cognitive

The Workings of Our Minds Series: Contemplation, Predictions, and Fantasies

/ natemarshallaz / Leave a comment

               This will be the first post in a series that explore the many different aspects of the workings of our minds.     

               Please allow me a moment to state the obvious: our minds are complex.  In my counseling practice, most of my day is spent helping people understand these complexities.  To understand the inner workings of our minds allows us to know how to best harness the power and strength that the mind offers.  I would like to focus on one aspect of our mind’s working in this post, and that is the concept of mental rehearsal.

               This concept is relatively straightforward; anytime that we are anticipating events or thinking about the future and possible outcomes, we are engaged in mental rehearsal.  Sometimes this is a purposeful act such as when we are weighing our options on how to handle a situation.  Other times it takes on the more mindless (or not purposeful) form of daydreaming or getting lost in mental fantasies.

               We often regard this latter category as benign and harmless, but it is important that we realize that our mind uses this as rehearsal for performance.  If you find that your mindless fantasies often drift to worst case scenarios and bad outcomes (such as: “I imagine that I won’t be able to reach the goal that I have in mind” or “I can picture how badly it will go when I try to talk to my coworker”), we are inadvertently preparing to make that outcome a reality.   We would be much better served to rehearse success and scenarios with a positive outcome.  Our minds can be a very powerful tool in deciding whether we approach a fearful situation or not and whether or not we successfully navigate the situation.  Our minds can keep us stuck in fear, powerlessness, and anxiety or it can help us to overcome these emotions.

               Now, that doesn’t mean that we need to take optimism to an unrealistic level to where we picture complete smooth sailing with no struggles or barriers to success.  In fact, it can be helpful to try to anticipate some of these hardships, but to focus on our strength and resiliency to cope with and overcome them.

               The main idea here is to remain mindful of the fact that our mind uses our contemplations and fantasies as rehearsal, and we are likely to perform in ways that are influenced by how we have rehearsed.

               Another way that I have heard this framed is using the analogy of going to a gun range.  One of the very first things they tell you in such a setting is to always keep your gun pointed down range.  It is an easy mistake to make to turn around and point the gun somewhere other than down range.  This presents a potentially dangerous situation where you could accidently fire the weapon and hit an unintended target.  If we think of our minds as the gun in this analogy, we want to ensure that we keep it pointed towards the intended target and not let it drift onto unintended targets.

               Our minds operate to help us execute and pursue our goals in ways that are both conscious and subconscious (meaning operating outside of our direct awareness).  Therefore, if we allow our minds to fixate on fantasies or predictions of negative outcomes, we may inadvertently activate the power of our subconscious mind to bring about those outcomes.

               Remaining mindful of which targets we are aiming our minds at can help us harness the full power of our minds to work towards desired outcomes and achieve our goals.

EDITED BY DR. JACQUELINE FULCHER @ https://paintedowlpsychology.com

The Search for the Positive

/ natemarshallaz / 5 Comments

Image result for detective

This post is aimed at helping you through struggles.  Not of the external variety such as financial stress or interpersonal problems, but targeting those struggles that reside within our own minds.  This is about the way that we see and interpret the events that are happening around us.  The manifestations of these struggles may be as mild as being in a bad mood or a bit grumpy for a small spell all the way to a full-blown depression that lasts for months on end.  While these endpoints are quite different, the same process underlies both results.

On a surface level, you are likely familiar with what this discusses.  People may have told you to “search for the silver lining”.  Others may have attempted to encourage you by saying that “things are not as bad as they may seem.”  Heck, even Monty Python told you to “Always look on the bright side of life.”  While well intended and on the right track, these suggestions and advice have likely been ineffective in pulling you out of the negative that clouds your thinking when you are feeling down.  Why is this?

Basically, this is prescribing the very thing that is most out of reach to you at that moment.  It’s like telling someone who is lost in the desert and dying of thirst to “just drink some water.”  When this suggestion is presented without appreciating the difficulty it entails, we are likely to reject it out of hand.  This is quite unfortunate, because the wisdom behind the suggestion being offered actually has some value in terms of the behavioral health benefits.  I will attempt to dig beneath the surface of what is being said when someone offers this type of advice and transform it from quickly discarded tropes to something that may be meaningful and helpful.

Continue reading →

A New Adventure: My Journey Toward Becoming A Blogger (And Why You Should Try New Things Too)

/ natemarshallaz / Leave a comment

New Year

     We just (somewhat recently) rang in 2016 and while I don’t personally do the whole New Year’s resolution thing, I do appreciate it as a cultural phenomenon.  As a licensed professional counselor, I am in the business of helping people change and therefore am interested in how to capitalize on the pro-change vibe that the New Year brings.  So while it is not necessarily a resolution, this year I have challenged myself to take on the new adventure of writing a blog.

Introduce

Please allow me to introduce myself (and my blog)

     This blog will be, very broadly, about behavioral health issues.  I will likely post about a wide variety of topics and issues but all will be in the vein of topics that relate to wellness and behavioral health.  This initial post is both an introduction to the blog and a topic in and of itself: trying new things.

