Are You Psyching Yourself Out?

 

Many people tend to forget reality when faced with struggles and challenges in life, psyching themselves out by overthinking. Humans as we are, we tend to fall into this mind game as a response to stress. Our problems seem more prominent and the world appears meaner that we feel and behave negatively. Fortunately, there are processes useful in dealing with adverse situations. Learn how these processes help in shaping our values, biases, and beliefs. In the end, what matters is realizing what’s happening now so we can take proactive steps in improving our lives.

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Are You Psyching Yourself Out?

Every day I meet clients who struggle with challenges in their lives because they fail to recognize the reality confronting them. Often, they have mental filters, blinkers and emotional triggers that distort what they see, hear and feel. Some of these processes were useful in a given context. Out of context, if it comes downright dangerous. These processes include delusion. Your brain has to make sense out of thousands of stimuli per second. After a while, it screens out the repeated background details. There are also things you don’t want to see or hear because they make you feel uncomfortable, so you screen them out as well.

As a result, you don’t pay attention to your loved ones when you’re struggling with a real problem, and you’re shocked, and you get a heart attack and drop dead. You don’t pay attention to how your client is presenting himself or herself and you miss vital clues that will help you close a sale. You kissed a $1,000 goodbye. Another pattern in generalization and you’ve always done in a certain way. You conclude that it is the only way. If something happened enough times in your life and with enough intensity to create a new neural pathway in your brain. You conclude that love hurts because some people you are close to die or leave.

You saw enough examples of unethical behavior by rich people, so you conclude that rich people are bad people. You do not pay attention to the changes in the environment or people. You fail to recognize major changes in the environment that would invalidate that particular marketing or business approach. If you’re lucky, your business will need this 10% because you missed the trend. If you’re lucky, your wife only smiles at you sweetly while she quietly curses because you bought her a gift exactly like what her best friend is wearing. You did not keep track. In the long-term, these little things are where your business and your relationship is down.

One person’s model of accuracy is another person's model of obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. Click To Tweet

Another process is distortion. This process is the basis for creativity. It creates great artists and poets who do creative things with the imagination like Picasso and his cubist style of painting. On the other hand, it can also lead to major issues. One person’s model of accuracy is another person’s model of obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. Projection, whatever secret fears and anxieties you have, you deny having them. You describe it to the people around you. You are an anxious person, but you cannot accept it. A cab driver looks at you and asks you if everything is fine and you conclude your cab driver is anxious. All of these processes, deletion, distortion and generalization and to a lesser extent, the projection will determine what we allow into our world.

In that sense, they are filters. They end up forming or shaping our values, biases and beliefs. On the other hand, based on these processes, we will design a future where all our biases, beliefs and values are validated. If that is so, you cannot appreciate your beliefs and design a future that is very different from the past. Based on these processes, you design your unconscious basis a story about yourself called the script. After a while, the script is so much a part of you and so real to you that you will call it your real-life story. The problem is that it makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Split brain experiments show something fascinating that happens on the left side of your brain and that phenomenon is affecting your life right now. When the connections between the two sides of your brain are interrupted, different tendencies come to the surface. The left side of your brain wants to find a reason for why things happen even in the face of scarce or conflicting information. It’s like an explanation factory where quantity is more important than quality. This tendency to form conclusions in the face of scarce or conflicting information is especially important when you’re under stress. That’s when you tend most strongly towards an unthinking habitual style thinking, feeling and behaving and most of us will feel negative. The problem seems bigger, the world seems meaner and you have reason to justify your conclusions. You need to realize this is happening and then you can take proactive steps to improve your life. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, worked one summer for the Metaplast Corporation.

The company was started with two metal plate plastics and they needed a chemist. This was back around the Great Depression. Plastics and related technologies weren’t what they were now. You could say they sometimes knew what they were doing. The biggest problem was getting the metal plating to stay on the plastic. Often, it wouldn’t and they didn’t know why but the salesperson wasn’t bothered by the facts. He’d go out and promise all sorts of things that Metaplast will then try to fulfill with mixed results. One day, some people in a company decided to run full-page ads on Modern Plastics magazine. The ads featured stunning photos of their best work.

What you couldn’t see in such a photo, Feynman relates in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman is how long the plating will actually stick. He spent the summer helping them improve their processes, but the entire chemistry lab there was just him, a college student on a summer break. Feynman tells this story. A few years later, I was in Los Alamos where there was a man named Frederic de Hoffmann who was a sort of scientist. One day, we were eating at the Fuller Lodge and he told me that he had been working in England before coming to Los Alamos. I asked, “What were you doing there?” “I was working in a process for metal plating plastics. I was one of the guys in the laboratory.” “How did it go?” “It was pretty well, but we had our problems. As we were beginning to develop a process, there was a company in New York called Metaplast Corporation. They developed further than we were.” “How could you tell?” He said, “They were advertising all the time in Modern Plastics in full-page ads showing all the things they could plate and we realized they were further along than we were.”

“Did you have any stuff from them?” “No, but you could tell from the ads they were way ahead. It was no use trying to compete with an American process like that.” I said, “How many chemists did you have working in the lab?” He said, “We have six chemists working.” I said, “How many did you think that Metaplast Corporation had?” “They must have had a real chemistry department. I would guess they must have had 25 or 50 chemists and a chief research chemist with his own office. The guys are coming in all the time with research projects they are doing, getting his advice and rushing off to do more research. How could we compete with them?”

Feynman revealed, “You’d be interested and amused to know that you’re now talking to the Chief Research Chemist for the Metaplast Corporation, whose staff consisted of one bottle washer.” Metaplast wasn’t any better than Hoffman’s English company. On the contrary, they were just louder. They were so loud that their competitors surrendered even before the battle began. The fact is, we are our own worst enemies as long as we stay inside our own heads. How many times have you looked at others and felt, “I’m so far behind. I’ll never catch up?” Now you’re telling yourself, you do not see the whole picture. The Metaplast Corporation went out of business after taking a big job they couldn’t handle.

Take a conscious look at your explanation style and how you make sense of a stressful event. This conscious exploration can affect your resilience to stress, your happiness and your productivity. First, think about the stressful event. Who was involved and what did they say and do? What did you think about the stressful event? Now, consider these questions. Can you be sure that your first thought about the stressful situation is true? How would you feel if you didn’t have that thought? What is the less stressful and more positive way to explain the situation? What are the three reasons the more positive perspective might be equally true as your original conclusion?

One lucky audience that posts a review on iTunes will win a private, confidential consultation and coaching with me in discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover the unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me that is worth thousands. I’m going to help you design a life that works, so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out to me to ask questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams.

 

Important Links:

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
• Your Life By Design podcast on iTunes
• AskDrSun.com