Is Reality Real? Part 2
Hello everyone, this is Pavluu. Recently, we published an article on reality management by B. Salikhov. Today, continuing our discussion on reality, I found a few more articles by the same intriguing author, who continues to share his experience on how to change reality and overcome the difficulties we face in life. To avoid overwhelming you with reading, I’ll share just a few exercises, as the original article is quite large.
How to Reshape Perception?
Perception is shaped by ideas formed in the past. Although every new situation is unique, in the first moments of encountering it, our brain automatically decides what it resembles, and then begins to perceive it as something familiar. After this point, it becomes quite difficult to influence your perception.
It’s no coincidence that in communication psychology, the first minutes of a conversation with a new person are considered the most important. In this short time, your conversation partner decides what kind of person you are, categorizes you into a familiar type, and starts treating you as they would anyone of that type. Escaping this communicative loop can be quite difficult later on.
Psychologists draw the correct conclusion: you should immediately present yourself to a new acquaintance the way you want to be perceived.
Thus, all perception of reality is a search for the answer to the question, “What does this reality resemble?”
From this, it follows that every idea about reality is a metaphor—a comparison, where one thing is perceived as similar to something else.
If you have a problem, ask yourself what it resembles, and your mind will easily present a metaphor or a similar memory from the past. Even if these comparisons seem odd, take them seriously, because they shape your perception of the problem.
Can you control this process? What if you compare the situation to something else? Maybe another metaphor would be more suitable? What would you like the situation to resemble?
To change a perception that has served a person for years, logical agreement with a new viewpoint is often not enough. The old image is so strong that it appears automatically, before you even have time to think. To create a new image of the situation and limit the influence of the old one, it’s helpful to mentally transform the old picture into a new one, much like a computer program morphs an animal’s face into a human’s (hopefully you’ve seen this). It’s best to repeat this transformation several times, each time making it more vivid and faster.
Exercise: Feel Like a Creator
- Choose a situation (or activity) you want to improve for yourself. Describe what you do there and why.
- Find a metaphor for this situation (object, activity). What does it resemble for you? Visualize the metaphor. Bring the image closer to yourself. How do you feel in it?
- Mentally live through the future situation (activity). Describe what you do, think, feel, and what you pay attention to.
- Answer the following questions:
- (a) What is most important to you in this situation (activity)? What do you focus on? (Let’s call this X.)
- (b) Why is X important?
- (c) What is X, essentially?
From the last two answers, identify a new concept Y.
- Reformulate the definition of the situation (activity) through concept Y. Find a new metaphor for the situation (activity) and associate yourself with it.
- Adjust to the future. What will change for you in this situation (activity)? Describe what you do, think, feel, and what you pay attention to.
Balancing the Conscious and the Unconscious
The conscious mind cannot be aware of everything happening in the psyche; it can only focus on one thing at a time.
Because of its limited capacity, a person can only be aware of a small part of what’s happening in their psyche at any given moment; the rest remains unconscious.
We can compare the psyche’s division into conscious and unconscious to an iceberg, with the majority of its mass underwater. The underwater part is not fundamentally different from the visible part. Similarly, there are far more unconscious processes than conscious ones, but they are all parts of a whole.
This raises a natural question: do we always use the limited resources of consciousness correctly?
Most actions people perform are automated through repetition. It’s not a bad thing that we’re not aware of everything we do at every moment. For example, we usually don’t pay attention to how we breathe or walk. It happens automatically, and we don’t have to think about it. Otherwise, our consciousness would be overwhelmed.
Ancient Indian philosophers compared consciousness to a rider and the unconscious to a horse. The rider knows the final goal and monitors the surroundings. The horse provides the power for movement and decides how to move. Similarly, in most situations, it’s necessary to consciously set your goal and monitor changes in the environment. Actions, thoughts, and feelings are best left to automatic, that is, unconscious regulation.
For example, if a teacher is about to give a lecture, they need to consciously set a goal—say, to explain all the material to the students. During the lecture, they should consciously pay attention to changes in the environment: students’ faces (to see if they understand), the clock (to keep track of time), the diagram on the board, etc.
There is a certain class of problems that manifest as a loss of natural behavior. For example, when someone can’t act naturally in a new group, finds it hard to talk to strangers, or can’t behave naturally at a formal event.
In all these cases, spontaneity is lost due to increased conscious control over actions, movements, or speech. Over time, this control becomes a habit and turns into an obsession.
You can restore natural behavior by doing the following exercise. Use situations where you’re dissatisfied with your behavior, doubt if it’s right, lack naturalness, feel confused, constrained, or obsessively plan your actions.
Exercise: Restoring Natural Behavior
- Choose a situation where you have difficulty acting naturally.
- Mentally enter the situation, notice how you feel the difficulty, then step out of it.
- Define your goal in this situation. Say it out loud before you re-enter the situation in the next step.
- Now, your conscious attention should focus only on the surrounding situation. Visualize and describe it at the environmental level. Just name the elements of the context and their changes. What’s there? What’s happening?
