Nearly all of us at one stages in our lives will have had the experience that we are being judged. Not just by people we know but worse - by strangers. Paranoia begins to creep in as we walk down the street and by half way down we've convinced ourselves that everyone is looking at us. Your anxiety levels start to rise, you pull at your top to ventilate and wish your brain would just shut up. There's some good news though - unless your an A list celebrity or your face is on wanted posters up and down the country in the majority of cases it will all be in your mind, and here's why...
Every time we walk past someone we don't know in the street our brain starts doing mental calculations for us and it kindly places people into one of four categories;
i. Friend - Is this person coming towards me a potential new friend? Could I see us sat together over a cup of coffee discussing the latest episode of Homeland or generally putting the world to rights whilst all the time maintaining a happy persona? Did they raise their eyebrows, did they smile at you or tilt their head? These are all good, positive and happy signals that your brain will respond well to.
ii. Threat - How about this next person, are their hands positioned where you can't see them? The brain hates that and automatically takes it as a perceived threat. Are they eye blanking you with a hat or hoodie which makes it harder to guess what they might do? Your limbic system should now be on high alert.
iii. Potential partner - Do you feel that rush of blood to the head? Do your cheeks begin to glow, are you getting that odd warming sensation in your earlobes? If someone put a mirror in front of your face at the this very moment apart from it being highly inconvenient and distracting, would your pupils be dilated? Are you having thoughts of wedding bells, the patter of tiny feet or in the case of some men - well you can hazard a guess at what they might be thinking...
iv. Indifference - Yes that's right, your brain has decided that it's totally indifferent to the person rapidly approaching you. It couldn't give a single shit about them. It doesn't want to talk TV shows over coffee, it's not turning your feet ready to run in the opposite direction, it's not eyeing them up to see if they'd be suitable to take home to meet the parents - none of the above. Instead we are just going to continue on past them like they were never there.
So guess what the default setting for your brain is - yep you guessed it - Indifference! What's the default setting for everyone's brain - Indifference! The person walking towards you no more cares about who or what you are than your brain does about them. So stop your worrying. If they're not indifferent to you then 2 out of the 3 remaining options are in your favour - they either think you're potentially a friend or they want to... well get to know you better. Maybe even being perceived as a threat can have it's advantages too, especially on those days that you'd rather be left alone in peace.
With 7 plus billion people in the world being indifferent is the easiest option. Imagine having to try make friends with everyone you walked past or without knowing it you made enemies with at least a quarter of the people you walk past without even saying a word. The world's a scary enough place as it is without the weight of that on our shoulders every single day.
It's important to know though that our primitive brains switch to a negative perception of others when we have limited data. So if you find yourself in those awkward social gatherings don't hide your hands in your pockets or behind your back from view. As we've already learned the brain perceives those as carrying a potential threat. It doesn't allow for the logic that you might be shy and socially awkward or a natural introvert who is desperate for a little me time right now. Don't try put on one of those fake smiles for people either. You might think you're good at them but we're programmed to spot the fact that you're faking it. If you can't raise a smile try finding someone your brain has identified as a potential friend and look in their direction and as you do make eye contact, raise your eye brows for three seconds, extend your arms slightly to your side and put your hands out with your palms forward and fingers apart, tilt your head to the side and shrug as if to say - what you gonna do! Oh and try practice doing this in one smooth continuous motion, not one after the other like a programmed robot going through the tasks one by one.
The brain will respond to the raised eyebrows and since we were just four months old we are programmed to respond to a tilted head. The open palms will show that you carry no threat and having your arms by your side will expose your belly showing that you come in peace. Well unless you happen to be a gun toting maniac and in that case you've just given the game away. As for the shrug - well maybe it's just an easy way of avoiding the smiling part you find hard, or you never know it might find a smile on their face which in turn creates a smile on yours.
As always I hope you find this of interest and of help.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Monday, February 17, 2020
Always allow for the possibility that you might be wrong
Everyone likes to be right - right? Well what if 1,000 people read that statement and just 1 person categorically states that it's not that important to them? So whilst you're close on 100% there is of course always a potential margin of error.
If we're truly honest with ourselves we can all remember a point in our lives where we've sworn blind that we are right about something only to have that horror dawn upon us that actually we were wrong. From an early age we're told how important it is to learn from our mistakes and yet despite this, so many people continue to fall into the same trap time and time again. It's so hard to admit we're wrong about something. So surely it's easier not to be so confident that we are right about something in the first place.
