Controlling the World and the Speed of Things ($)

Your ability to move forward has as much to do with the gear you’re in, as the hill you’re on.

“Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.”
— Charles M. Schulz

Things in the world proceed at different rates, and we operate at different rates. We think at one rate, speak at another, and feel at a third. We coordinate with each other when there’s a common tempo, but these rates are often unclear, leaving us to act at our own pace.

We get burned out when we have to operate too long or too fast. We’re usually aware of what’s happening and we disengage intentionally, but in other situations, we lose clarity. We can feel that we’re not “up to speed” without knowing why.

Keeping up with traffic is a rhythm we’ve learned to maintain. We pace ourselves with what’s around us. We tolerate some faster or slower drivers to a point, but the driver who zooms past us, or who drives so slowly as to back-up traffic, is deeply annoying. These potential risks make us uncomfortable.

Disconcerting situations trigger us. Regardless of their actual effect, outliers disturb us emotionally, upsetting our peace of mind. Humans not only behave collectively without thought, but are aware that it feels comfortable. We think in common, but the thoughts don’t much matter. We get in step first and think in step later.

This is herd mentality. The smarter you are, the more you lead with your intellect, and the more susceptible you are to it. That’s because herd behavior is emotional, and your intellect is driven by your emotions.

Rhythm

We have many rhythms of attention, each are flexible to a certain degree. We can converse and chop vegetables at the same time. We can merge from local to highway traffic flowing at twice the speed. We perform these shifts almost unconsciously, as our minds have some kind of automatic transmission.

If you’re in conversation with a driver who’s making a transition in traffic, you’ll notice a break in their thinking. They will momentarily redirect their thoughts. A temporary wave of distraction washes over them, the previous conversation then bobs back to the surface. If the distraction is too large, like if one is being forced to merge into a fast lane filled with large trucks, the conversation may not recover.

My friend Eugene Wigner was a careful, thinking man. I was young, he was old, and we’d walk on the sidewalk in Austin, Texas, and talk about physics. Eugene was bright and thought at his own pace. He was one of Einstein’s close friends.

I think his hearing was particularly sensitive, as he was extremely annoyed by loud noises. The only time I knew him to swear was when a loud motorcycle would drive past. This happened every time: the noise completely rattled him. He lost his train of thought, and he couldn’t shut it out.

We can all be distracted by outside events. It’s not their volume that intrudes so much as their disorganization, the way they disturb the rhythm of our thoughts. It’s your sensitivity that determines whether you’re disturbed, not the volume of the disturbance. Sensitivity is a subtle thing because different mental gears operate simultaneously to keep one's thoughts in focus.

If you’re in a quiet, contemplative state, even minor distractions, such as your daily schedule, can disrupt you. If you’re in a rapidly responsive state, like trying to collect yourself as you head outdoors, or collect the kids for a carpool, then simple, sensitive thoughts are impossible.

These tempos are the frequencies of your brainwaves. I’ve spent years watching the complexity of people’s thoughts vary with their brainwaves. There are direct correlations: slow, regular brainwaves lead to wide, expansive thoughts; fast, staccato brainwaves allow you to incorporate exceptions and distractions.

If you can integrate brainwaves with higher frequency events in your environment, then you can react more quickly. If you cannot accommodate these frequencies, then you appear to be distracted and annoyed.

Many of your emotions of anger and irritation arise with bursts of fast brainwaves, as well as events that cause bursts of fast brainwaves—like Eugene and his annoying motorcycles. These stormy brainwaves have emotional origins, triggered by events, that direct or distract our thoughts.

The important point is this: these are brainwave induced states. There is no intellectual reason for your feelings. You will manufacture reasons later. You are moved into or out of a contemplative states by the reaction of your brain’s rhythms, going from calm to vigilant to irritated. Once you’ve created a reason for your feeling, the reason becomes an explanation, but the reason is an illusion. The state creates the thoughts, not the other way around.

Entrainment

Music is the obvious example. Music entrains you into mentally organized or disorganized states. Once you’re in such a state, you ascribe your state to the music. But your state developed before you were aware of it. You synchronize with the stimulus, and the stimulus holds you in that state. You have little control over your state; you lose the state when the music stops.

Your ability to function is determined by your awareness. We think we’re in control in the way that we speed up and slow down for traffic, but we’re not in control. If you try to tap your foot against the beat, you can’t. We mimic the rhythm of our environment, and we pick the environment that suits the result we’re looking for.

We’re not as good at this as we think. Many difficulties, which we think are problems in need of solutions, are not problems. They’re situations to which we are not synchronized. Solutions “fall into place” when the situation is correct.

How much deductive thinking are you actually doing? Not much. In most cases, we’re waiting for familiar patterns to manifest. We don’t solve problems so much as we move toward consonance and away from conflict.

This is the foundation of brainwave training. It’s a process that’s like evolving from a 3-speed mind to a 21-speed mind, to gain the ability to sense the need for different levels of synchrony, and to shift smoothly. This is critically important, but most people are not even aware that they shift gears at all. Brainwave training can enhance every aspect of your life, but most people are oblivious to the need, the process, and the potential.

If you think you’re a slow thinker, or you think you’re bad at math, or you feel you’re too anxious, this is why. It has nothing to do with your intelligence, your mathematically ability, or the stresses in your environment. It’s how you’re tuned. These behaviors are a consequence of your brain’s habitual response.

Brainwaves are easily trained, and the brainwave patterns you create yourself are quite “sticky.” This is different from entrained patterns, which arise from our tendency to synchronize with our environment. Entrained patterns are “thin,” we move into and out of them quickly: music, group-think, and the astrological trend of the day triggered by those around us.

Brainwave patterns are a kind of physical fitness in that they improve with exercise. And just as we all know fitness will improve our health, most of us make little attempt to improve. With relatively easy brainwave training you could become more intelligent, less anxious, and more emotionally sensitive.

The “stickiness” that makes one’s habitual patterns easy to overlook, also creates the promise of improvement. Once you develop a new pattern, it sticks. But this only happens when you are controlling your emotions.

If you’d like to know how your personal problems are really brainwave patterns, book a free call using the button below.