Monday, June 13, 2011

Perception

Today while driving to my first day on the job i noticed something interesting. The 45 minute car ride to my orientation was one of the most enjoyable car rides i've ever had alone. Then i got to thinking and realized how car drives are a key example to show the theory of relativity. If you have an enjoyable experience waiting for you at the end of the drive, it is going to feel like forever. However i was not exactly looking forward to the 3 hours of job training i had to endure so every song that i played from my ipod gained new meaning, every landmark i saw was beautiful, and every speed limit sign was aptly obeyed. The time passed faster than it does when i am sitting at my computer browsing stumbleupon and then i got to realize that by planning events(or making up fake events if you can convince yourself you are going to go) either worse or better than the situation you are currently in you can feel like you are either spending more time or less depending  on how long you want the situation you are currently in to last. Im going to spend some time looking into it but if it truly does work this simply you can trick your mind into perceiving work as fun and fun as even longer amounts of fun. The mind is a wonderful place to be. Thanks for reading my structured rants/thoughts.

Monday, June 6, 2011

new direction

Yesterday i was talking to some friends and had an idea. I thought about how when you look back on embarassing situations you tend to feel horrible about yourself for that brief moment when you knew you did something socially unacceptable. But the strange thing was that as i realized some of these things i did there were some that were worse than others (specifically punching my uncle straight in the nuts for no reason when i was 8). But then i thought about it and didnt truly feel that embarassed about it. This is when i got to thinking, as you grow older from an event of this nature (we all have these moments) you tend to disconnect from the person you were at a younger age. But then the conversation drifted to all the good memories of when you were a child and you feel good inside like you are reminiscing on an award you won at an earlier age. So this means that your mind must have an automatic content filter based on good and bad memories to allow you to move on from negative influences in your past and the positive memories of your childhood and i couldnt help but feel that by having these bad memories blocked if it wasnt actually a bad thing. by disassociating yourself with these embarassing situations we arent actually helping ourselves but instead increasing the chances that an event like that will happen again. So the next time you get into a mood where you look back on all of the embarassing situations you have put yourself in take a moment and reflect on the way it made you feel and make changes in your personality so you dont have to feel that social awkwardness again. Just a thought and thanks for reading!