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No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences.
Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if they didn’t, we’d be overwhelmed.
Research suggests that our senses get bombarded with over 40 million bits of data per second. Out of that, how much are we actually aware of? About 40.
That tiny fraction of what we become aware of is based on the circuits and thresholds that our senses and neural networks have built over time based on our unique experiences.
But, it’s important to understand that our senses are deceptive and there’s lots more we can tune into: We have way more than the 5 senses that most of us are familiar with!
In this episode, we’ll go into three ways to use ‘diversity of data’ to re-engage our senses, and go way beyond our senses – in order to have more moments of insight, intuition and creativity.
When we truly ‘diversify’ our brain activity, we get better at our relationships, at achieving our goals, and at finding new ways to deal with challenges.
When we stay in our comfort zones and stick to the familiar, it makes it harder for our body and mind to notice new things and come up with new ideas.
Topics covered:
– Senses are gatekeepers to what reaches our brain, then our brain does a lot of processing, deletion, and exclusion. This narrows down our view of the world.
– Principles of grouping.
– We have many more senses than the 5 we’re most familiar with.
– We can get better at feeling what’s happening inside our body
– Our overall health can benefit from sitting still for a few moments each day.
– The case for exposing ourselves to more in the world and how it lets you highly attune your senses.
– We become very close and narrow-minded if we don’t expose ourselves to many different things whether it’s food, opinions, places, etc.
– Body and internal awareness.
– Quiet moments and being engaged with senses can lead to ideas.
Links:
Season 1 Episode 5 – Self-Regulation: the remarkable skill that will make you a better human
https://stephenporges.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17:the-infants-sixth-sense-awareness-and-regulation-of-bodily-processes-&catid=5:popular-articles&Itemid=12se
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/strange-order-of-things-antonio-damasio-review
