The Search Engine Analogy: Understanding the power of self-talk.

We all use search engines like Google in our day to day life. We are experts in searching for things and finding things out.

We know what words to use to get the results we want from the search engine.

The more accurate and precise our language the better the results. The better we become at communicating with these machines the better we will be at finding the answers.

So what does the human mind have to do with search engines?

Keywords

The human mind is incredibly similar to search engines. It's always running searches in our environment to try and figure things out.

Yet the mind doesn't just search for things at random. It runs off keywords and these keywords are your self-talk.

The way you communicate with yourself influences the way you see the world.

What keywords are you using when communicating with yourself? Are these keywords helpful or detrimental?

If your keywords are more negative than positive then that's the kind of results you will get.

Keywords matter more than you think. When you get the right keywords, everything else falls into place. 

Cookies and memory

Search engines run off memory and dialogue.

They pick up on patterns and the more you search for something the more it seems to come up across advertisements and other means.

The human mind is similar in a sense that it stores patterns. It becomes used to the language you input. If the language is always negative, the mind creates a pattern of negativity.

What cookie are you storing? How is this impacting how you approach situations and the feedback you are getting?

Broad searches vs Specific

Sometimes we make broad assumptions, statements or conclusions about ourselves which can lead us to feel overwhelmed and unsure about the future.

When you type something broad into Google, you get millions of results which may not be relevant or helpful.

Specific searches, however, come up with more relevant and actionable results. Broad generalisations about yourself will limit your search for solutions.

Be more specific with how you are communicating with yourself and you will get better results. Searching to broadly, might leave you feeling even more astray with yourself. 

Author's Note: I am currently authoring an analogy-themed book "Vehicles for Growth". For more details on this book visit curlysmind.com/vehicles-for-growth.