If I asked you to guess how many bits of information each of our sensory systems take in per second what would your answer be? Maybe low in the low thousands, somewhere in the five figures or even six figures? Well let's break it down;
Eyes - 10,000,000 bits per second
Skin - 1,000,000 bits per second
Ears - 100,000 bits per second
Smell - 100,000 bits per second
and finally
Taste - 1,000 bits per second.
Maybe it's no wonder we like eating so much, it gives our brains a rest compared to the information overload we experience through the other four. You now have an excuse as to why you're comfort eating.
The human body sends around 11 million bits of information to the brain per second to be processed. Now we know that it's no wonder we forget where we last saw our house keys. How many of those bits can the conscious mind process per second - 50. That's right, of 11 million bits being calculated per second in our heads we are only consciously dealing with the 50 that our brains have selected are the most important.
How many of you have been in a group of friends and you all witnessed something on which you later cannot agree? How many of you had the same experience in a situation where consumption of alcohol was also involved? Or when experiencing a high degree of stress or anxiety?
In your own mind you're utterly convinced about what you saw and yet reality dictates that any one of those other 11 million plus pieces of information that your brain chose not to share with you consciously could have given you a far different perspective on an event if only they'd been given the chance. Remember that figure is per second - sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes per hour multiplied by... Well you do the maths if 11 million isn't a mind boggling number to start with already.
Ask yourself when you weren't there in person to witness something, how reliable is the information being told to you? We've all heard that there's two sides to every story and yet how many times do we even listen to both of theses sides before we make up our minds as to which version we believe is true? On the one hand you've got your friend of 25 years telling you what happened. You know them, you've been so close for so many years and you know in your heart of hearts that they'd never lie to you. That bright yellow dress you wore to the company Christmas event with the huge bow on the front that your best friend told you that you looked amazing in and then you wondered why everyone walked past singing the theme tune from Sesame Street. They wouldn't have lied to you about that would they especially knowing you'd shelled out the best part of a weeks wages on it?
Friends sometimes tell other friends what they want to hear right rather than the truth? Of course a true friend would have told you that you looked like Big Birds long lost twin but they thought they were doing the right thing I'm sure and you got a new job and untagged yourself in all the photographs across all major social media channels so it's OK. You can forgive them one minor discretion. There's always a chance they were telling the truth and the rest of the room didn't appreciate how great it made you look... But apart from that when something happens to them which upsets them and they tell you their version of events and you didn't witness it, you're going to take their side and back them up not just 100% but 110% because that's what friends do. You go out to battle for your friend and you become blindsided and won't hear a single word against them. One day however it transpires you were wrong because what you'd been told wasn't truthful and all because you based your friendship on blind faith and didn't allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. Most of us will be able to name such examples in our lives, especially when we're teenagers.
This doesn't just count where friendships are concerned or substituting friends for family members. Every time you read something in a newspaper, magazine or online - how do you know it's true? 'Oh it was in the Guardian,' you say, 'they're a trusted source it must be true!' Then you go around preaching the information like it was the Gospel and let's be fair how much faith would anyone put in something which is so clearly un... oh wait. In the latter example way to much but that's a conversation for another day. The point being if what you're believing is coming second or third hand to you just because someone presenting it to you has faith in it's merits and truthfulness, doesn't make it any more truthful than the existence of Santa or the Tooth Fairy when you're five years of age.
Who was it that said we can't be right all of the time? Well they were right - well that time at least. So allow yourself that nagging doubt of uncertainty. Stop and ask questions and if something doesn't feel right then maybe your gut reaction has some merit even if you have known someone else involved since you were knee high to a grass hopper. And lastly if you're going to swear blind you're correct and not be prepared to back down - don't choose to do it in a restaurant. Or maybe if you happen to be with someone who chooses to do it in a restaurant whilst you're present and still waiting for your meal, have the presence and piece of mind to walk out and leave them to it if necessary. We all know what's going to happen to the food behind those closed doors!
If we're truly honest with ourselves we can all remember a point in our lives where we've sworn blind that we are right about something only to have that horror dawn upon us that actually we were wrong. From an early age we're told how important it is to learn from our mistakes and yet despite this, so many people continue to fall into the same trap time and time again. It's so hard to admit we're wrong about something. So surely it's easier not to be so confident that we are right about something in the first place.
