| | I always take these with a grain of salt. I don't believe personally in intro or extrovert. In the end we'll all be guided by what we hold as painful and pleasurable to us, however irrational or rational we've linked those up to be in our nervous systems. I believe it's our values and our beliefs that will ultimately guide us. The reason an introvert isn't an extrovert is because he/she doesn't have it in their self concept, or they don't want to be, they find other things more valuable or they've associated in their nervous system that it's painful.
When I look at these kind of books I always ask myself... is it the introvert's thinking that creates the brain chemistry, or the brain chemistry that creates the thinking? We frequently hypnotize ourselves with our own or other peoples generalizations. Like" I'm an introvert...I'm an extrovert, I suck at math, I can't do this, I'm good at this. All of these are based on past experience. But past experience is based on beliefs, values, what's we've associated pain/pleasure to...what things mean to us. It's funny when people talk about hypnosis actually, because in my opinion we are in a trance all the time...we create it with our generalizations and distortions. And to create a new more profound "trance" we need to question our past generalizations.
Possibly hypnosis is an illusion, maybe it's taking us out of trance, and we can also do it by asking ourselves very effective questions.
Under hypnosis you can have a strong individual not be able to pick up a pencil, this is amazing, because no matter how much he has the capacity, with the suggestion of the hypnotist he is taking a direct command that bypasses his conscious awareness. I think of this as an embedded command, and we do it all the time.
Everything matters...how we speak, how we move, how we look at things, how we talk to ourselves, how we picture things to ourselves. The body and mind are one.
The power of visualization to me is amazing. Our minds respond to our visualizations, what we picture and how we picture it, what we say to ourselves and how we say it and how we move our bodies... it's all connected. When we do something we suck at...we are visualizing sucking at it, we already use visualization...just not right! I believe too, we often have to listen to our language.
Self concept is kind of like the picture we have of ourselves in our mind. If we lay down for 20 minutes a day for a month and visualize ourselves in an area that we may lack confidence in, or want to get better at...it changes us.. The physical follows the mental, and what we are doing is rehearsing. Studies have shown our minds can't tell the difference, it's still experience. Often it can be tuff to change with will power alone, anything... smoking, eating. As evident the strong guy trying to pick up the pencil with all his will. The only way willpower works is if we link enough pain to the old habit and enough pleasure to the new one, and reinforce it continually by focusing on it. The best way I've found for this is to keep my eye on what really matters, control your focus, you control your behavior.
But...it also must be something we want, it must flow from our values, discipline sucks, it breaks down. If we don't want it we're going against what we've linked pain/pleasure to, or what things mean to us. Possibly an introvert is such because they don't find many people around them appealing.
Here's what I've found.... go into other peoples worlds in conversation...talk what others want to talk about...pace them, and then bring them in your world.(You actually may begin to actually enjoy talking with others...mere mortals!) If you try this over and over and you have no success...chances are you're not hanging around the right people. You shouldn't have to hide what is important to you and what interests you. Get around people that interest you.
I guess in the end all this all comes back to the genetics, environment and the consciousness thing. Often doctors only concentrate on the first two...leaving out the most important one..the third.
As I'm getting older I'm becoming more and more skeptical, not cynical...just skeptical. In our fast moving division of labour society we rarely have individuals anymore with a true liberal education. Many specialize, so we have to "generalize" on what sounds reasonable to us. Often this is all we can do...but it's also dangerous, because many people specializing could be neglecting crucial information. For instance... the historian that studies history without economics or philosophy. Or the stock trader who studies trading principles without economics and reason. I see this everywhere.
|
|
