Recalibrate Your Reality

[ocean59]

http://lifehacker.com/5891564/recalibrate-your-reality

Wish you were better/smarter/stronger/faster? Sure, hard work helps, but the truth is, your self perception may be getting in the way. We all form our own realities, and those realities aren't perfect. Your self perception can be very limiting, and shaking up your notion of the world can do wonders for your productivity, creativity, and happiness. Here's how to recalibrate your reality.

Remember the last time you lost confidence after your boss was disappointed in your work—or maybe you were stood up by a friend? You second-guessed yourself after that, and ultimately your work or personal life suffered. The idea behind recalibrating your reality is pretty simple. When you get locked into a view of the world you get stuck in routines and you lose sight of different viewpoints. Recalibrating that view can help you solve problems, win arguments, and even be happier. But how do we actually do it? We'll take a look at a few of the different methods you can use to recalibrate your perception of the world and yourself, but first, we have to understand how we perceive the world to begin with.

The Basics of How We Perceive the World

To get a grasp on how we perceive the world, I talked with David Eagleman, neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and Timothy Wilson, psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Chance.

[continues]

 

[bngenoh]

Great find Jason,

This is an excellent supplement to the material already in the Psychology & Cognitive Science child board. This

Wait Five Minutes Before Your Respond

One regret most of us have is our stupid responses during debates or heated arguments. To help cure that and give yourself time to think, 37signals author Jason Fried suggests a simple approach: give it five minutes. He describes a situation where he was arguing with a speaker at a conference who eventually offered him this advice:

He said "Man, give it five minutes." I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it's fine to disagree, it's fine to push back, it's great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you're sure you want to argue against them. "Five minutes" represented "think", not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

Many arguments don't offer the luxury of a five minute response, but others, like email, social networks, or even conferences, give you plenty of time to formulate your response and recalibrate your reality before you say something stupid. Simply letting ideas settle in will inevitably force you to reconsider your own viewpoints, weigh them against your own, and give you an opportunity to come up with a better response.

Reminded me of Laura's "This Will Bake Your Noodle" thread, specifically one of Ark's responses to the guy who was emailing him. He said that he's not good at talking on the phone because he thinks about what the other party said before responding, boy, imagine that, thinking before responding instead of mechanically reacting to stimuli, whether within or without. Btw Ark, i do the same thing, that's why i don't have a cell phone or talk much on the phone.

Also this:

In his book, Mr. Wilson talks about the importance of writing things down as a means to understand different perspectives and one way to do that is to take a look at your day—whether that's work, your creative life, or happiness—from the third person. He explains:

Some researchers have developed a method where they say, if something is nagging at us, write about it in the third person so we can look at it as objectively as we can as opposed to immersing ourselves in a negative experience. That kind of distance can be really helpful to change our story and to look at it in a new way and give new meaning to it.

I think I try to do this sometimes. I remind myself that my interpretation of something is just that—an interpretation. It's not the only way. Sometimes it's good to to look at a situation the opposite way as an exercise.

It might make you feel a little like Bob Dole for a minute, but writing out your day from a different point of view will give you a unique perspective of your situation and can help you pinpoint where a problem is.

Just reinforces the absolute necessity of the formation of the observer in the psyche. When the observer is at least minimally established, one begins to SEE and realize, that there really are multiple possibilities in any given instance, existing simultaneously; Whose probability of changing, solidifying, & etheryfying, etc (my word ;) ) Depends on the information available at that instance.

Excellent article Jason, thanks again for sharing.

 

[Alcarohtare]

Just reinforces the absolute necessity of the formation of the observer in the psyche. When the observer is at least minimally established, one begins to SEE and realize, that there really are multiple possibilities in any given instance, existing simultaneously; Whose probability of changing, solidifying, & etheryfying, etc (my word )

Well said, bngenoh!
Btw, happy birthday!

 

[bngenoh]

Well said, bngenoh!
Btw, happy birthday!

Thanks lux12,

Just had a conversation with an acquaintance who called to say the same. He basically was trying to say that we should go out and drink, i said no thank you, he asked why and i said that i now have an aim and purpose for my life, and that i weigh all my actions in relation to that aim. Actions that further my progress towards my aim, i DO, those that do not, i do not.

though :D