At the same time (afterwards), you may notice behavioral responses arising unconsciously (no need to talk about them).
- Go through the situation to the end. Compare your feelings now with how you felt in this context before.
- Mentally go through another similar future situation (without any instructions).
Usually, doing this exercise just two or three times for specific situations is enough to learn the general strategy of dividing functions between conscious and unconscious attention. This improves their interaction in other contexts as well.
As with any rule, there are exceptions.
Creative Experience
Have you ever watched a child learning to write? When their hand forms letters, all their conscious attention is focused on the hand. This makes the finger movements deliberate, though slow. This way, the child learns new actions. Later, once the skill is mastered, the child no longer needs to pay special attention to hand movements. Attention would only interfere with automatic and therefore fast writing.
When consciousness is focused on an action, it disrupts automatism and makes the action deliberate. This is good in two cases: when learning something new, or when you need to change an established habit.
In situations where you need to change habitual experience or act creatively, you need to be aware of at least two components of experience. One component should be maintained (let’s call it the “reference component”). You use it as a guide for changes. The other is the one you’ll change (the “operational component”). With it, you make changes to your experience. For example, when learning to write letters, the reference component is the visual image of the letter, and the operational component is the finger movements.
When a poet writes a poem, they find a certain feeling they want to convey and hold onto it during the process (the reference component). Guided by this feeling, they direct another part of their attention to the realm of thoughts and wait for a good line to appear (the operational component). This doesn’t mean the poet consciously selects words—the words arise on their own—but awareness is needed to notice them as they appear.
Another example: woodworking. If a carpenter has done this work many times, they already know what the finished product should look like. Then, they focus on the workpiece and monitor what’s happening to it. The actions and everything else needed for the job will arise automatically.
If the carpenter is making the item for the first time, before starting, they need to imagine the finished product (which is harder the first time). During the process, it’s not enough to just watch the workpiece; they’ll also focus on their actions, being aware of every movement of their hands with the tool. Only then will they find the right way to make the product.
So, you need to be aware of your actions if you intend to perform them creatively, not automatically.
To change—or reprogram—your actions, first define your goal. What do you want as a result? Then, as you enter the situation, direct your attention to both the environment and your actions. This way, you’ll see how close you are to the result and creatively choose the right actions.
This process is outlined step by step in the following exercise.
Exercise: Creative Living of a Future Situation
- Identify a future situation where you’ll need new experience.
- Define your goal: what do you want in this situation? Visualize the result.
- Mentally enter the future situation. Focus your attention on the situation. What’s there?
Also be aware of your actions (or thoughts) if the situation involves acting (or speaking).
- Describe what’s happening out loud: “In the situation, X is happening, and I am doing (saying) Y…” Live through the situation to the end. Are you satisfied with the new experience?
- Describe what you felt, thought, did, and what you paid attention to in this situation.
Creating a new habit is like making a path in the snow. The first time is hard, but the second is easier. After a few times, it’s much easier to walk the path than to stray from it. That’s why it’s helpful to adjust to several future situations. And to turn new behaviors from virtual to real, experience them as vividly and in as much detail as possible.
Contextualizing Old Reality
Everything a person’s psyche has learned in life is preserved and can continue to serve them. When solving a problem, the old reality should give way to the new, but that doesn’t mean it has to disappear completely.
For example, a little boy learned to use his fists. Unfortunately, he started using them even against weaker children. The teachers managed to solve this problem by teaching him to negotiate. But that doesn’t mean that, in an emergency, the boy won’t be able to use his fighting skills to defend himself.
Thus, in some contexts, the old reality remains appropriate and isn’t a problem. In those situations, a person can still keep their old views and behaviors.
Exercise: Creating a Metaphor for Reality
- Choose a problematic context where you’re dissatisfied with the situation, your state, or your behavior.
- Become aware of your experience in this context. What do you feel? What do you think about? What do you do?
- “Take off” this experience like heavy clothing and “set it aside” at a distance. Feel your body and breathing free up, change your posture.
- Notice other elements of the situation and your interaction with them. What do you do, and what do they do in relation to you? What does this interaction resemble? Create a mental symbol (caricature) of this interaction.
- Identify your limiting belief about reality: why do you behave this way? State the opposite of the limiting belief and feel how it affects your state.
- Contextualize the old reality: in what situations (objective circumstances) is this way of interacting appropriate? Is the old reality appropriate in the current situation?
- Create a metaphor for the new reality: what metaphor fits this situation better? Create a new symbol for reality. Smoothly transform the old symbol into the new one three times. Bring the metaphor of the new reality closer to yourself. Notice what state it evokes in you.
- Mentally enter the future situation. Let your conscious attention focus only on the situation. Describe it at the environmental level. What’s there? What’s happening? Don’t talk about your feelings, thoughts, or anticipate your behavior. Just notice what happens spontaneously. Compare your self-perception now with how it was in this situation before.
- After finishing, describe what you felt, thought, did, and what you paid attention to in this situation. Find a gesture (or pose) that you associate with this state.
Author: Boris Salikhov, psychologist, NLP trainer