How to read minds

Welcome back! How have you been? We’ve both got to admit that it has been a long time since the last time I said anything to you – but here I am again.

Reflections in retrospect

Today I am going to talk to you about EMPATHY. Dan Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, talks about how the world would be a much better place if we were all empathic towards each other. He gives an example of how a doctor who really listens to his/her patients is usually more successful in diagnosing them with the correct ailment. Empathy really does have the power to show us the true side of a situation and help us understand where its origins lay. Most of the time these days, everybody just looks at what others are doing and estranges their behaviour. We all do this to make ourselves seem socially acceptable in comparison to others, however, in reality if we try to put ourselves at everybody’s level, try to understand why they are the way they are and accept them, we become more acceptable within a larger group. In my own life, I have made the strongest friendships where I have connected to people on the level of why they do certain things.

Staring at the present

My world, personally, revolves around empathy. I have always wondered about how it would feel like to put myself in someone else’s shoes. I have always wondered whether or not I was any good at really knowing what someone else was thinking or feeling. Well –

I finally have the chance to put that to the test.

In his book, Pink gives a link to a test provided by the BBC that tests how well you are able to distinguish between a fake and a genuine smile. I took the test within 10 minutes and found that I was rather good at it. After all, I got a score of 15 out of 20, however, when I thought back to what I had just done I realized that there was more to this score than a mere two-digit number. I realized that most of the times I got the answer correct was when I felt the smile radiate right through me or simply just dull me, even if it was on a computer screen. I got the answers wrong where I didn’t follow my emotions or intuition, but rather followed the path of logical and linear analysis of the facial expression. I found that my intuition fired up like the ignition of a car when I looked into the eyes of the person who was attempting to smile. I suppose the old proverb is right

“The eyes are windows into a person’s soul.”

A look into the future

TAKE THE TEST YOURSELF and see what you get. Share what you learn through the test, in the comments section below.

Assign Value [Meaning]

Courtesy of unknown author

What is the meaning of life?

In all honesty, I don’t know and I doubt I could answer that question for you within the next 15 years, but believe me I’m working on it. In the meantime, WELCOME to my latest and humble blog post which is all about the question you are supposed to have asked me above.

In my recent endeavors, I have been reading Dan Pink‘s A Whole New Mind as i was before. This time, anyhow, I have been reading his seventh chapter on Meaning and all I can say is that doing so has rather elucidated my view of the world in a few ways. The idea proposed by Viktor Frankl  in his momentous work Man’s search for Meaning that Dan Pink relates to us moved me far from where I stood 5 minutes before I read it. Meaning in life is what propels me and it is the reason why I strive to do the best in all the activities that I do. Now that I think about it more deeply, I can’t find a better way to explain my own behavior or that of anyone else.

ANYWAY!

Once again Dan Pink puts forward a few activities that one can engage in, in order to increase his/her sense of meaning in this world. One of these talks about dedicating every single piece of your work to somebody that is not you. He says that doing so will make all of your work richer in quality because your motivation becomes a lot more intrinsic, meaningful and emotional.

Alright… I will do just that then… I will write a song for a friend who is in a long distance relationship.

Now that I have written my song, I am amazed by how much dedicating my work to my friend has affected my motivation and the result of my effort. Most times, I eventually run out of words to write half way through the second verse. Today, I ended up writing a whole song because I wasn’t just doing it for the sake of pleasure and stress-release, but for somebody else who would find more meaning in what I was doing. I made bigger strides in trying to find more lines that expressed more of my friend’s situation.

While I am not allowed to disclose who my friend is, I can tell you a little bit about her story. This summer, my friend was finally asked out by a guy who she had had a crush on for a few months already. The couple had spent a rather happy summer until the moment had arrived when both had to leave Thailand for two different places. My friend had to leave to Europe for her undergraduate course, while her boyfriend had to leave for the USA to pursue an MBA. While both keep in touch on Skype and Facebook, there is no real way of overcoming the obstacle is distance without physically meeting at some place. The days can get lonely at times and I know that my friend misses her boyfriend a lot.

So that is what I had to write a song about. I’m going to share the song below. You can read it if you wish to – If you do, I sincerely hope that you can relate to it and feel the feelings I have embedded in it.

—

I lay here in my bed,

trying to survive the moment,

I watch the walls bleed red,

against an empty sky,

The cold seeps through the floor,

I trip over life back then,

I can’t find my next step,

You’re the only reason I try,

–

Can you hear me…

There is so much I want to say.

Can you hear me…

It keeps getting harder to pass each day,

–

But you’re so… far away,

And I wonder if you’re the same,

I need you

right here by my side today.

