How We Perceive Reality And How To Change It

Behind perception there is a very sophisticated process that involves the way our brain interprets the information we receive from our senses. The interpretation is directly related to what we believe and feel about the information being input.

Neuroscience explains that we don’t see with our eyes. The job of the eyes is to send data to be processed by the brain. The eyes send the picture so the brain can interpret it using our memories, emotions and beliefs. The same applies to all our sensory system.

The amount of information sent to our brain from our sensory system is a staggering 400 billion bits per second. Just for us to understand how much information that is I’ll give an example. 8GB (gigabytes) is enough to store 8 thousand songs and 8GB is equal 68.8 billion bits. That is definitely a lot of information. Of course our brain has to process it and get rid of the info that doesn’t match our memories, emotions and beliefs.

It seams surreal, almost impossible that our brains can take this amount of information each second. However when we think that while we are driving although we are not aware of it our brain is receiving information about the temperature, the texture of our clothes, the pressure of the seat belt, the pressure of your feet against the pedals, the noises around, every single thing we see, all the number plates and advertisements. That’s when our filters begin to work and keep just the important information in and pushing to the very bottom of our subconscious the ones our brain considers not important.

Here is the catch. The judgement our brain makes is solely based on our memories, emotions and beliefs. If the information doesn’t match these criteria then it is filtered. Therefore the world we are able to perceive is compromised by our beliefs, emotions and memories. In the same environment people can perceive the world around them quite differently. Inside our little world that we swear is the real world we create our realities.

How many times have we said to ourselves “of course, why didn’t I think about this before”! Or when we see a very creative and simple invention and we think: “It is so simple and logical why wasn’t I able to invent this myself?”  Simply because our filters were preventing the information to access our conscious mind. We are confined in an imaginary boundary that allows us only to experience what we know.

To perceive outside that boundary, to experience more happiness, more creativity, more imagination, more intuition, to be wiser and insightful we need to break this boundary. A way we could do this is by increasing our knowledge. More information in our neuronal nets will expand our perception. Asking questions to ourselves is another way to get outside the boundary. Is my emotional state affecting the way I perceive the experiences I have?  Are my decisions based on my emotion state? We can also experience new emotions. We can do that by finding out which emotion is more predominant in our everyday life and substitute it consciously with a more positive one.

Being attentive to our behaviour will help us to perceive when we are falling into the same old habit then once trapped we can switch the behaviour/emotion until we do it unconsciously.

How Our Mind, Body and Soul Became So Disconnected

History is a very powerful tool which certainly helps us to have a better understanding of the present facts. We hear a lot about how the mind, body and soul have become so disconnected and there is this avalanche of alternative therapies which try to make ourselves whole again. Let’s look historically and see if we can understand it better.

The Sumerians were the first known civilization around 4000 B.C. According to historians they were very organised socially and politically. In the science field they developed studies of mathematics, astronomy and other sciences. They also studied and developed astrology and had a strong belief that the stars controlled all events in the universe as well as our fortune. Polytheistic the Sumerians thought the gods controlled all aspects of their lives including the forces of nature.

The next stage of evolution brought us the almost unbeatable power of the church – the age of priesthood. The church axed the worshiping to gods and established their own truth and laws and proclaimed their omnipotence over everything including death condemnation – Welcome to Inquisition Time! Any intuitions, significant dreams or science findings could be a reason for a human barbecue. The disconnection had begun.

However the truth always finds a way to emerge. Nicholas Copernicus to the horror of the church proclaimed that the sun was at the centre of our universe, not the earth. He was lucky enough to die from natural causes before the church barbecued him. Later Galileo Galilei presented Copernicus’s ideas as proven facts but he was forced to recant and was house arrested by the church. Some people say that he was not burned because he and the Pope were friends.

Later came Rene Descartes announcing to the world that the universe and humans were mere machines that worked like clocks. Then Isaac Newton came with his classic mechanics finds plus a lot more. The mechanic approach was then applied to everything within the sciences. Disconnection was strongly implemented!

The discoveries of these scientists were crucial to our material development today but it came with a high price. We became disconnected in such a way that our minds and bodies were dissected and disassociated by the medicine science. Leading us to believe that if we are not connected within ourselves then, the events outside are not related to us at all. Truth again had to find a way to emerge.

Einstein then came with the quantum theory saying that the so called physical world was not physical at all. Einstein along with other scientists investigated the matter in such a profound level that they were absolutely amased with the finding – PURE ENERGY – something that was more comparable with intelligence, consciousness or information. Re-connection had now begun!

The little atoms in their orbits were energy packets and between them is this pure energy so powerful that one cubic centimetre – a sugar cube – has more energy than all solid matter in the universe. Mind blower!

The quantum theory basically says that everything in the universe is connected and our intention can impact results.

The world is changing radically and time urges us to be more sensible in the way we behave, in the way we think, in the way we perceive everything around us. It is time to stop, observe and change.

