Words Words Words
May. 24th, 2006 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaWords. We use them all the time. Writing e-mails back and forth to coworkers, sending instant messages to friends, talking to someone on the phone or over a meal or, well, anytime!
I'm pretty sure they have a much larger impact on the way we think and see the world than we realize. They are almost always the symbols that we manipulate when we're thinking--especially about abstract concepts--because it's more convenient to use them than to try to visualize the thing we're thinking about (or even trickier, reproduce the emotion).
But they still have a connection back to that thing or concept. Our brains know that the words "piece of lasagna" are not the same thing as a piece of lasagna, but at the same time, there is still a very strong association. If you think about the words "piece of lasagna," or better yet, picture one in your mind, and imagine how delicious it smells and how yummy it looks with all those layers of pasta and tomato sauce and cheese and how it would taste if you could just cut off a corner and put it into your mouth... you'll probably notice that you're starting to salivate and/or feel hungry--even though there's no lasagna in sight! Your brain has associated those symbols so strongly with the actual thing that even just those symbols can produce the same physical response as if there really had been a piece of lasagna there (for those readers who can't stand lasagna--or just ate a huge meal and are currently stuffed to the bursing point--you may have noticed the same phenomena, but differently; your feelings of revulsion probably kicked into gear as soon as I started talking about it, similar to how they would if you were confronted with a real piece of it).
Does this little piece of food for thought produce as strong a reaction as actually being handed a fresh piece of lasagna? Probably not, though I think it depends on the amount of concentration you put towards it. If you focus as much as you can on making it seem real in your mind, you will probably have a much stronger reaction than if you read it thinking, "What's all this silliness about lasagna?" and wondering when it was going to get good, and whether you left the oven on.
All right, so we can trick ourselves into drooling by imagining a piece of yummy food. What's so special about that? That was just an example of how presenting the symbol to our brains can make it think that it is experiencing the real thing--and it will react accordingly. So we should be careful what symbols we present to our brains, and how we present them. Even offhand comments in response to small things, like saying, "I'm a klutz," after accidentally tripping or knocking something over, send that message to the brain. As I said above, the magnitude of the response seems proportional to the amount of focus that you give something, so saying something like that offhandedly probably won't have too much of an impact... at any given time. But it also is cumulative. If you say it everytime you fumble something or trip or bump something, your brain will start to believe it and burn it into the neurons that make up your self-image. And it'll back you up with all those memories of those things so you have plenty of evidence to support the case--and it will also probably not retain as well the many times that you didn't do something clumsy (like the thousands of meals you've eaten without spilling something on yourself).
Lots of people, when you ask them whether they do affirmations, will tell you something like "No, I would feel too silly." But I bet those same people, when they make a mistake, say or think to themselves, "That was stupid of me," and don't feel the least bit silly doing it. That's an affirmation too--an affirmation of stupidity, but an affirmation nonetheless. That brings us to an interesting potential tangent of why people feel silly saying good things about themselves--even when they've just done something well--but feel perfectly justified in putting themselves down. For now, I'll say that my suspicions are that it's a combination of our puritanical culture and an indication of the self-esteem pandemic. Forget Avian Flu--millions of self-images are withering and dying as we speak!! Where are the billions of dollars being poured into research to help stop the spread of that?!
The bottom line is that I would encourage you to look at the way you're looking at things, think about the way you think about things, and keep in mind that, good or bad, your brain is reacting as if that were reality. Your brain hates for you to be wrong, so it does what it can to make you right. That kind of works against you when you're thinking something like "This is going to suck," because your brain, not wanting you to be wrong, will do its best to make sure that it does suck so that you will be vindicated. Why not harness all that brainpower for making experiences better? (even if your initial reaction is that you think they'll suck ;)
I'm pretty sure they have a much larger impact on the way we think and see the world than we realize. They are almost always the symbols that we manipulate when we're thinking--especially about abstract concepts--because it's more convenient to use them than to try to visualize the thing we're thinking about (or even trickier, reproduce the emotion).
