Hey what’s up guys! Welcome back to Part 4 of our mini-series 4 Simple Tools for Brain Surgery where we’ve been sharing 4 simple but highly effective questions we can ask people about their ideas and beliefs to get them to think about them a little more deeply. So often, when we run into people with bad ideas or even just ideas that are different from ours, we instantly go into defensive mode or we go into convince mode where we try to convince them why our idea or belief is better or more accurate. That approach is usually not effective. The greatest form of realization is self-realization and Bill Jack from Worldview Academy teaches these 4 Tools and gave me permission to share them with you here on this podcast.
So, this episode will be pretty quick, but I want to be sure you tune into tomorrow’s episode b/c I’m going to have ny 15-year-old daughter on the podcast with me and we’re going to talk through these 4 questions together & I want you to hear her perspective on them as we go through a couple of scenarios sort of doing mock conversations so you can hear what these questions sound like in conversation and how they work to get someone to do some thinking.
Ok, first, let’s do a quick review of the first 3 tools or questions:
Question #1: “What do you mean?”
Question #2: “How do you know it’s true?”
Question #3: “So what? Or What difference does it make?”
And today, we’re going to dive into Question #4: “What if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong?”
Why is this question important? This question is powerful b/c pries open the brain in two ways: 1. It plants the seed that “I could be wrong” and forces them to at least think about it for a minute. Most people never get to this point of even thinking of the possibility that they could be wrong. So if we can get someone to stop and consider the possibility that they could be wrong and then to think about the consequences of being wrong…WHOA! That’s huge!! Their brain has really been pried open if they can get to that point.
And the second thing this question does is similar to question 3: It gets them thinking even more deeply about the potential consequences of their idea or belief. I mean, think about it…if you’re talking to someone who believes there is no God and you ask them the question, “What if you’re wrong?” That’s deep! The consequences of being wrong in that scenario are pretty big. Or, if you’re talking to someone who says that Japanese people shouldn’t be trusted after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, and you ask them what if they’re wrong…whoo…you could help prevent them from treating Japanese people in a really awful way if they hadn’t been open to another viewpoint.
Be sure to come back for tomorrow’s episode and hear this discussion with my daughter! She’s never been on a podcast before, lol, but I think we’ll have fun & it’s going to be awesome as she shares how she’s used these 4 questions in some rea-life conversations she’s had. And I really want you students who are listening to this (probably listening with your parents, I’m guessing?) to hear from someone your own age and to know that this stuff I’m teaching you here really matters, and it’s really applicable to your life and it really makes a difference to have these skills of good thinking & the ability to ask good questions!
I want to thank our sponsor, Classical Conversations, for supporting this podcast and for teaching us the skills of good thinking! If you’re at all curious about how you can help your child learn these skills, there are two free downloadable books available for you when you fill out the form at classicalconversations.com/gibbens.
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?”
