bad. It seems obvious that feeling bad is the appropriate response. But it only seems that way because your explanation zipped by so quickly. And it only zipped by so quickly because you have practiced that explanation so many times.

I want you to fully understand how well-practiced your explanations are. You have many setbacks every day, all of which you explain to yourself, and you’ve been doing it since before you can remember.

What happens when you do anything several times a day for that many years? What happens is that you stop being aware you’re doing it. It has gone completely automatic. This would not be a problem if we always made good explanations. But sometimes we make mistakes.

The way we explain setbacks to ourselves is the way we haphazardly got into the habit of doing it when we were younger. We’re not necessarily making the best possible explanations we could make, as you’ll find out. But now it’s automatic.

So you explain setbacks automatically, and the way you feel and what you do ensues from the way you explain the setbacks, but you aren’t even aware you’re doing it. To you, your feelings are appropriate and fitting, given the circumstances. You always feel this way when that kind of thing happens. Not because that’s the only way a person could feel when that happens, but only because you always explain those kinds of setbacks the way you’re used to explaining things like that, and your emotions in response are familiar and seem perfectly normal.

That’s why it’s hard to notice yourself making explanations. You’re explaining setbacks pretty much automatically, just as you drive your car automatically. You can carry on a conversation while you drive, allowing your driving (a very complicated process) to happen automatically. And you haven’t had nearly as much practice driving as you have explaining setbacks.

The solution to this problem is to write down your negative thoughts, and argue with them on paper. Your explanations of setbacks are slippery and hard to get ahold of. They move through your mind with practiced speed. But put them down on paper and you can dissect them more easily.

Your thoughts are more airy than a physical habit, and that’s the only thing that makes them seem harder to change. But when you write them down, it makes your thoughts real, physical, and available for scrutiny.

So when you begin to try to improve your explanations of setbacks, the first problem you’ll run into is your explanations are well-practiced and move with a lot of speed through your mind, making it hard to know what you’re thinking.

The second problem occurs even when you know what you’re thinking. You know what you think, but you believe your thoughts are true.

For example, after his divorce, a man decided, “I am doomed to miserable relationships.” His mind is made up. He is sure he is right. How can he successfully argue with his demoralizing thoughts? He is defeated before he starts.

e may even be aware of thinking the pessimistic, defeatist thought, but if he assumes he’s correct, he’ll make no attempt to argue with his thinking.

The solution to this problem is to look at your thoughts with an already-existing list of “virus definitions” (which you’ll find out about shortly). In other words, you won’t try to decide on the spot whether your thoughts are true or not. If you feel bad, you’ll write down your thoughts. Even if you think you’re not making any mistakes in your thinking, write down your thoughts if you feel bad. Then look at your thoughts through the filter of the virus definitions I’ll give you shortly. You may be mistaken about your explanation without knowing it. The virus definitions will help you discover whether or not this is the case.

The third problem you’ll encounter when you try to argue with your thoughts is not knowing which thoughts to argue with. You have a lot of thoughts going through your mind. Which ones do you write down and argue with? It’s not as hard as it might seem at first. We can be very specific about what to look for:

1. something you believe caused the setback
2. a belief that makes you feel bad

Let me give you some examples. Let’s say you planned to exercise today, but the day is over, and you are now in bed — and you didn’t exercise today. You think about it for a second and conclude, “I have no self-discipline.” And you feel like a loser.

That conclusion is what you would argue with. The setback is: You didn’t exercise. You’re trying to get in shape, and you didn’t exercise according to your plan. The thought, “I have no self-discipline” is what you believe caused the setback. In other words, the reason you didn’t exercise is that you have no self-discipline. That reason is what you would argue with. (You’re going to learn how to argue later in this chapter.)

Let’s look at another example. You’re a freshman in college and you get a failing grade on your first exam, and you feel sad. You were enthusiastic but now all the enthusiasm about school has drained out of you. That is a setback. Remember, a setback is anything that happens you didn’t want to happen. Or anything that doesn’t happen that you wanted to happen.
You didn’t want a failing grade, so it is a setback. You think, “I don’t have what it takes.” That is your explanation of why you failed the test. That is what you believe caused the setback — it’s the reason the setback happened — so that is the thought you write down and argue with: “I don’t have what it takes.”

A woman who showed up to a book-signing stayed afterwards to talk to me. She said she was compulsively perfectionistic, but she considered it a fixed part of her character so she had never tried to change it.

This is a setback. It doesn’t seem like a setback, perhaps, because it didn’t happen suddenly. But she didn’t want to be a perfectionist. Her explanation implied that she couldn’t help it. She was born that way. She thought genetics was the cause of her setback, so that was what she wrote down to argue with.

Another reason it doesn’t seem like a setback is that her explanation of the setback probably evolved before she really got a chance to form a goal of being more relaxed (less uptight, less perfectionistic). But listening to her, it was clear she didn’t want to be a perfectionist. This implies a goal of being free of that compulsion.

