Reality Upgrade

If you have ever felt like you get all your best ideas while going for a run or a swim, it turns out you may be right. According to Newsweek magazine, small bursts of exercise can boost your creativity for hours afterward.

In fact, Newsweek says “Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward.”

Of course, this only works if you are in good shape. Otherwise the exhaustion from unaccustomed exercise outweighs the benefits.

For more on this, and a bunch of other ideas for boosting creativity, check out the full article here.

We all like to think that our every decision is based on careful, rational analysis of all sides of a subject. That we weigh opposing facts and opinions, and carefully decide on the best option we can. Our decisions are our own, and they are good decisions.

Not bloody likely.

In fact, your decisions are probably based mostly on years of paying attention to things that reinforce your pre-existing opinions, and ignoring things that challenge what you believe.

This is a phenomenon known as Confirmation Bias, which is what happens when your brain uses its amazing filtering powers to filter out everything that you subconsciously think is unimportant. As soon as you think about something, like a movie for instance, your subconscious filter decides that it must be important, so it stops filtering out that movie.

And then you start seeing the movie EVERYWHERE.

Anyway, it is a fascinating feature of our brains, but it can be very problematic. It tends to falsely reinforce our beliefs, which can be dangerous. Beliefs are fine, just be aware of why you believe what you do, and make sure you understand the affect that confirmation bias can have.

To read a little more about confirmation bias, take a look at this fantastic article about it, from youarenotsosmart.com.

Enjoy!

Belief is a powerful thing, and it is amazing how subconscious expectations can affect our performance on so many levels. Simply by believing that a given outcome is going to happen drastically improves the likelihood of that outcome. I have talked about this before, in the context of body language.

This article from Bad Science talks about an amazing study on the effects of lucky charms. Test subjects were given a series of tests along the lines of this one: One group was given a golf ball and told that it was the “lucky ball” and the other group was given a ball that “everyone uses”. The test was to get a hole in one at 100 cm, with 10 tries per subject. The group with the “lucky ball” performed more than 35% better on the test, with an average of 6.42 versus an average of 4.75 for the group with the ball “everyone uses”.

The article talks about quite a few more tests, but the results all seem to indicate that our subconscious beliefs really do influence reality.

Cool, huh?

Self control. We exhibit self control all the time, in all sorts of ways.

When I sit down to watch a movie, I really enjoy eating a bowl of ice cream while I watch, even though I know how bad it is for me. Sometimes I know I should go to bed and get some sleep, but I stay up watching TV instead. And sometimes, I just want some french fries.

What is interesting is when I am able to resist the temptation, and when I give in. When I have a long exhausting day at the office, chances are I am going to be busting out the ice cream scoop when I get home. On the other hand, if I have a nice easy day at work, I might cut up an apple instead, or skip the movie completely and go running.

As it turns out, the reason I fail to resist temptations sometimes is because I have used up my self control, or will power.

There have been many studies done on this subject, but in this particular study test subjects are given two plates, one with radishes and one with chocolate chip cookies. One group of subjects is told to eat only the radishes, and solve a complicated (and unsolvable) puzzle. Another group was told to eat the cookies, and solve the puzzle.

On average, it took the cookie-eaters 19 minutes to give up, and it took the radish eaters 8 minutes.

This is because the radish-eaters were using up their willpower on resisting the cookies, and therefor had less to spend on trying to solve the puzzle.

By remembering that willpower/self control is a limited commodity, it is possible to make decisions about where to spend it. If you have a big test tomorrow, maybe tonight you should let the house cleaning go. If you don’t want to drink too much at a party, maybe you should not go window shopping before hand. And whatever you do, don’t go car shopping if you have used up any of your willpower at all.

On the other hand, willpower can be trained, just like muscles.

The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

- NY Times

So start with small changes, something as small as brushing your teeth with your opposite hand, and slowly build up to bigger challenges, and your willpower will increase over all.

I have talked about this before, here, and mentioned another article about it from the NY Times.

Once again behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, asks why we do what we do. In this lecture for TED, Dan Ariely describes a series of very interesting social experiments that try to find out how and why we cheat, and explores the implications of the results. He focuses on Enron, and the cheating that happened there, but he also applies the results across the rest of the stock market, and on our personal lives.

If the video does not work, you can also find it here, at TED.com.

This is a fantastic video about the true nature of freedom of choice, or rather our shocking lack thereof. As Dan says, we are good at coping with our physical constraints…stairs, clothes, etc. But we are not so good at dealing with, or even acknowledging, our mental constraints.

Dan Ariely is the author of Predictably Irrational, a great book that I am reading right now, and which I highly recommend.

If the video below does not work for some reason, the original is at TED.com

When you think of a parasite, most people get a horrible disgusted feeling. There is just something about a creature living inside you without you knowing that sets our teeth on edge.

If you aren’t already, picture the scene in the movie Alien where the little alien bursts out of one of the astronauts’ stomach during dinner. Ugh.

But in this fantastic podcast by Radiolab, a case is made that parasites are a lot cooler upon further inspection. So are they awful, or awesome?

Check out this great podcast and decide for yourself.

What makes us happy? Not happy in the I-just-got-some-chocolate temporary way, but really, truly happy in the long term. The kind of happy where you die at 87, with your great-grandchildren around you and think, “I had a good life, and wound not change anything.”

Is there some formula, some magic mix of psychology, upbringing, career, and love that lead to a good life?

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been trying to find out. (continue reading…)

This is an amazing video. Sean Gourley is a physicist who decided that by mapping the number and size of acts of violence in the Iraq war, and others like it, the behaviors could be modeled, and thereby predicted.

I think this is great, because I believe that human behavior can be modeled, in a general way, to predict outcomes of certain situations.  I have seen this in action in social settings all the time, and it is great to see someone putting this into practice in a large scale. Especially for something as useful as understanding the conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan. 

If we are ever going to really achive world peace, this is the beginning of how we will do it.

If the video will not play for some reason, watch it here on TED.

Here is some more about Sean Gourley, if you are interested.

I first understood the power of the body to affect the mind when I was sitting in a yoga class many years ago. I was in the class after a very long day, I was tired, and I did not want to be there. I was grumpy, annoyed, distracted, and sleepy. Not the best disposition for a class about relaxation.

The teacher said “Take a deep breath.” I did not really want to, since I was feeling somewhat rebellious. But I was already there, so…..

I took a deep breath, and like magic, I calmed down. My frustration and tension and distraction melted away, and suddenly I was ready to do yoga.

The best way for you to know what I felt is to try it yourself. So take a deep breath.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See how that felt? It had nothing to do with your mind…that was your body taking over, relaxing for you.

The deep breath is a great example of how breathing can contribute to relaxation, but there is much more to this concept. By understanding how the subconscious mind uses the body to communicate,

Nervousness, confidence, shyness, anger, fear, discomfort, sexual attraction; all of these are communicated by body language, and for many of us this happens without our even being aware of it. But for those of us who are aware of it…knowledge is power.

Not only is it possible to bypass the subconscious signals and intercept that communication, but it is even possible to change our own moods and feelings. Act confident, and you will become confident. Act fearful, and you will be fearful. More than what you eat, you are what you do.

In this series on body language, we will explore together several aspects of body language, the subconscious signals that each bit of body language demonstrates…and how to fake it till you make it.

After all, in the words of the great psycologist Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Direct your own life. Be your own fate.