Renewing Your Mind

Romans 12:2:
"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

This verse says the mind is the cause of transformation.
When our mind is renewed, we will be transformed.
How is it possible for our mind to get “old”?

Last year, a study was done with 15 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Each person was shown a set of contradictory statements by the 2004 Presidential candidates. The participants’ brains were scanned with M. R. I. The results were very telling…

When the Democrats watched the contradictory statements by Bush and the Republicans watched the contradictory statements by Kerry, their brains worked correctly. The reasoning part of the brain that detects contradictions was active and this caused activity in the parts of the brain associated with emotion.

However, a completely different pattern was observed when the participants watched contradictory statements by "THEIR" candidates. The reasoning part of the brain was not active AND the area of the brain that reinforces reward was active.

Essentially, their brain was wired to avoid detecting the contradiction and then rewarding themselves with the feeling that they had tested the statements for contradictions.

This is an “old” brain!
This brain doesn’t detect contradictions, gives itself a comfortable feeling, and abuses causality to convince itself it must have tested the statement because it got an effect that does occur when it does test statements.

However, this brain did not intentionally focus on being contrastive.

Take a second to realize that people with "old minds" FULLY believe they have checked a contradiction even though no activity was measured in that part of the brain!

The key to continuously renewing your mind is to be contrastive…to actively prove your beliefs wrong. To surround yourself with people who will question you. To avoid pride and look to improve your beliefs.

When is the last time you changed a deeply held belief?

Click here: The Transformed Mind