Learn

We learn by learning

     Overall, we are beings who thrive when presented with challenges.  As children, we are learning new things all the time:

  • learning facts and skills at school (like how to read, write, add and subtract, how to use money, and where Lithuania is on a map)
  • learning life skills at home (like how to make our bed, how to wash dishes, how not to bite our sibling when they make us mad, and how to be kind and loving to others)
  • learning about the world by playing outside (gravity makes us fall off the monkey bars, how physics relates to kicking a soccer ball, and how it smells bad if we step in dog poop)
  • learning social skills by playing with our friends (people get mad if we don’t play nicely, our culture ascribes gender roles in that boys are expected to play certain games and girls are expected to play others, and that there is a pecking order of dominance and power when groups of people get together)

Sadly, as adults, we often get to the point where we aren’t learning much new stuff anymore.  Sure, there is the saying “we learn something new every day,” but that pales in comparison to the immense amount of learning that we do as children on a daily basis.

“What’s the big deal if we are not learning?” you may ask.  Excellent question!  It is actually a pretty big deal.  Think of any muscle in your body.  It gets stronger the more that you use it and it atrophies (or weakens) if you neglect to use it.  In a way, this is the same with our brain.  You can see how this is acknowledged in the recent suggestion for elderly people to do things that challenge their brains (like crossword puzzles or Sudoku) or in the popularity of sites like lumosity.com.  There is a bit of a “use it or lose it” dynamic with our cognitive power.

Not only is learning beneficial for our brains but it is also beneficial for our psyche.  A lack of trying new things can lead to us feeling stale and stuck.  In fact, many of the people who come to see me in my counseling practice are looking for ways to get out of a rut that they have been in for some time.  Life seems lackluster and dull for them.  As we work together to get them out of this state, it is typically through efforts to try new things which will challenge them to learn new things that improvement occurs.

 Failure

Failure is always an option 

     I love the show Mythbusters and one of their sayings is that “failure is always an option.”  They seem to embrace failure as a reality and are not discouraged when it happens.  To them, any outcome, even if not what they were hoping for, is informative.

I would recommend taking this approach to your attempts at trying something new.  You are likely to try something that you think will be engaging, fulfilling, and invigorating.  But what if it isn’t?  What if the thing you have tried is dull and uninteresting to you?  Should you hang your head in failure and not try anything else because of this “bad” outcome?  Absolutely not!  Instead, I would encourage you to focus on what you learned from this experience.

For one, you crossed one potential activity off of your list and that means that the odds of one of the remaining items being successful has now increased.  You know that this attempted thing is not going to work for you for whatever reason.  If you can identify why it was not a good fit for you, you can apply that knowledge to the next activity that you choose.

The main thing is for us not to get discouraged and give up on our pursuit if we “fail.”  We can learn from our attempt and apply that new understanding as we continue moving forward.

Perspective

New perspectives on old stuff 

         Another benefit to trying new things is that it provides us with new perspectives.  We can learn new things about ourselves, our interests, our capabilities and limits, and the world around us.  The really great aspect about trying new things is that it can lend a new luster to the other things in our lives.  Even that thing which has become dull and routine for us can have new life breathed into it by the fresh outlook that newness can bring.

In this way, the benefits of challenging yourself to try and learn new things is twofold.  On the one hand we have the obvious direct benefits of the effort made and the enjoyment that can come from new pursuits.  On the other hand you have a generalizing effect where all other areas of your life will enjoy the spillover benefits of these efforts.  This is the value of living a balanced life.  We are better able to handle setbacks and stresses when we are feeling fulfilled in all areas of our lives.

What to try

So what to try? 

          If you are with me in seeing the benefits of taking on new challenges but are unsure of what exactly to do, I’ve got some good news for you: there are no wrong answers.  You can literally try anything.  As we discussed in the “failure is always an option” section, even efforts that do not succeed are beneficial.  It is more about the process of attempting new things as opposed to the outcomes.

Keeping in mind that the process is the more important factor, I did want to give you some ideas as far as specific things you could try.

  • Pursue an active activity: try a new sport (or resume playing one that you used to play), go on a hike, go for a bike ride, get into a daily walking routine, etc.
  • Get into a hobby: paint, learn an instrument, go to an art museum to learn about art, tour a winery to learn about wine making, take a pottery class, get a camera and start photography, learn to play chess (or checkers if that is more your speed), take up adult coloring, get into cosplay, learn to juggle, fish, read comic books, etc. (more ideas at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hobbies)
  • Find an opportunity to volunteer: at your local food bank, a local soup kitchen, hospitals, the Red Cross, United Way, a local school, library, YMCA, an animal rescue facility, etc.
  • Take on a challenge: commit to a 5k run, start a blog, write a book, learn to cook, take a college course, etc.

In taking on something new, recall that ideally there is a balance between challenge and enjoyment.  In fact, there is even a term for this ideal state when undertaking a new venture and it is called flow.  Flow is a term that is widely used in positive psychology and refers to the state where one is fully immersed in and absorbed by what they are doing due to an ideal balance between challenge and pleasure.  As defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (I dare you to try to say that one out loud!), flow is a state of mind associated with both physical and mental health benefits.

 

Recap

  • Our cognitive ability is enhanced by providing novel challenges to our brain.
  • Tackling new challenges prevents life from getting stale and dull.
  • Any attempt at new things is successful even if it ends up being a “failure.”
  • The process is more important than the outcome.
  • Flow is the state where we are absorbed by the challenge that we are taking on and this is a very healthy state of mind.

In closing…

         While this was written in the weeks following the New Year of 2016, even if you are reading it mid or late year, consider making a resolution to try something new in the coming weeks.  Your renewed outlook on life and overall sense of wellness will be your reward.

Edited by Shirley Sachs

Written January 11, 2016