Your ability to perceive what you experience is limited by your need to have a small, energy-efficient brain. Your Reality is warped.

Why do I experience things differently to others? Why are the decisions I make different to others? Is there something wrong with me?

No – there isn’t anything wrong with you!

With a brain smaller than a melon, how do we make sense of everything happening around us?

Navigating the world for the majority of us is seamless and boundless, and rarely do we need to ask the question about how we actually navigate the endless possibilities and actually make it to the end of the day without major incident.

Incomprehensible.

Think about the millions if not billions of parallel logistical actions involved to allow someone to travel to a foreign country. From the earning of the local currency, allowing another to act on the transaction, to the engineers keeping a plane, boat, and train in serviceable condition to the international timekeeping universals. All working in harmony to enable a person to move from one location to another seamlessly without, in most cases, fault or error.

How do we not become paralysed by the data?

You Delete More Than You Know.

The first and simplest solution is that your brain doesn’t represent everything taking place around you. Not even close. You perceive only a small fraction of the energy and information around you in any given moment.

The majority of the information passes as the body lacks the capacity to detect it and act upon it.

For the average adult in a resting state, the brain consumes about 20 percent of the body's energy. The brain's primary function — processing and transmitting information through electrical signals — is very, very expensive in terms of energy use.

Processing the information sent to the brain via the senses depends on the activity of brain cells called neurons and the connections between them. Brains with more of these interconnected neurons can process more information, but they are also heavier and require more energy. 

Take a look at my previous article on the advantages of adventure if you are looking to work on this.

Your Brain Builds Historic, Present And Futuristic Maps To Enable Navigation 

One of the main reasons we are able to move freely without fault is as a result of our brains ability to organise neurons into literal maps. These maps allow more neurons into a brain while keeping the costly connections between them as short as possible.

Your different brain maps represent different features of your world, note I said “your world”, information about light detected with your eyes, information about sound detected within your ears, pressure detected with your skin, locations in space around your body, and so much more. Thanks to maps, your brain can house five senses rather than just one or two.

Think about the unconscious/subconscious action required to walk down a flight of stairs while humming your favourite theme tune, while holding a hot cup of coffee. Perception, distance, time and balance to name a few, all working without significant conscious thought.   

What You Sense Is NOT Fact Rather Your Made Up Truth.

You are warped; preserving some details are key to the function of the brain while sacrificing others is a necessity. We have evolved and developed to make the most of our processing space. And these distortions, in turn, distort how you perceive “your world”.

Have you run out of your phone memory at some point? I know I have. The solution? Either upgrades the storage space or sort through the photos, videos and large files; deleting duplicates, the blurred or those that lack significance. We work in similar ways, deleting what is necessary.

Consider your sense of sight. You can see far more detail at your centre, or where you are looking at any given moment, than "out of the corner of your eye." For example, try focusing on one point in front of you and expand your awareness beyond the peripheral. How far can you see while keeping your eyes and head still?

Ideally, you would be able to see things equally well out of the corner of your eye as you do at your main point of focus. But you need more neurons, and more connections between those neurons, to represent fine details and therein lies the problem. 

In order to see equally well in your visual periphery as you do at your main point of focus, the visual maps in your brain would have to be thirteen times larger. If this change sounds innocuous, think again. It would make your visual brain maps alone too large to fit inside your skull. And that would leave no room for the brain maps you rely upon to hear, feel, and move.

To avoid such catastrophic outcomes, brain maps devotes most for representing detailed information at the expense of practically everything else.

Hence all that you see isn’t Fact but literally a manifestation of fillers and guesswork based on what you have experienced in the past.

SO… the next time you are certain of something, it could be worth looking at it with new eyes…. the outcome could be very different.

If you need some assistance looking at life in a new way, then why not book a one to one therapy session with me Benjamin Bonetti. More details can be found on the booking page.

Click here to secure your therapy appointment.

Thanks for listening; there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts, articles and videos out there, and every time you share, like and subscribe, you help me help more people. For more articles remember to visit the website BenjaminBonetti.com and if you think it is time, then take advantage of the introductory sessions that can be found on the booking page.

 

 

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