Chris Crouch's Blog

External Versus Internal Reality

Among a group of people, the most successful person is usually the one whose viewpoint or image of reality is most closely related to reality. But why would someone's image of reality deviate from reality in the first place? It's easy to understand how that can happen if you understand how the brain creates images of reality.

In order to get information from your external world (your environment) into your internal world (your brain/mind), all incoming sensory information must first be converted into a language that your nervous system can understand...electrical impulses and chemicals (usually called neurotransmitters and hormones). The conversion to electrical impulses happens early in the process; so in one sense everything you experience quickly becomes just a bunch of electrical impulses. If you consider the five conventional forms of sensory input, they all work this way. Light waves, sound waves, molecules in the air, molecules ingested, pressure, temperature and pain are all converted to electrical impulses by your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. The process of converting one form of energy to another is called transduction. All of your sensory organs have something called receptor cells (transducers) that perform this function. So...once your retinal receptor cells in the case of vision, or similar receptor cells in the case of your other sensory organs, finish processing the incoming information, the data is sent down the line and routed throughout your nervous system in the form of electrical impulses that trigger chemical messengers. The brain uses this data to reconstruct the experience that occurred in your external world. That's why neuroscientists say that we "see" with our brains...not our eyes. For example, in the case of eyesight, the impulses are routed to over thirty different cortical areas (areas of our thinking brain) for processing. Then the pieces of the vision puzzle are reassembled to create an internal image that we perceive as eyesight.

Well..so what? Well...that's why our image of reality can differ from reality. If we focus on just one part of this process...the reconstruction of the image...we can uncover some interesting things. The brain reconstructs the internal image that represents what we encounter in our external world by making comparisons. Comparison to what? I'll give you a hint. It's a key word in the theme song to one of the biggest chick flicks of all times...The Way We Were. You guessed it, the brain draws on your preexisting internal memory files to interpret what it is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling. That's the point in the process that can create vast perceptual differences between and among different humans.

Most things get encoded into your memory with some sort of associated emotional tag. Let's say two people pass a certain place everyday overlooking a scenic view of the ocean. In one person's case, it is the very spot where their spouse proposed and they have now been happily married for over 20 years and still very much in love. In the other person's case, it is the very spot where their spouse told them they wanted a divorce after 20 miserable years of marriage. When the first person passes the spot each day, their brain probably creates a delightful and positive image of the scene. In the second person's case, their brain probably creates a delightful and positive, or dreadful and negative, image of the scene depending on whether on not they wanted to get out of the marriage. So...in both cases light waves interact with their retina...the light waves are converted to electro-chemical messengers that provoke various parts of the brain into creating an image of the scene in their brains. Running these electrical impulses through their memory filters creates the potential for similar or different interpretations of the same sensory input.

Here's a few practical insights we can draw from all this transduction, impulse-generating, emotional-tagging, brain-related talk:

• Surround yourself with things that trigger positive memories for you.
• Get rid of things that represent compromises in your life.
• Get rid of things that have negative memories associated with them (yep...including old photographs of people you don't really like that much that you have been hanging on to for some reason).
• Use feelings of failure, frustration, anger, anxiety, sadness, etc. to help you identify and upgrade faulty memory files. Odds are these particular memory files are out of sync with reality in some way.

You can probably figure out a lot of other ways to use this information to improve your life. I'll write about a big one in my next blog. Until then, remember...among a group of people, the most successful person is usually the one whose viewpoint or image of reality is most closely related to reality.

So...Streisand and Redford fans...who do you think was more in touch with reality...Hubble or Katie?

---

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Beware, Emails Can Simulate Brain Damage!

Most of you have probably fired off an emotionally charged email to "nip a problem in the bud" and quickly discovered that not only did your message fail to nip the problem in the bud...it made the problem worse! Or maybe you sent someone an email that you considered to be innocuous and it turned out that the recipient considered the message quite controversial. These things probably happened because emails have the potential to simulate brain damage. Huh? Read on if you are interested!

One of the fundamental purposes of emotions is to promote accurate communications between humans. For example, if someone says, "You look nice today", what does it really mean? The meaning of those four words can vary significantly when you consider the emotional tone associated with the delivery of the words. For example, is the other person being sincere, sarcastic or seductive? Body language, voice tone and something called limbic resonance (a potential future blog topic) help communicate the true intent of the four words.

In order to understand why emails can be so easily misinterpreted, it helps to understand a little about how the brain processes language. Two areas of the brain central to language processing are Broca's area and Wernicke's area (the areas, typically on the left side of the brain, are named after the people who first discovered the language processing functions associated with the areas). Broca's area has a lot to do with converting your thoughts into words and Wernicke's area has a lot to do with understanding or comprehending words. People with damage to their Broca's area can understand you, but they cannot express themselves verbally. People with damage to their Wernicke's area can express themselves verbally, but cannot understand what is said to them. There are two corresponding areas on the opposite side of your brain that give emotional meaning to spoken language. People with damage to these areas cannot sort through and choose the appropriate meaning of spoken words nor deliver their words in a way that will accurately convey meaning to another human.

Okay, enough brain talk for now. The last sentence in the previous paragraph is the reason I am telling you about all of this. Think about it. When you use email to communicate with another human, it is the equivalent of damaging the areas of the brain that give emotional meaning to spoken language. You can, as some people do, try to overcome this shortcoming with emoticons :) or excessive words; however, you are probably going to be disappointed :( with the outcome. Anyhow, as you can see, emoticons are distracting.

Therefore, if you must communicate emotionally charged information to another person it is probably best to call them and deliver the information over the phone (introducing the element of voice tone)...or even better, tell them face-to-face (introducing the additional elements of body language and limbic resonance).

I probably should have told you all of this in person. Sorry about that! If the fact that I didn't tell you all this in person upsets you, please do not send me an email about it. :):):)

---

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.