Hey what’s up guys! Kathy Gibbens here…
Ok I’m going to be doing a short, 4-part mini-series on 4 Simple Tools for Brain Surgery. Each episode will cover a different “tool”. Now, I want to say up-front that I did not come up with these tools! Earlier this year, my daughter attended TeenPact, which is a super cool program for high schoolers where they get to learn about their state legislature, how to present & pass bills & how to be involved in state politics. At this event, they had a special guest speaker, and in Colorado, our guest speaker was a man named Bill Jack. Bill Jack is the founder of Worldview Academy where he teaches students apologetics, Biblical worldview & how to think. (and by the way, I’ll include links to both TeenPact & Worldview Academy in the show notes if you want to look into them further)
Anyways, at TeenPact, Bill Jack gave the students these 4 Simple Tools for Brain Surgery and I thought they were absolutely fantastic & go along so well with what I teach in this podcast and I knew I had to share them with you. So, I did talk with Bill and explain what I do and I got his permission to use his 4 tools here on the podcast…which was super cool.
Now, here’s why I wanted to share these 4 tools with you here on the podcast: It’s one thing to be able to recognize when someone is using bad thinking, and it’s another thing to be able to name what the fallacy is and state why it’s wrong, but it’s a whole NOTHER thing to be able to talk with the person who is using the bad thinking in a winsome, persuasive way that actually gets them to think about and maybe even come to recognize their bad thinking as bad thinking! Guys, this is a whole new skill that most people do not have. And when they don’t have the skill to know how to have the conversation, typically they resort to emotionalism and the conversations break down into something very unproductive…or they just don’t say anything and the bad thinking goes unaddressed & unchallenged. And maybe there are instances where that’s totally fine to not address the bad thinking, but there are also instances when we really do need to address it. But how do you do it in a way that’s effective & actually gets the person to think? That’s what these 4 tools are designed to do. They’re simple and they work!
These 4 Simple Tools for Brain Surgery are actually 4 questions that you can ask to get people to THINK. To get people to Filter Through a Brain Cell the things they’re saying and actually ask THEMSELVES, maybe for the first time ever, if what they’re saying actually makes sense. Guys, it is so much more powerful for someone to come to a self-realization that maybe they’re a little off on something than for you to point out that they’re off on something! If you point out how they’re wrong, they’re very likely to get upset & defensive. Whereas if THEY come to the realization that they’re wrong about something, they’re much more likely to accept it and be open to reevaluating their stance on something.
So let’s dive into question #1:
“What do you mean by (fill in the blank)? What do you mean by what you’re saying?”
What this question is doing is asking for the Definition of whatever word or phrase they’re using. For instance, say someone says, “I’m a Christian. Or I’m an Atheist” You can ask the question, “What do you mean by Christian? What do you mean by Atheist?” Why would you want to ask that question? To get clarity. Do they think they’re a Christian b/c their parents are? Or b/c they go to church on Easter & Christmas? Or does it mean something else to them?
Here’s why this is the first Tool for Brain Surgery: Words matter. Language matters. It was the LANGUAGE the Nazis used that laid the foundation for the ideas that led to the holocaust & the extermination of millions of Jews. For instance, they started by calling them “spreaders of disease” and compared them to rats. Well, that served to dehumanize a whole group of people and made the Germans more open to the idea of isolating & getting rid of them.
As Bill Jack says, “Words form ideas and ideas lead to actions; & actions always have consequences…good or bad.”
In our world today, there are lots of words that have fallen victim to the fallacy of Equivocation, where the meaning of the word has been changed, or they’re using a different word completely. Here’s a few examples: Equality has been replaced by Equity. Censorship has been replaced by Cancel. Illegal Alien has been replaced by Undocumented Worker. The definition of Racism has changed. So when you’re having a conversation with someone, you need to know if you’re even on the same page as them when you’re talking about a topic or an idea. And the way to do that is to start with the Definition of the words they’re using. And the question to do that is this: “What do you mean by ____?”
Simple, right? But powerful. Questions are the crow-bar we can use to open the mind and get people to actually start to think. Questions are powerful!
I want to encourage you to look for ways this week that you can ask the question, “What do you mean by that?” to someone around you! Practice this! If you don’t practice these 4 Simple Tools for Brain Surgery, you’ll forget them and won’t have them ready to go when you need them in a conversation! So practice asking, “What do you mean by that?”
Listen, I am not a natural question-asker…my husband is, but I’m not. You know where I’ve learned to ask good questions? In the Classical Conversations homeschool program. Their whole program is designed to help students learn HOW to think by giving them the tools of good thinking & at the heart of that is knowing how to ask good questions. If you’d like more info on what that looks like, you can download 2 free e-books at www.classicalconversations.com/gibbens.
Ok, in the next episode, we’ll move on to Simple Tool for Brain Surgery #2.
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