But they still have a connection back to that thing or concept. Our brains know that the words "piece of lasagna" are not the same thing as a piece of lasagna, but at the same time, there is still a very strong association. If you think about the words "piece of lasagna," or better yet, picture one in your mind, and imagine how delicious it smells and how yummy it looks with all those layers of pasta and tomato sauce and cheese and how it would taste if you could just cut off a corner and put it into your mouth... you'll probably notice that you're starting to salivate and/or feel hungry--even though there's no lasagna in sight! Your brain has associated those symbols so strongly with the actual thing that even just those symbols can produce the same physical response as if there really had been a piece of lasagna there (for those readers who can't stand lasagna--or just ate a huge meal and are currently stuffed to the bursing point--you may have noticed the same phenomena, but differently; your feelings of revulsion probably kicked into gear as soon as I started talking about it, similar to how they would if you were confronted with a real piece of it).
Does this little piece of food for thought produce as strong a reaction as actually being handed a fresh piece of lasagna? Probably not, though I think it depends on the amount of concentration you put towards it. If you focus as much as you can on making it seem real in your mind, you will probably have a much stronger reaction than if you read it thinking, "What's all this silliness about lasagna?" and wondering when it was going to get good, and whether you left the oven on.
All right, so we can trick ourselves into drooling by imagining a piece of yummy food. What's so special about that? That was just an example of how presenting the symbol to our brains can make it think that it is experiencing the real thing--and it will react accordingly. So we should be careful what symbols we present to our brains, and how we present them. Even offhand comments in response to small things, like saying, "I'm a klutz," after accidentally tripping or knocking something over, send that message to the brain. As I said above, the magnitude of the response seems proportional to the amount of focus that you give something, so saying something like that offhandedly probably won't have too much of an impact... at any given time. But it also is cumulative. If you say it everytime you fumble something or trip or bump something, your brain will start to believe it and burn it into the neurons that make up your self-image. And it'll back you up with all those memories of those things so you have plenty of evidence to support the case--and it will also probably not retain as well the many times that you didn't do something clumsy (like the thousands of meals you've eaten without spilling something on yourself).
Lots of people, when you ask them whether they do affirmations, will tell you something like "No, I would feel too silly." But I bet those same people, when they make a mistake, say or think to themselves, "That was stupid of me," and don't feel the least bit silly doing it. That's an affirmation too--an affirmation of stupidity, but an affirmation nonetheless. That brings us to an interesting potential tangent of why people feel silly saying good things about themselves--even when they've just done something well--but feel perfectly justified in putting themselves down. For now, I'll say that my suspicions are that it's a combination of our puritanical culture and an indication of the self-esteem pandemic. Forget Avian Flu--millions of self-images are withering and dying as we speak!! Where are the billions of dollars being poured into research to help stop the spread of that?!
The bottom line is that I would encourage you to look at the way you're looking at things, think about the way you think about things, and keep in mind that, good or bad, your brain is reacting as if that were reality. Your brain hates for you to be wrong, so it does what it can to make you right. That kind of works against you when you're thinking something like "This is going to suck," because your brain, not wanting you to be wrong, will do its best to make sure that it does suck so that you will be vindicated. Why not harness all that brainpower for making experiences better? (even if your initial reaction is that you think they'll suck ;)
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 11:38 am (UTC)I agree that our words embody our thoughts embody our focus embody our energy embody our being...and we should try and focus on the positive versus the negative.
But bringing things out into the open can be the right way to deal with it and work on letting it go.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 02:29 pm (UTC)Wow. You've just summed up the concepts of Language as Symbolic action AND Self Fulfiling prophecy. I've seen Comm students go 4 years without getting this.
Mind if I save this to use in class?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 08:42 am (UTC)You're welcome to use it in your classes, though I'd appreciate credit/blame if you do :)