Your Brain Evolved To Do This One Thing
The Amplified Impact Podcast
October 15th, 2023
Think about it – our brains are question-answering machines. We evolved from survival-based questions to questions about thriving and purpose. But here’s the catch, the quality of our life is directly linked to the quality of the questions we ask ourselves.
So, here’s the secret sauce: Dig deeper. Question everything you believe, challenge those limiting beliefs holding you back.
Next, recruit your subconscious mind. Before bed, write down a question, and let your dreams work their magic. When you wake up, grab your journal and watch the ideas flow.
Remember, your life is the culmination of the questions you ask and the answers you generate. The better the question, the better the answer, the better the results.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“The quality of their life was dictated by the quality of the questions they asked.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
Hey, real quick, guys. I don’t know if you know this, but each week I put together an exclusive newsletter for our subscribers that covers things like entrepreneurship, investing, wealth, building productivity, and personal development. Also, you get some pretty cool behind the scenes content that the rest of the world just will never get to see. So if you’re interested in joining us, get over to beyond theapex.com newsletter to join the tens of thousands of other subscribers getting their weekly five to Thrive.
Anthony Vicino:
Alright, let’s get into the show. One of the coolest definitions of the human brain, or a way of describing the human brain that I’ve heard, is that human the human brain is a question answering machine. That’s all it’s doing. Over and over and over is answering questions about like, what do you want to do next? How are you feeling? What are you going to do to improve your mood? How are you going to stay alive? What are you going to eat? Where are you going to go? All these things. And we evolved out of the savannah. The quality of the questions we started asking ourselves really started to change as well. Instead of just asking questions geared towards survival, we started as modern humans asking questions about thrival or thriving or thrival. I like that word, thrival.
Anthony Vicino:
And that’s where a lot of existential angst really started to occur, is because we started to think about ourselves, not just in the context of this moment and what you’re going to do to make yourself feel content or happy or pleasurable in this instant. But what are you going to do overall with your life, with your existence? What’s it all mean? Where’s it all going? What’s the purpose? And because we have the ability to ask these questions, we also have the ability to spiral wildly out of control and perseverate on these things and go into these unhelpful negative feedback loops where we can’t help but keep asking the same unhelpful questions over and over and over and then stress out about the answers. And one of the things that I find so fascinating about reading biographies, about amazing people who go on to do incredible things, whether that’s, like, great leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, CEOs, athletes, whoever it is, whatever they did, one of the things I find so interesting about them is that they all seem to inherently understand whether they could articulate it or not, that the quality of their life was dictated by the quality of the questions that they asked. Not just the questions that they asked of the world or of others, but the questions that they asked of themselves. And I think about Einstein on this, and the quality of the questions that he asked were just so much better because he questioned things nobody else thought to question. Or he questioned them about the physical manifestation of reality in ways that we had never thought before. And when you ask better questions you get better answers because your brain is a question answering machine. And so you input the question, and you will get an answer.
Anthony Vicino:
It might not be the right answer, but you will get an answer because the brain is great at coming up with answers. And I find that a really easy sneaky trick for moving your life forward towards your goals, is just to start asking your brain better questions. Start putting the challenge to yourself to come up with the solution. And if you’re not where you want to be, if your business isn’t where you want to be, your relationships aren’t where you want them to be, your health isn’t where you want them to be, it’s probably because you’re not asking yourself the right questions. You’re asking yourself too easy of questions. Think about that for a second. Now, there’s two things that I find very helpful when it comes to asking questions. Well, actually, three things.
Anthony Vicino:
Let’s go with three things. First is to ask yourself, like, to dig deeper than the surface level. Instead of just accepting the first thing that comes to mind, you got to dig deeper beyond the things that you just commonly accept, because it’s this Orson Scott Card quote that, God, it just sticks with you. He said, we question all of our beliefs except for the beliefs that we truly believe and those we never think to question at all. And so if you’re on this treadmill and the life that you want is just over the horizon, but you can’t seem to make progress towards it, then it could be that the beliefs that have gotten you here, that are holding you here, are limiting you. They’re not empowering beliefs, but because you don’t even think to question them, you don’t realize that they are just a belief. And as such, they can be changed. So we have to dig deeper below the surface level of our beliefs.
Anthony Vicino:
We have to question everything. Things that we take for granted about who we are, about the world, about our relationships, about God or this experience that we’re having. All of it needs to be questioned, because only then can you get to those better answers. Number two is to start eliciting, start recruiting your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind makes up such a large portion of your day to day experience, and yet, because it’s subconscious, we don’t necessarily realize it, and yet it is driving so much of our actions. And there’s a large portion of our life, about a third of our life that we spend asleep in an unconscious state. And that is when our subconscious comes to the surface. That’s where dreams and all the wonderful things that spawn from that come and dance in the light.
Anthony Vicino:
And there’s an opportunity to recruit our subconscious mind, to put it to work on the questions that matter to us and have it find the answer for us. And one of the great ways of doing this that I’ve discovered, I have not discovered this, but I learned this from other people, is to just before bed, right before you go to bed, pull out your journal and just write down a question, one thing that you want your brain to think about. So that in the morning you will have spent eight 9 hours dreaming and perseverating on this thing. And it might not be so clear to you that your subconscious is actually doing anything. But when you sit down in the morning and start journaling, which is the third part of this process is you’re going to find that these words and these ideas just start spurting out of you like you’re a fountain. And you’re like, where did that come from? Because the subconscious is linked in this very tactile way to this deeper part of ourselves that isn’t always on the surface level of consciousness. And so yes, you ask yourself this question before going to bed. You write it out like I would like to make more money or I want to do something about this relationship, whatever the thing is that you’re asking your subconscious brain to answer for you or to ideate on.
Anthony Vicino:
You might not be able to access it consciously in the morning, but that journaling process is like this weird unlock for infinite creativity and ideas. And so that two step process is very, very powerful. And I highly recommend that you never go to sleep without giving your subconscious a job. And so if you do these things, if you start implementing them into your life, I think you will start to see a significant improvement because your life really is the culminations of the questions you ask and the answers that you generate of those questions. Ask better questions, you get better answers that will drive your different actions and ultimately different results. So take that and do what you will with it. Hopefully it brings you some value. Guys, I appreciate you as always for being here.
Anthony Vicino:
If you got some value out of this, do me a favor. Just drop a review, leave a thumbs up subscribe if you’re watching on YouTube. That helps a ton boost everything in the algorithm. Spread the word so that more people, more hyper focused entrepreneurs just like you can get this content and hopefully run with it and take their life to the next level. That’s the dream. That’s the ambition of this podcast. It’s why we do it. To try and just bring some value of the lessons learned over the years.
Anthony Vicino:
So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. We’ll catch you again back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
Anthony Vicino:
Hey, real quick, guys, you already know I don’t run any ads on this because I want to keep it like a really awesome listening experience for you.
Anthony Vicino:
But I do have an ask.
Anthony Vicino:
I’d love it if you could just help me spread the word so we can help more entrepreneurs, creatives and high performers. Just make more money with less stress and more fulfillment. So the best way that you can help me do that is by reading, reviewing and sharing this podcast. The single thing I ask of you is please just take 10 seconds to drop a review. Seriously, it would mean the world to me. And more importantly, it may just help change somebody’s life. So thank you, and let’s get to the show.
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