If I asked you to guess how many bits of information each of our sensory systems take in per second what would your answer be? Maybe low in the low thousands, somewhere in the five figures or even six figures? Well let's break it down;
Eyes - 10,000,000 bits per second
Skin - 1,000,000 bits per second
Ears - 100,000 bits per second
Smell - 100,000 bits per second
and finally
Taste - 1,000 bits per second.
Maybe it's no wonder we like eating so much, it gives our brains a rest compared to the information overload we experience through the other four. You now have an excuse as to why you're comfort eating.
The human body sends around 11 million bits of information to the brain per second to be processed. Now we know that it's no wonder we forget where we last saw our house keys. How many of those bits can the conscious mind process per second - 50. That's right, of 11 million bits being calculated per second in our heads we are only consciously dealing with the 50 that our brains have selected are the most important.
How many of you have been in a group of friends and you all witnessed something on which you later cannot agree? How many of you had the same experience in a situation where consumption of alcohol was also involved? Or when experiencing a high degree of stress or anxiety?
In your own mind you're utterly convinced about what you saw and yet reality dictates that any one of those other 11 million plus pieces of information that your brain chose not to share with you consciously could have given you a far different perspective on an event if only they'd been given the chance. Remember that figure is per second - sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes per hour multiplied by... Well you do the maths if 11 million isn't a mind boggling number to start with already.
Ask yourself when you weren't there in person to witness something, how reliable is the information being told to you? We've all heard that there's two sides to every story and yet how many times do we even listen to both of theses sides before we make up our minds as to which version we believe is true? On the one hand you've got your friend of 25 years telling you what happened. You know them, you've been so close for so many years and you know in your heart of hearts that they'd never lie to you. That bright yellow dress you wore to the company Christmas event with the huge bow on the front that your best friend told you that you looked amazing in and then you wondered why everyone walked past singing the theme tune from Sesame Street. They wouldn't have lied to you about that would they especially knowing you'd shelled out the best part of a weeks wages on it?
Friends sometimes tell other friends what they want to hear right rather than the truth? Of course a true friend would have told you that you looked like Big Birds long lost twin but they thought they were doing the right thing I'm sure and you got a new job and untagged yourself in all the photographs across all major social media channels so it's OK. You can forgive them one minor discretion. There's always a chance they were telling the truth and the rest of the room didn't appreciate how great it made you look... But apart from that when something happens to them which upsets them and they tell you their version of events and you didn't witness it, you're going to take their side and back them up not just 100% but 110% because that's what friends do. You go out to battle for your friend and you become blindsided and won't hear a single word against them. One day however it transpires you were wrong because what you'd been told wasn't truthful and all because you based your friendship on blind faith and didn't allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. Most of us will be able to name such examples in our lives, especially when we're teenagers.
This doesn't just count where friendships are concerned or substituting friends for family members. Every time you read something in a newspaper, magazine or online - how do you know it's true? 'Oh it was in the Guardian,' you say, 'they're a trusted source it must be true!' Then you go around preaching the information like it was the Gospel and let's be fair how much faith would anyone put in something which is so clearly un... oh wait. In the latter example way to much but that's a conversation for another day. The point being if what you're believing is coming second or third hand to you just because someone presenting it to you has faith in it's merits and truthfulness, doesn't make it any more truthful than the existence of Santa or the Tooth Fairy when you're five years of age.
Who was it that said we can't be right all of the time? Well they were right - well that time at least. So allow yourself that nagging doubt of uncertainty. Stop and ask questions and if something doesn't feel right then maybe your gut reaction has some merit even if you have known someone else involved since you were knee high to a grass hopper. And lastly if you're going to swear blind you're correct and not be prepared to back down - don't choose to do it in a restaurant. Or maybe if you happen to be with someone who chooses to do it in a restaurant whilst you're present and still waiting for your meal, have the presence and piece of mind to walk out and leave them to it if necessary. We all know what's going to happen to the food behind those closed doors!
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Hand Me Downs - The things I've learned I pass to you in the hope of helping
The chances are if you were born post 2000 the concept of hand me downs maybe somewhat lost on you. However as a child of the 70s or 80s you're more than likely to be well accustomed as to it's meaning unless of course you were born into a world of privilege. Let's face it if you fall into the latter camp you're highly unlikely to be reading this anyway, so...
