Heroes Not Zombies

What influences how we experience the everyday? What shapes reality?

One of the ways our minds work is by creating frames and schema. We learn from our own experiences, from the stories of others, and from the messages we are given. All of these combine to create frames, or lenses, through which we filter the present moment. They also combine to create schema which are like pre-formed sets of perception, values, attitudes and behaviours.

There are lots of examples from psychology research – although, beware, because a lot of psychology research has been called into question and other researchers have failed to repeat the results of very famous experiments. But here’s an example of a type – volunteers are told they are being tested on a cognitive skill, say, perhaps, the ability to undertake certain mathematical tasks. But before they take the test, some are interviewed by a researcher who asks them to talk about the lives of the most elderly members of their family. Others don’t have that chat. After the test is complete, the researchers measure the time it takes the volunteer to walk to the exit. Those who had spent time talking about elderly family members before the test take longer to walk to the exit after the test. Bizarre, huh? This kind of experiment suggests that we can be “primed”. That pre-fashioned patterns of thought and action can be set in train unconsciously.

There are lots of different experiments which seem to demonstrate the same idea. These “schema” or “pre-fashioned” patterns of thought and action can be activated and influence how we experience and perform in the light of them.

We shouldn’t be too surprised by this. We know we are influenced by the messages which bombard us. Why else would advertisers spend billions to catch our attention? There’s a whole discipline now of “neuro-marketing” where companies can learn how to use how the brain works to catch our attention and to “prime” us to do what they want us to do – click “buy”, or vote “yes”, or whatever…..

This is one of the things underlying my choice of the title “Heroes not zombies” for this blog. I think that it’s easy to spend life on autopilot, allowing others to press our buttons, to convince us of their frames, to implant their schema in our minds. If we want to become the “heroes” of our own narratives, then we need to wake up, become aware of things like this, and then, perhaps, even consciously choose to create our own frames and our own schema.

So here’s my question today – for me, and for you – what are the frames, the schema, and the messages which are creating my experience of today?

Once we become aware of them, then we are able to make some choices – choose to accept them, or choose to make our own ones.

Let me finish with a simple example. If you spend the first part of your day “doom-scrolling” (you know that new term? Where you read story after story on your newsfeed, your twitter feed, your facebook feed, each one horrifying you, irritating you, outraging you, frightening you….but you can’t stop…you keep on scrolling)….so, if you spend the first part of your day doom-scrolling then what kind of day follows? What are you set up, or primed to notice, to pay attention to, to give your energy to? What if you chose to start the day some other way? With affirmations, reflection, gratitude…….you get the idea?

What if we started each day with some “conscious creation“?