Focus Your Focus - Blogs

In this issue we write about existing, scientifically based approaches to development technologies. Development is inevitable - develop or lose! Otherwise it will be like in that joke: “You lie to yourself, you degrade, and then - bam! - there is nowhere to degrade."

A person's potential is not infinite, so in development it is important to determine not only what needs to be done, but also what not. It's important to be strong where you need it and weak where you can.

The theme of endless possibilities is very romantic. The statement that a person uses his abilities by three percent does not find scientific confirmation. So what now? Are we doomed to mediocre ability and no growth potential? Of course not! But it should be borne in mind that our possibilities are finite. It is precisely understanding your boundaries, focusing your abilities on what is really interesting, what gives energy and inspires, is the best way to expand them.

Our main ability

One of the main resources that we have is time, attention. We can control our focus of attention, and this is our main ability. We make a choice consciously or automatically. Often the brain makes a choice automatically as a consequence of the conservation of psychic energy. We must remember that he constantly deceives us by using familiar patterns and heuristics. Here are just a few studies to support this.

In one experiment, scientists from Harvard University and the Catholic University in Milan, Italy, recruited 47 participants with type 2 diabetes. The subjects measured their blood glucose levels, then all people played computer games for exactly 90 minutes, but perceived the passage of time differently. Some were convinced that the experiment was over in 90 minutes, others that it lasted 45 minutes, and still others claimed that 180 minutes had passed. Participants who felt like they were playing for 180 minutes saw their glucose levels drop significantly. As if it had actually been three hours, not an hour and a half! In other participants, the decrease in glucose also matched the idea of how much time passed.

In another experiment, scientists from Yale University suggested that people drink a milkshake with a caloric value of 380 kcal, after measuring the level of ghrelin (hunger hormone) in the blood. Then the people were divided into two groups and asked to take a close look at the composition of the drink. In the first group, the participants could see that the drink contained 620 kcal, and in the second, that there was only 140 kcal. Those who drank a “nutritious” cocktail of 620 kcal, the level of ghrelin dropped sharply, people felt full, like after a hearty dinner. Those who tasted the "light" cocktail did not feel satiety, and the level of ghrelin in their blood did not budge. It turned out that hormones are also being carried on to an uncomplicated deception.

Focus management is also a way of prioritizing. We know that future plans can govern what we do in the present. Our view of the past from the present changes in accordance with what metamorphoses occur in ourselves. It is not for nothing that psychotherapists joke that "every adult has the right to a happy childhood." Indeed, by changing yourself in the present, you can reduce the influence of childhood psychotraumas, thereby changing your future, your destiny.

Breaking templates

How to deal with predestination and doom? Is it possible to "escape from fate"? Destiny is an inevitable experience that results from the fact that we do not want to revise the typical patterns of our reasoning. Belief in destiny assumes that the world is just, but it is not. The world is not rigidly determined, it is probabilistic, that is, by our actions we influence the likelihood of this or that event occurring. But the event itself may depend on external factors, and not only on us or be random. For example, if a person has a heart attack, then this does not necessarily happen because he smoked a lot. But if he smokes, then the likelihood of a heart attack increases many times.

Belief in destiny forces us to look for cause-and-effect relationships where there are none, and often generates a guilt complex, which makes it possible to manipulate those who will explain the cause of problems and “remove the spoilage” for a reward.

Change the picture of the world

Man is, first of all, the picture of the world he professes. Our brain usually does not think, it just explains this picture, trying not to destroy it. He ignores facts of reality that contradict his picture of the world.

Therefore, we so often ignore existing relationships and look for non-existent ones that would fit our picture of the world. We believe that our views are the only correct ones, although in fact they are only a mirror image of the reality into which we are looking.

What can be done? The first is to try to realize that we and our brains are not the same thing. The second is to treat your brain with care, realizing that the information it receives, impressions, against our will, affect the picture of the world it builds. It's not so harmless to feed your brain with apocalyptic news, horror movies, or, conversely, pink unicorns and caramel illusions.

As a result of the processing of emotionally charged events, our focus of attention is shifted from real, primary problems to secondary or even non-existent phantoms, the picture of the world becomes inadequate. And until a person realizes this, he will not understand what controls him and cannot change. Psychotherapy helps to pay attention to the unconscious.

We hope that after reading the articles in this issue, you will be able to see your own picture of the world and bring it closer to a more constructive one.