–

With the new pictures of you I see,

Makes deeper the chasm  in my gut,

I wish I could place myself,

where ever you stand,

And no matter what I do,

I  feel like i’m stuck in a rut,

I decorate the past in a frame on the shelf

When all I want is to hold you once again,

(everything I do reminds me of you)

–

Can you hear me…

There is so much I want to say.

Can you hear me…

It keeps getting harder to pass each day,

–

But you’re so… far away,

And I wonder if you’re the same,

I need you

right here by my side today.

–

I miss how you held me close and tight,

You’re not here and I can’t find the light,

The pain never goes away, the days never stop turning gray

When I look far away, the future’s fading out,

When I look around, I’m the only one alone,

Tell me you’re coming back and you’ll never be gone again,

I spend my days just standing by the phone,

Will we ever see each other again.

–

Can you hear me…

there is so much I want to say,

Can you hear me…

It keeps getting harder to pass each day,

–

But you’re so… far away,

And I wonder if you’re the same,

I need you

right here by my side today.

—

Source of Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net/cartoon-what-is-the-meaning-of-life

Catharsis

Image Courtesy: Noah Shachtman

Bullets don’t stop for time. The gunman pulled the trigger on the man before him. Years of anger and frustration poured out of the barrel into a metallic projectile. Red memories poured from the painful wound. The gunman walked away from the man he shot – the image of his past.

You must be wondering what that was all about. I have been reading Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind again. Recently, I read the chapter “Story”, which happened to include 2 activities that caught my attention. Write a Mini-Saga is about writing a story in 50 words, while Play Photo Finish is about writing a story based on an image – I thought that instead of doing just one, I should do something that is the mix of the two.

The image you see on the left was one I found by Googling “Bullet.” I must confess that I am rather fascinated by the power and impact of these little objects. One shot can change someone’s life. It holds the power of allowing somebody to live and causing the death of another.

In reflecting upon the story I have written, I find that it is very personal to me as it relates to certain painful experiences that I have been through and how much strength it took me to overcome the pain they caused me. I’m quite sure you’d like me to elaborate on what kind of painful experiences I am talking about. As a young student, I did face a lot of bullying of various forms for unimaginable reasons. While one might imagine that it can’t be bad enough to scar someone for years on end, bullying is the worst thing that one can go through in the early years of their childhood. Personally, I have only begun to pick myself back up from the memory and forget what had once conspired.

Although I don’t know how well my story can connect with anybody else, I am quite sure that I have at least made a start in trying to express what I believe in and communicate an emotional state to the rest of the world.

Image source: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/images/2007/06/27/bullet_from_revolver_1.jpeg 

How would you like to tell a fail-proof joke?

Hey there!! Welcome back!!

This time around, I tried another activity from Dan Pink’s book under the chapter Play.

It was thought-provoking and fascinating.

It was amusing.

It was a bit odd.

I dissected a joke made by my favorite comedian Gabriel Iglesias:

“I’m not fat.. I’m FLUFFY!”

Image 1: Gabriel Iglesias

So, to start with, I went on youtube and picked his joke called “Crocodile Hunter“.

I listened to the joke a few times, and each time I fell off my chair laughing and tearing up out of shear insanity. After analyzing the reasons for why Gabriel is so incredibly funny, I realized that his humor arose from an amalgam of factors:

Gabriel is incredibly adept at modulating his vocal tone to emulate those of others. When he does this, it allows the listener to imagine the scene more clearly, thus enhancing the experience of the joke. Personally, I found myself virtually standing at the scene that was being described before me. Most jokes tend to fail because the humor can only be understood in context, thus can only work as an “inside joke”. The advantage of Gabriel’s ability to transport his audience  to the scene removes the “inside joke” barrier as virtually everyone feels part of and familiar with the context. In other words, his way of telling the joke makes every member of the audience feel included, thus it makes his jokes very funny rather than making himself fun. He makes sure that the audience understands the context and can grasp the situation as easily as possible.

Furthermore, Gabriel uses a host of details in his joke that enhance the incongruity of events – such as his mentioning of the Crocodile Hunter wearing shorts to Iraq and poking an Al-Qaeda member with a stick. In my personal opinion, there could not be anything more out of place yet more imaginable and possible in reality and that is why this part of the joke is a highlight for me. It is well known that humans are deeply humored when they notice that something is out of place in their situation and doesn’t relate to their inductive learning experience; Gabriel’s method exploits this most basic rule of telling jokes, he makes all the odd things stand out.