This was a time where our version of Spotify would mean tuning into the Chart Show every Sunday on Radio 1 primed with our fingers over the radio to record our favourite tracks onto a cassette with the vein hope we'd also manage to not catch the DJ talking with an intro or outro. Yes ladies and gentleman this was music piracy on a grand scale which took place it the majority of households throughout the United Kingdom. Times were hard and before the advent of rechargeable batteries it wasn't uncommon to see people twirling a cassette on top of a pencil or biro just to conserve the battery life on something called a Walkman. If you think Apple EarPods are bad then you should have tried wearing two bits of foam attached by a sheet of thin metal which would easily bend out of shape with no hope of it ever returning to it's original composition.
With money scarce hand me downs were a common every day part of life. For those with older siblings, clothes and toys would be passed down to the next child. You were told to look after things because when your parents told you that you wouldn't be getting another one - they weren't joking. Lines of credit didn't come as they do now with credit card companies continually trying to get you to spend money you don't have or can't afford to pay back to buy goods you don't really need. Sure you could get something through the Littlewoods catalogue and someone would come and collect the money every week or so or maybe you could rent a TV or Radio but that was about it.
Hand me downs were an everyday part of life and maybe even a necessity to many people. I never had older brothers and sisters but that didn't mean I was immune. My action men came from two of my cousins. One set would come with hands and feet missing, the other in immaculate condition. It wasn't hard to work out which cousin would go on to join the RAF later on in life.
So why am I telling you all this? Well a hand me down is an article of some description. In this instance I want to take the opportunity to hand down to you the reader some of the many things I have learned over the years. Pieces of advice that I think will be of benefit to those reading. These may be snippets of psychology, general life advice and thoughts or quotes which may inspire you in the same way they did me. They might just help provide answers to some of the questions you might be asking yourself especially when you're going through tough times. If I can help just one person then the time will have been worth it. For years I've been writing notes in books and never known what to do with all of them. Hopefully this blog will provide the perfect outlet for them all. If something you read here proves of use then hand it down to someone else and encourage them to do the same. Maybe, just maybe in a world where everyone is evermore becoming self obsessed we can together start to make it a little nicer once more.
If you've got this far - thank you for reading it all. It means a lot. I hope what's to come will be of use to you.
This was a time where our version of Spotify would mean tuning into the Chart Show every Sunday on Radio 1 primed with our fingers over the radio to record our favourite tracks onto a cassette with the vein hope we'd also manage to not catch the DJ talking with an intro or outro. Yes ladies and gentleman this was music piracy on a grand scale which took place it the majority of households throughout the United Kingdom. Times were hard and before the advent of rechargeable batteries it wasn't uncommon to see people twirling a cassette on top of a pencil or biro just to conserve the battery life on something called a Walkman. If you think Apple EarPods are bad then you should have tried wearing two bits of foam attached by a sheet of thin metal which would easily bend out of shape with no hope of it ever returning to it's original composition.
With money scarce hand me downs were a common every day part of life. For those with older siblings, clothes and toys would be passed down to the next child. You were told to look after things because when your parents told you that you wouldn't be getting another one - they weren't joking. Lines of credit didn't come as they do now with credit card companies continually trying to get you to spend money you don't have or can't afford to pay back to buy goods you don't really need. Sure you could get something through the Littlewoods catalogue and someone would come and collect the money every week or so or maybe you could rent a TV or Radio but that was about it.
Hand me downs were an everyday part of life and maybe even a necessity to many people. I never had older brothers and sisters but that didn't mean I was immune. My action men came from two of my cousins. One set would come with hands and feet missing, the other in immaculate condition. It wasn't hard to work out which cousin would go on to join the RAF later on in life.
So why am I telling you all this? Well a hand me down is an article of some description. In this instance I want to take the opportunity to hand down to you the reader some of the many things I have learned over the years. Pieces of advice that I think will be of benefit to those reading. These may be snippets of psychology, general life advice and thoughts or quotes which may inspire you in the same way they did me. They might just help provide answers to some of the questions you might be asking yourself especially when you're going through tough times. If I can help just one person then the time will have been worth it. For years I've been writing notes in books and never known what to do with all of them. Hopefully this blog will provide the perfect outlet for them all. If something you read here proves of use then hand it down to someone else and encourage them to do the same. Maybe, just maybe in a world where everyone is evermore becoming self obsessed we can together start to make it a little nicer once more.
If you've got this far - thank you for reading it all. It means a lot. I hope what's to come will be of use to you.
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