emotional processor

In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels

-Daniel Goleman

Were you ever scared by someone and it took sometime for you to realize what just happened ? Have you ever wondered why babies cry when someone else tries to hold them other than their mother ? why are we scared about certain places or why we enjoy eating at certain place or with certain people? so many questions and answer lies in almond shaped part of your brain – Amygdala

Its quite a curious name and I came across this in a book called Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Why are we talking about this and why this has so much importance in our life ? Emotional responses like smile, fear, crying, being sad etc are given out by Amygdala based on external stimuli ( events ). More than 50% of our communications are non-verbal. Emotions are powerful communicator of our thoughts and in turn affect our actions and how we feel post-actions. So lets take an example that you like certain place and it calms you down but WHY ?  This happens as our eyes captures this detail and sends to part of our brain called “Thalamus” which sends this information to appropriate sensory cortex ( like visual cortex, auditory cortex etc) which evaluates and assigns a meaning to it and if this meaning tends to be threatening  then it sends this information to Amygdala which then sends appropriate emotional responses ( in our case it will be emotionally calm response ).

But recent studies have shown that there is shortcut route which explains why we are scared and then realize what just happened.There is this Direct pathway to Amygdala from thalamus by passing Cortex ( which assigns meanings to events ). This is shorter and hence faster and more dangerous as we are bypassing meaning assigner. This makes us to lose the ability to evaluate the situation and react accordingly thus explaining why sometimes we scold and let out words that hurt others which we later repent or take decisions in an emotional burst and wonder why we did that. This is all just happens in fraction of seconds and before we could realize we could do something and it could be fatal.

Our Mind is an adaptive system which learns continuously based on several factors ( external responses, surroundings etc ). Consider it like a feedback system which takes feedback and learns and stores. It later uses these stored stimuli with current environment and provides appropriate emotional responses. Understanding why we react to something in certain way helps us to learn and understand others and connect with people emotionally. Controlling your emotions helps us to approach every event in a more mature way and lends us life in a better perspective.

“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

-HORACE WALPOLE

Emotional self-awareness is a next step to our evolution of seeing and handling events in better perspective. Lets go for it !!

Lucia, the movie – Lucid Dreaming

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

– Alfred Hitchcock

Its another weekend afternoon, chose to play a kannada language movie  which (my first ever ) my friend suggested and it turned out to be a surprise thriller and I got really excited about after the watching it. There is so much in that I am right now wondering where to start writing about it.  Movie Lucia takes you for a mind engaging thriller that you don’t  know who shares the credit, is it either hero or the director. I am not writing a review here and there will be no spoiler alerts here. I went with no assumption and I got into this movie which was clever in its screenplay ( when I ask question how? the next scene explains it for the viewers in subtle way ) and propaganist enacts it to the level where you don’t see him as a hero but just as a character that helps in narration of the story.

I stop here with me raving about this movie any further and talk about the theme of this movie which is “Lucid Dreaming”. Lucid Dreaming is state of mind where you are aware that you are dreaming. It is a state of mind between being awake and sleeping. Lucid dreaming is not new concept, it was existing in Hinduism and Buddhism traditions. “Yoga Nidra” is a same where people historically practiced as a relaxing techniques and it is appearing in Hindu epic , Mahabharata.

OK, I stop here without more adieu for the theme which is unique in current Indian movies being made. There is lot of innovations here and there people try and get success and this kannada movie gets into that band of experimental movie that reached out to mainstream audience and captured their imagination. When talking about these kind of movies being made, I read about the way this movie was produced another new concept  that I heard on this movie.

“Crowd funding” is the way how this movie was produced. Director went to social media – Facebook to say that there is no respect for the writers and producers are not ready to take this movie. People went on funding for this movie and money came pouring in for the movie.

I think as a filmmaker my first contribution would just be to make a good movie that people would love to see and leave the theatre charged, with a sense of excitement. – Micheal Moore.

Love of a filmmaker to make movies that really makes sense and train audience to get to next level of appreciation is something world of film making expects and as a general audience I would really want you all watch this movie and say what you think.

Multitasking is a myth

“There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

– Lord Chesterfield , on his letter to his son (1740)

Contrary to popular belief, our brains cannot process more than one thing at a time. What we commonly think of is multitasking is nothing more than switching quickly between multiple tasks. The problem is that the switch time requires for us to slow down, shift gears, and speed back up again. As a result, when we multitask, we tend to get things done much more slowly than

1.  if we stick to one task at a time; 30-50% more slowly according to some research. (Source: American Psychological Association)