I was reading a bit about NLP and read about using stories to influence the mind on a subconscious level. By carefully analysing my thoughts lately I've noticed how my mind has been heavily influenced by stories I've heard because I notice I automatically apply the morals the were contained in stories people told me over the years to my view of reality. Over the past few days I've been analysing the kinds of things people said to me and noticed that the majority of stories I hear are of a negative nature. For instance today my mother told me about her friend who was on medication for years but was unaware of the side effects and her blood pressure went up so high she was on the verge of death. My granny told me how its impossible to get jobs these days and how I shouldn't be optimistic about finding one. I've noticed family members seem to only have negative stories to share with me but my good friends (which are few) are the polar opposite, they only have positive stories. Conversely I seem to mainly share negative stories with family members and only positive ones with good friends. At the same time I've noticed my family members automatically reject my positive stories while my friends rarely even question them. This is an interesting exercise, from now on pay close attention to what people say to you and when you spot a story analyse it and determine what kind of morals they contain. On top of that analyse your thoughts and try and trace automatic reactive thoughts back to when you adopted the ideas/beliefs that paved the way for them. A lot of these automatic thoughts can be traced back to stories certain people shared with us.
Obviously the more cynical and skeptical people will be way more resistant to having their minds influenced by these kind of mental trojan horses, conversely though people who aren't very cynical or skeptical might benefit by paying closer attention to the stories you hear on a daily base and consciously deciding whether they want to accept a story as representative of truth/reality or not. I think this is a better defence than excessive cynicism and skepticism because cynicism and skepticism are double edged swords, they allow us to automatically reject viral stories but conversely they cause us to automatically reject the beneficial ones. This is all common sense but its so easy to go about your life without bothering to step back and analyse your own mental processes that you don't get around to setting up your mental firewall properly. On top of that by being aware of the impact our stories have on the minds of others we can attempt to consciously influence their minds by carefully selecting our words. I've been experimenting with this lately. My brother suffers from anxiety and stage fright and I knew that he was planning on trying out beta blockers in the near future so I made up a story about someone who suffered from anxiety and stage fright for years then suddenly became immune to it when they started taking beta blockers. Its very hard to know if this story had any effect because maybe the beta blockers alone would have done the trick. The mind also seems to work like that. It often requires an external change to rationalise the desired change. I've noticed that when this change doesn't arise its only years later that the desired change arises and I think the reason is that the change only occured when my conscious mind had forgotten all about it.
Edited by ampakine (05/07/11 07:42 AM)
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