Our brains can be fooled
As humans, we think we are good at observing and remembering. Unfortunately, we are quite bad at it. Because our brain has placed a translation between actual observation and our behavior. This is what it looks like:
What is true…?
If you ask several people to give a testimony about an accident that they all saw, you get many different versions. Our brain is not very good at that. Our interpretation and judgment/opinion (fed by our culture that is fed and filled by everything around us for the first four years and is unchangeable) blur our perception.
Rationality as higher wisdom?
Measuring is knowing, we often say. Men in particular value rationality and facts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. If a scientist has experienced the loss of loved ones or is going through a divorce, he will get different results in his scientific research than when he is in love.
Steering and training
The great thing about cheating is that we can also use it to feel better or think differently. For top athletes, this is visualizing their ultimate and optimal performance. If you repeat this often enough (train), your subconscious will start to believe it and experience it as your own. Muscle memory takes that trained memory and then converts it into a better performance than without the visualization. So the next time you have an exciting presentation or a difficult negotiation, visualization is a valuable tool.
Tool
Visualization is very helpful in achieving your goals. This Tedtalk by Ana Isabel Bacallado gives more insight into how visualization works. Because real and imagined are exactly the same for our brains. How nice is that?!
