Tag Archives: learn new things

22

Suspending Your Belief

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There is a skeptic in everyone. The voice inside questions the validity of everything and the intentions of everyone. It is natural to doubt things because we protect ourselves from avoidable forms of suffering. There are times it is appropriate to have questions about something. Otherwise, people would continually take advantage of you. But like everything, there is a balance you have to strike in life, to selectively suspend your disbelief to allow new ideas to reach you. Think of the great things you might experience if you allowed just a little bit of change into your consciousness.

We Suspend Belief All the Time

One of the great things about this process is we have a lot of practice at suspending belief. Any time you watch a movie or show on Netflix, you suspend belief. You know the situations you are seeing are not happening in reality and that the people you are watching are only pretending to be the characters you are viewing.

Yet, people are still moved to tears by the action that unfolds. People allow their emotions to rise and fall with the characters’ plight on the screen. A viewer can sympathize and empathize with a fictional character, suspending your belief in the experience. How many people have seen a good movie and think that a pleasant experience? This is a skill I am encouraging you to develop in other areas of your life.

Growth Comes With New Ideas

I often break life down into simple things for me to be able to understand my journey better. When it comes to development, you go one of two ways, growth and getting better or stagnation and getting worse. There are very few times we are sitting in neutral and staying precisely the same. Growth can happen naturally, like when you are a child, all you have to do is wait for time to work its magic, and a person physically transforms throughout their life.

Intellectually it is not that simple. Without new input, we are sentenced to experience the same old things. Suspending belief for a short time to allow further information to enter your intellect will allow you to evaluate things rationally. Each piece of data can be weighed and measured, and one can choose to use it or not. Either way, they understand it, and there will be natural growth in that understanding.

Stubborn

I have often been accused of being stubborn about my beliefs in life. People like to hang onto the known because it gives them a false sense of security. If the recent pandemic has taught me anything, we have no idea what security is. Everything you know can be wiped away in an instant. It is up to us to learn what information is valuable and what is not.

Growth can result from any suffering if we allow for the addition of new information, new experiences, and unique points of view. I know not one person who has experienced no change over the past two months. It has been stressful for many, looking outside and seeing danger everywhere, and some have found strength. If I can handle this, then I can take anything. Facing this new situation with only the past paradigms will lead to a frightening and frustrating experience. Allow further information in, then decide for yourself what makes sense. Let your heart determine what actions are right for you and whatnot.

Conformity Is Limiting

The choice to avoid new information or, worse, only to accept the point of view of someone else (the media, the government) leaves you with nothing but limitations. There is a comfort in conformity, everyone agreeing on a mode of action. Anything different is frowned upon or even outlawed, but we will get the answer to cure the problems we face through nonconformists. It won’t come through hanging onto the past. It won’t come through judgment, ridicule, or treating people poorly.

I have seen many efforts to force conformity on everybody since mid-March. Many celebrities and government officials urge people to stay home, social distance, wash their hands, and wear a mask. I am sure there is value in all of these things, but we don’t have enough information to know how this will all play out. Unfortunately, that will never happen until this is all over, and then we can say what should have happened, which didn’t. Anyone who claims to know what will happen is fooling themselves.

Growth Recipe

I am for letting people operate at their level of comfort. If the current circumstance frightens you so much, being in public makes you nervous, then stay home and avoid all of this whenever necessary. If you have a higher level of comfort, get out and see what the world is doing. It has been my experience. Life is full of challenges, illness, uncomfortable moments, and fear. Overcoming them is a part of growth, and following the crowd blindly is a recipe for disaster.

Today, try to suspend your belief and allow something new to filter into your reality for just a short time. Try to challenge the paradigms you are living through and see if a method makes no sense. You may find you were right all along, and learning this is also growing. If you do the same things you always have done, think the thoughts you have ever felt, and believe what you have always accepted without question, it leads to stagnation. Any belief we hold without question will end up limiting you. You may have the correct answer for everybody if you suspend your belief for a second and allow a new breeze of thought to blow through your mind.

“It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief.”-  George Bernard Shaw

“It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.”-  Lionel Trilling

“The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.” – Edward Norton

“I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief.” – Melissa Bank

 

21

On Your Mind

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a-mind-is-a-terrrible-thing-to-waste-reallyEach of us is given a gift of a mind on the day we are born. People spend lives trying to develop it (or not) and build skills that help us experience success in many different phases of life. As we learn all sorts of things,  from the rudimentary activities of functioning to the most complex ideas, our mind helps us develop goals and make the plans that allow us to make grand ideas a reality.  Our brain is our best friend and most valuable tool. It is designed to learn and grow and has a nearly limitless capacity to accomplish nearly anything you desire.  There are some simple things that we can do to enhance the process and avoid destroying the potential that our valuable brain possesses. Improving your mind is a full-time job.

Don’t Do Drugs

brain-on-drugsThis seems to be a “no-brainer,” but apparently, many people still find an acceptable escape from their problems or look for simple entertainment. Whatever the reason a person chooses to partake in the use of drugs, they choose to damage their most valuable asset. You may not be where you want to be in life, but the way to change that is to change what you believe, and your mind is the tool that can take you there. Drugs and alcohol are detriments to this process. Addiction is the home of the ego, and these well-ingrained habits are nearly impossible to stop, yet it is possible, and when you do it, your brain (or what is left of it) will be there to help you. When you stop these bad habits, you are going to be improving your mind.

Feed Your Brain

Each person has a brain that likes to learn. You may not think so as you remember your experience in the public school system, but that is not an indicator of your joy of learning but rather an indictment of the rigidity and lack of options provided by schools in our world today.  We all like to learn. We all learn differently.  To use a tool well, you need to start to understand it.

Much like a mechanic knows the workings of an engine, we should all learn something about the thoughts our brain is producing and how to control them. Some of the basics are that our brain has different parts, how many are really up for debate, and depends on who is talking. It is agreed that there is a conscious mind which is the part we have direct control over, and there is a subconscious mind working in the background all the time, helping us react and remember how to perform rudimentary tasks.

The subconscious is responsible for most of our choices, and if you let it run by itself, it will make choices based on your experience and how much pain one has felt in the past. The conditioning in the subconscious can be affected by the conscious mind with a little work. How much is up to each individual, and how much are they committed to improving their mind?

R.A.S. Improving Your Mind

Our brain has a mechanism called the reticular activating system, which helps us filter information based on what is important to us.  We are bombarded with somewhere around 2 million bytes of rasinformation at any one time and can only understand and process about 147.  That means that much of our “reality” is being ignored. The RAS works through the context of the subconscious mind, so what we hold in our mind is relevant to our interests.

If you can change your interest, your experience changes. Improving your mind is a process of becoming aware of the control you have with a concentrated, focused interest in something.  Using your Reticular Activating System to notice the things you want in life will allow you to create a life that is more of what you desire.  If you are unhappy with things, try adjusting your focus and seeing how much your life changes.

If you spend your time focused on fear and worry, then you will find more things to fear and be worried about.  If you focus on solutions, then you will find things that provide solutions.  Your life experience will follow your focus. Where that focus is directed is controlled by each of us.

We are all given the gift of a brain that can help us achieve our goals and live the life we would like to live. It makes sense that we take care of this valuable treasure by any means necessary. All of our decisions will impact the function of the mind and, through that, how much we are capable of achieving. So it is conceivable that you can achieve anything that you want if your mind is healthy and you are using it the right way. Improving your mind is a full-time job and needs our full attention.