Opening different doors of perception

Your brain is the most powerful computer, how you think, act, perceive, feel and behave is all about the software that you have programmed your brain with since you were born.  All the experiences you have had and the meaning you make out of them shape who you are. Unfortunately most people do not think about how they could update their brain software and this leaves them seeing things the way they always have.

I often say to my clients … if only we could plug in our brain for updates, bug fixes and latest software just like we do our phones. However unfortunately we just keep shoving more and more experiences or thoughts into our brains without ever really getting rid of the unhelpful, outdated or useless stuff. This is why we can be plagued by the cruel taunts of kids in the playground or negative things that happened to us many years ago and it still have a profound effect on how we see ourselves today. It is why we often listen to our inner critic when it says horrible things about us, undermining our abilities.

I remember Nadia Hussain, the talented chef, author and television presenter that won the Great British Bake Off in 2015 talking about the horrific bullying that she experienced at school, where her head was often held down the toilet by fellow students and the loo was repeatedly flushed. The trauma left her with a fear of drinking water and going to the loo, extreme anxiety and panic disorder. Being Muslim mental health was not recognised in her community and it was only decades later that Nadia began to explore how she could overcome the madness that she lived with every day since schooldays. What happened to Nadia shaped how she viewed the world and this coloured her perception for a long time.

Your perception is your reality. If you think life sucks, then it probably will. So how do we change our perceptions? How do we open our mind to see things from a different perspective?

Finding a different viewpoint changes the way everything looks. It is like when you randomly sit at a different desk at work. It is the same office, the same people around you, the same smell yet if feels like a whole different world. This small variation might make you act differently, feel different, treat people differently, work differently.

We CAN change our perspective using the following methods …

1.     Therapy – by talking about how you feel, how you react and respond it helps bring awareness which is the first step to making change. Once you start paying closer attention to your inner talk and mindset you can make a conscious effort to change it.

2.     Mindfulness -by default most of us spend time agonising about the past or daydreaming about the future. We rarely are present, which means we are not conscious of most of our thoughts, feelings, activities or interactions. Mindfulness can help us naturally notice how we look at the world and we get the opportunity to gently shift perception if it is not serving us well.

3.     Focus on the positive.  There is something called the “negativity bias” where we are hard wired to focus on the bad, negative, critical, dangerous in order to keep us alive. We need to put a whole lot more effort into noticing the good things, appreciating beauty and kindness, having an attitude of gratitude.  By doing this you are taking the step to see life through a more positive and hopeful lens. It is empowering to choose you look at a situation rather than it being automatic.

4.     And finally, psychedelics can create new neural pathways in your brain that help you see things in a different way.  Aldous Huxley wrote a book called “The Doors of Perception” in 1954, after taking psychedelics it opened his mind and helped him see (Huxley was almost blind with a very bad sight condition).  Psychedelics take away the ability of the controlling brain (called Default Mode Network) which then allows the mind to be liberated and free – which helps people to see things from a different perspective.  There is a resurgence of research showing that psychedelics can have marked positive outcomes in treating people with mental health conditions such as depression, trauma or OCD.

So my challenge to you is check and see if your viewpoints or perspectives are serving you well.   If not, might you try one of the methods mentioned to try and create a new perspective?

You might be surprised by how radically your life can change by just changing the way you look at a situation.