Moreover, the use of pauses that add to the thrill of listening to the joke keeps the audience hanging in anticipation, not knowing what to expect, but supposing Gabriel would say something that he eventually doesn’t. Thinking of this in terms of a good analogy, the pause is like the first high point on a 100 meter tall roller coaster just before the first and biggest drop. I find that the relief felt after a long period of feeling anxious and tense is exactly what this is. Instead of  surmounting the tension created in the audience by adding a serious twist to the plot, a more illogical and comical twist is added to stimulate amusement. Pauses are important – especially at the points in the joke where what happens next cannot be predicted.

This exercise was particularly eye-opening in terms of what I realized about being humorous. I used to just try to “be myself” and find that people only ever occasionally laughed their hearts out with me, however, I used to be incapable of understanding why. This exercise gave me greater and a more well-rounded insight into the big machine of generating humor. There are a few tricks to telling jokes and if I practice making use of those, I will become much better at telling jokes.

That’s all I’ve got to share today with you my friends 🙂

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it!

 

Sources:
Image 1: http://hotww.com/where-can-i-watch-gabriel-iglesiass-im-not-fat-im-fluffy-online-for-free/
Courtesy of Comedy Central

Trying A Little Something New.

Hi there!

How are you doing this time around? For the past few hours, I’ve been reading the chapter SYMPHONY in Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind! It’s about a multitude of different activities that are designed to encourage R-sided thinking – in other words, looking at the larger concept in things.

There were many activities in the chapter that I read (ranging all the way from trying to draw my face using 5 lines to listening to symphonies over and over again to looking for negative spaces in every image I look at). I chose the activity that required me to listen to a symphony or any particularly non-vocal and acoustic piece of music and analyze it. Dan Pink does say that experts recommend particular symphonies by Beethoven, Mozart and other classical composers. However, I picked a piece of music that was entirely different.

Just to give you a little background on the piece that I listened to: the piece is called Last Carnival – Norihiro Tsuru and was produced by Acoustic Cafe. This is a piece that I was introduced to through a friend and ever since I have been in love with it. However, I have never really tried to pay much attention to its details when listening. This time around, that was going to change. Interestingly, the emotions that I felt were much different than before.

Listen to it to see how you feel.

On another day, that would be sunny and cloudless and rather joyful, I would find the music of this piece inarguably humbling and relaxing, yet shallow. Today, the plot of the story ran down a different path altogether. I felt a lot more burdened, as if somebody else’s sadness and pain was pushing down upon me. In a sense, the feeling was bittersweet and grimly beautiful in a way that would be mildly provocative.

Drawing of what I imagined and felt

The piece starts quite forcefully and instantly lures me into the realm of a dark and cloudy scene where a standing orphan holds a rose to his mother’s grave in the middle of a deserted 19th century carnival. However, there is an ironic undertone of majesty and splendour running alongside a strange destitution (an effect of the dynamics of the piano and violin). I have never felt this way before – so tolerant and empathetic towards an image that is particularly disturbing to me. Being attentive to the piece in this manner, for the first time compelled me to even draw an image. (Excuse my horrible drawing skills but I tried).

I suppose, I’ve learnt that it is always possible to rediscover what is old. Maybe that is where the saying that

“old is gold”

comes from. Gold always returns with greater grandeur from the trial of fire. There is a lot in mind that I have not yet explored. Maybe I just need to find a ride to those places where I can see a bigger picture. Maybe this song is just another ride I have chanced my way to finding. Maybe this is how I can find encourage the symphony within me.

Rhetoric aside, what I’ve truly learnt from this activity is that sometimes it is important to take a step back and carefully look at the details of an entity in order to effectively form a bigger and better picture. In other words, this would be like taking a look at every single pixel in a digital image and thinking how I feel about it, and then summing every feeling up to say how the whole image makes me feel.

I suppose that this is what Dan Pink wanted me to achieve before I took on the endeavor, and I believe I have most certainly been successful. This activity has demonstrated to me how looking at the small details of something can help me grasp the greater concept. Practicing this activity should allow me to do this much more quickly in the future.

Be Adventurous. Step outside your box!

You can try to do this too:

1. Pick an acoustic instrumental song of your own.
2. Listen to it a few times.
3. Listen to it once more, however, this time pay more attention to the details of the song and see how they make you feel.
4. Imagine a story or image behind the song as if the song was actually just a soundtrack.
5. Draw the image or write the story you have imagined.
6. Listen to the song once more in context of the work you have just produced and reflect on the emotions you feel.

Try to do this often and with different songs. I’m sure it will change the way you think about the songs you listen to and definitely enrich your enjoyment.

Both images are courtesy of myself.