But the goal was never articulated because she thought it was impossible. A lot of goals are like that. You probably have some goals like that yourself. The very second you formed the goal in your mind, you dismissed it because of some explanation. So you formed a goal and hit a setback (in your mind) in the same moment.

Things you “always wished” you could do are in that category. You decided they were hopeless dreams the second you thought of them. They sit there in the back of your mind in a state of suspended animation, and until you read this, they may have remained that way. You may never have checked those explanations for mistakes.

I had one of those. When I was a kid, I wanted to play the electric guitar. But before I even fully clarified that goal in my mind, I had already killed it: “Electric guitars are really expensive, I would have to learn the accoustic first (and I’m not interested in accoustic guitar), I don’t have the patience for music lessons, and besides, everyone wants to play the electric guitar (so I’d never be able to play in a band because of too much competition).”

These are conclusions I never examined. They were self-evident conclusions as far as I was concerned. Conclusions like this destroy motivation and demote a potentially satisfying purpose to an idle daydream. The battle was over before I even knew a battle was going on.

We largely defeat ourselves. Wise people have been saying that for thousands of years. But cognitive researchers (scientists who study the effect of thoughts on feelings and behavior) have discovered how we defeat ourselves.

If you have “always wanted” to play the piano, but you think, “I’m too old now; I should have learned as a child,” you slam the door on that possibility just as completely as if you had amputated your hands. But what is stopping you? The only thing stopping you is your explanation of the setback.

The setback: You would like to play piano, but you have failed to do so.
The explanation: If you’re going to play the piano, you have to start when you’re a child, and you’re no longer a child, so now you can’t play the piano.

Let’s look at one more example of a setback and an explanation and then we’ll get to the meat of the matter. It is vitally important that you understand these first distinctions. The method I explain in this chapter rests on the solid foundation of you knowing exactly what I mean by “setback” and “explanation of a setback.”

Let’s say you want to become a teacher but you’re afraid of speaking in public. Years have gone by and you’ve never done anything about it. You feel like a chicken, like you have no backbone, and you’re a little ashamed of yourself. That’s a setback. In this case, it is something that doesn’t happen that you wanted to happen. And you feel bad because you believe it will never happen.

Your explanation of why you’re afraid to speak in public is, “I was born shy.” That is your explanation of the cause of the setback. That’s the reason you’re afraid to do it. And that is the thought to write down and argue with.

Okay. Enough examples. Now you know what to look for and what to argue with. When you feel demoralized or some other negative emotion, look for what you think caused the setback. Look for the reason the setback happened.

Rooting out negative thoughts — and seeing them for what they are — can eliminate the negative emotions they cause. Successfully arguing against those demoralizing thoughts will undemoralize you. It can, and probably will, make you feel good again. And it will make you stronger, more creative, more persistent, and more capable.

A feeling of frustration or demoralization takes the fun out of your days. So immunizing yourself against demoralization is not only good for you and good for your ability to succeed, it makes life more fun!

It takes a little work, but it is worth it. Some people try to take the easy way so they “think positive.” Let me be very clear on this point: Arguing with your negative thoughts is not positive thinking. If you handle your explanations of setbacks by trying to think more positively, it will not work nearly as well as finding out what is really and truly mistaken about your negative thoughts.

This is not positive thinking. It is more like anti-defeatist or anti-discouragement thinking. Aim at making fewer mistakes in your thinking. This is a kind of antivirus program for your mind. It is more fundamental than positive thinking, and also more effective when you feel demoralized.

You’re not trying to make yourself believe a more positive thought here. You’re not even trying to make yourself believe your negative thoughts are mistaken. You’re trying to find actual, real mistakes in your negative thoughts. No convincing is necessary, no “faith” is necessary, and trying to make yourself believe something you don’t actually believe is unnecessary.

Read next: Why Negative Thoughts Seem So Right

Tags: science of determination by Adam Khan
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Good question. It seems like the obvious answer, right? To avoid making mistakes in your explanations, simply avoid making explanations. There is only one problem with this answer: It is impossible. Wait a minute. Am I being unnecessarily defeatist? No. Please don’t go off the deep end by concluding that nothing is impossible. Some situations are hopeless and some things are impossible. And one of those things is preventing your mind from explaining setbacks. Let me illustrate the problem with a few research tidbits.

Researchers sprayed androstenol on a chair in a waiting room. Androstenol is chemically related to male sex hormones. Women coming into the waiting room tended to sit in the sprayed seat, and men tended to avoid sitting there.

But here’s the interesting part: Each person was asked, “Why did you choose to sit in that particular chair?”

Their answers had nothing to do with smelling anything. They said things like, “I wanted to read, so I sat by the magazines,” or “it was closest to the door.”

Niether the men nor the women had any idea their decision was influenced by androstenol. And yet clearly it was.