You must be thinking how will this information help me? If everything is energy and as scientifically proved energy attracts similar energy, then thoughts, behaviour and beliefs are energy with a specific consonance being sent out and attracting similar energy. We are creating our own reality every second….. Now I ask, what can YOU do to make this information work for you?

How Anger Can Affect Your Life And Health

Feelings are intangible nevertheless powerful enough to sweep our lives with the force of a hurricane. Who is in charge of your life, you or your feelings?

Anger is one of those very powerful feelings that we have to keep an eye on all times. Anger can dominate and slowly destroy your relationship with family and friends, sabotage your professional life and jeopardise your ability to connect with people in general. Anger can also cause physical illness. A study made by psychologist Stephen Bruehl, Ph.D. showed that chronic pain is associated with expressed and repressed anger. So no matter if we expressed or repressed it we will get the consequences. The American Academy of Neurology Journal published that people who had strokes experienced anger at least 2 hours before the stroke.

Learning and understanding the functioning of a certain feeling can help us to keep it in control and free us from addiction. Yes, that’s right addiction. Do you know that we can get addicted to certain feelings the same way we can get addicted to drugs? Every time we experience anger strong chemicals called peptides are released into our brain and they literally dock in our receptor cells. This process causes an intense avalanche of biochemical actions. As a result we became addicted to this discharge of chemicals meaning that we at some level feel a morbid pleasure to these reactions.

Once addicted and UNAWARE of the whole process behind it we have no choice but to repeat it over and over again until it gets to a point of exhaustion. At this point we can’t change or control our anger because we are trapped in the vicious cycle of stimuli and responses.

Once we are AWARE of what is happening we can regain control of the situation using the power of observation. Through observation you can start looking closely into your anger patterns and start changing your behaviour radically and consistently until it is permanent without effort. If we can’t do it by ourselves let’s seek help before it is too late.

Ask yourself this question: Can I control my anger? If not, you are addicted. You can ask this same question to check all other feelings and find out if you are addicted to any of them.

Richard Gross in his book ‘Psychology The Science of Mind and Behaviour’ says: “Mr Spock in Star Trek often points out to Captain Kirk how much energy human beings waste through reacting emotionally to things, when a more logical and rational approach would be more productive. But would we be human at all if we didn’t react this way?”

Tips On How To Make More Assertive Decisions

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion” – Chinese Proverb

Although we are not always aware of it, making decisions is part of our daily life. We deal with simple ones like what to wear or eat to the more challenging ones like what university to go to or a business decision. Due to the high number of decisions we have to make on a daily basis it is almost impossible to make rational decisions all the time because our ability for reasoning is limited. Therefore it is extremely helpful to know how our minds work when making a decision. We use different methods to make decisions and recognising which method we are using at that particular time will give us the chance to overcome it if needed.

One of the ways we make decisions is by using the most “readily available information”. The recurrence of a piece of information in our minds makes it a strong probability that we will make a choice considering this information. A classic example of that is a study from Hastie & Park asking a group of people if the letter K appears more often as the first letter of a word or as the third. Most people answered the first when actually it is the third. The reason for that is this information is more available in our minds as we think more about words where the K comes as the first letter.

“Preconceived ideas and stereotypes” is other way to make a decision. A study from Tversky & Kahneman can perfectly illustrate this way. They asked a group of people to decide if a student from University X (where 80% of the students were studying humanities) was either a computer science student or a humanities student based upon him being described as neat and tidy, dull, mechanical and a poor writer. Guess what? 95% of the group decided in favour of computer science, ignoring completely the base rate factor. The conclusion is that even if the frequency of two things is even we tend to make our decisions to meet our beliefs and stereotypes.

The “trapped feeling” is also a way to make decisions. Usually it happens in relationships or businesses. We feel that we have invested so much that we feel obliged to continue even if huge losses are involved. It is the false feeling that too much investment would be left if we withdraw.

Another way is the “fear of losses”. We are more inclined to say ‘no’ to risky decisions even if they can be more worthwhile unless the risk is to avoid a big potential loss. We are a lot more predisposed to look at losses as investments or costs. Makes it more bearable but delusional sometimes.

Next we have a “framed decision”. When your options are displayed in a way to trick your judgment. We naturally would go more for a product in the supermarket that says 80% fat free than 20% fat. It is just a different approach to present something so we are more susceptible to buy the idea. Another very famous example of this was when Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, read this statement to a cheering crowd in front of 10 Downing St. when he came back from seeing Hitler in Munich in 1938 and said: “My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace in our time.”

We all make decisions everyday and these are based upon our previous experiences or our knowledge or our preconceived notions or even preconceived wishes for the future outcome. Be aware of why you come to the decision you have made because by using the wrong concept it is possible to make a totally erroneous decision which ignores the obvious facts of the case and in hindsight is completely stupid. Be realistic and be alert so that you make balanced decisions.