They had no problem answering the question about why they sat where they sat, and even though their answers were plausible, they were wrong. Isn’t that interesting? Why do you suppose they answered the way they did? Why didn’t they just say, “I don’t know?”

Because they (and you and I) have an automatically-functioning explanation-producing part of our brain. It takes whatever information we’re aware of and makes the most plausable explanation, and it does this whether you want it to or not.

In another study, a different group of researchers told their subjects something like this, “John is a man who ran away from home as a child. Now he is in the Peace Corps. Can you explain how the childhood incident could account for the fact that John decided to join the Peace Corps?”

The subjects were easily able to explain it plausibly.

A different set of subjects were told, “John is a man who ran away from home as a child. He recently committed suicide. Can you explain how the childhood incident could account for the fact that John decided to commit suicide?”

And again, the subjects had no problem at all coming up with plausible explanations.

It reminds me of a story I heard from Earl Nightingale. Twin boys grew up with an alcoholic father. As adults, one of the brothers was an alcoholic and the other never drank. In seperate interviews, each was asked, “Why did you turn out the way you did?”

Both brothers gave exactly the same answer: “With a father like mine, what else would I be?”

Several experiments have shown that if you give someone a test and then say, “Based on this test, we have determined you are above average at reading,” and then ask the person to explain it, they can explain it very well.

What the researchers discovered is that it doesn’t matter if the subject is told, “You’re above average at reading,” or “You’re below average at reading.” If people believe the result was from a legitimate test, they can explain it. And explain it believably.

And it didn’t matter what the researchers tested for. If they could lead the subject to believe he or she was above or below average at anything, that person was able to explain it — plausibly.

a hypnotic experiment

Two people sit in a room. One is the researcher. The other is a volunteer who is hypnotized and given a post-hypnotic suggestion: After he awakens from the trance, says the experimenter, the volunteer will respond a particular way to a specific thing. Let’s say the volunteer is told, “When I say ‘it’s a nice day today,’ you will get up, open the door, and look down the hall. But you will not remember that I gave you this instruction.”

The volunteer is awakened and the two talk casually for a few minutes. Then the researcher nonchalantly says, “It’s a nice day today.”

The volunteer gets up, opens the door, and looks down the hall. He comes back and sits down. The researcher asks, “Why did you do that?”

The volunteer says, “It’s stuffy in here. I’m letting in some air.”

The researcher closes the door and they continue talking for a few minutes, and again, the researcher says, “It’s a nice day today.”

And again, the volunteer gets up, opens the door and looks down the hall.

“Why did you open the door again?” asks the researcher.

The volunteer says, “I thought I heard a noise outside.”

This experiment has been repeated many times with different volunteers, always with the same result. People follow the post-hypnotic suggestion and when asked, come up with a plausible reason for their own behavior — a reason that in fact had nothing to do with it.

Again we see there is a part of the brain that just seems to generate explanations — wrong, right, and everywhere in between, and whether or not it has anything to do with the actual cause of the event.

For years, a particular kind of epilepsy was cured by a surgery. The corpus callosum was completely cut. The corpus callosum is a thick bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain. When it is cut, the two hemispheres can no longer communicate with each other. They become almost like two seperate brains.

After the surgery, the epilepsy stops with no apparent side-effects, except for odd little things once in awhile. For example, sometimes the person’s right hand tries to do something different than the left hand. One hand tries to pull the pants up and the other tries to pull them down. (The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right hand, and the right hemisphere controls the left hand.)

This is such a unique condition, lots of experiments have been done with these people. One in particular is illuminating: Each subject is shown two pictures at the same time, one to their left visual field (which goes to the right hemisphere) and a different picture to their right visual field (which goes to the left hemisphere). So the two sides of the same person’s brain is each shown a different picture.

For example, a picture of a snow-covered meadow was shown to the left visual field. (Keep in mind that the right hemisphere is nonverbal in most people.)

A picture of a bird claw was shown to the person’s right visual field (going to the verbal left hemisphere).

Then the person is shown a big collection of pictures and asked, “Which one of these pictures goes with what you just saw?” Both arms move — the left-hand finger points to a shovel (to go with the snow). But the right-hand finger points to a picture of a chicken (to go with the claw).

The researchers then asked the person, “Why did you point to two different pictures?” And a plausible explanation comes without hesitation, something like this: “Well, the chicken goes with the claw and you clean out the chicken coop with the shovel.”

In other words, the explanation-generating part of the brain is clearly in the left (verbal) hemisphere and it didn’t see the snow scene. But it did see what the two hands pointed to and explained it easily, no problem and without hesitation.

Now, here’s the point of all of this: Your brain makes explanations of events, whether you want it to or not. You can check your explanations for accuracy, but you do not have the option of just avoiding making explanations. Your mind makes explanations immediately and automatically. You can’t stop it.

But you can improve it.

Read next: How To Improve Your Explanations Of Setbacks

Tags: science of determination by Adam Khan
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