Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Ducklas, and
Speaker 1: this week we're talking about memory editing. And if this
Speaker 1: were your average science journalism story, you would inevitably start
Speaker 1: with a reference to Eternal Sunshine of the Spot Spot
Speaker 1: was Mine. You know, have you have you noticed this trend?
Speaker 1: Like any story that relates at all to changing memories
Speaker 1: or racing memories, they will name drop that film in
Speaker 1: the lead. Well, because it was such an intriguing idea
Speaker 1: that you could, uh you could alter or completely remove
Speaker 1: a memory that had been dogging you your entire life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. But I you know, I feel like there
Speaker 1: have been enough stories about like changing memories and and
Speaker 1: and and what memories actually are, that we don't need
Speaker 1: that film as the reference point anymore for an actual
Speaker 1: story about the science of memory and the science of
Speaker 1: altering memory. I always feel like a little bit insulted.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like someone's like, hey, so if you've
Speaker 1: seen let me tell you about space. You've seen Star Wars, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to start with Star wars. We live
Speaker 1: in a the world. We're surrounded by space, alright, Alright,
Speaker 1: so I think, and maybe I'm projecting my own feelings
Speaker 1: on here, is that the problem is that the spotless
Speaker 1: mind idea is it's erroneous. And it takes this idea
Speaker 1: that you could like return your mind to some pristine
Speaker 1: platonic state, right where everything is completely new and fresh.
Speaker 1: But that is not the case. Our minds are the
Speaker 1: cages that we have. But it turns out that we
Speaker 1: can actually tame them to a certain degree. We can't erase,
Speaker 1: we can't make them spotless, but we can make them
Speaker 1: a little bit more manageable. The problem is just just
Speaker 1: this inherent misunderstanding of what memory is in the first place.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at this survey that was published
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven by PLS so one found that
Speaker 1: almost two thirds of Americans believe that memory works like
Speaker 1: a video camera and that it's like we're recording events
Speaker 1: so we can review them later. Yeah, it's not so
Speaker 1: at all. And we've we've discussed the science of memory
Speaker 1: um a good bit in previous episodes. Off to make
Speaker 1: sure I throw some of those back up on the
Speaker 1: website and on the social media pages around the time
Speaker 1: this episode publishes. But indeed, we've talked before about the
Speaker 1: seven Sins of memory. Uh. These of course were brought
Speaker 1: to mind by Daniel Shackter, the former chair of Harvard
Speaker 1: University Psychology Psychology Department and author of the book The
Speaker 1: Seven Sins of Memories Cohen How the Mind forgets and remembers,
Speaker 1: and he mentions, uh, these seven just seven ways that
Speaker 1: all our memories are uh untrustworthy at the very least.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's transience, So that's the weakening or loss
Speaker 1: of memory over time. What you have for lunch eight
Speaker 1: years ago today, the side of sweet potatoes there human
Speaker 1: sprinkling on top. Okay, well that was a really good
Speaker 1: sandwich apparently, so that was stuck with you. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, these memories just fade over time. It's
Speaker 1: just how it works. And then there's absent mindedness. Uh
Speaker 1: so this involves attention in memory. We're just not paying
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on around it, so we're not
Speaker 1: getting all the data. There's blocking, that's the failed attempt
Speaker 1: to recall tidbits of memory a face, a name, Etceterates
Speaker 1: on the tip of my tongue. But I can't remember
Speaker 1: what it is. Uh. There's misattribution. This is when we
Speaker 1: recall an authentic memory, but then aspects of it are misattributed.
Speaker 1: And this includes scenarios such as incorrect incorrect time or
Speaker 1: place identity, misattribution, or confusion over the originator of an idea.
Speaker 1: We've all had those conversations where you're telling a story
Speaker 1: about something that you think happened to you and it
Speaker 1: turns out it's happening to the person you you're you're
Speaker 1: speaking to, or you have some very pivotal detail of
Speaker 1: the story completely backwards, like oh, that trip that wasn't
Speaker 1: a trip I took with this person, was a trip
Speaker 1: I took with this person. It wasn't this past girlfriend,
Speaker 1: it was this past girlfriend, or you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: scenario might be. And then there's suggestibility. Our minds are
Speaker 1: and our memories entirely susceptible yes to to suggestions. So
Speaker 1: you were to say it enough times, I might either
Speaker 1: actually get a astronomy sandwich for lunch or falsely remember
Speaker 1: that I had one. There's bias, uh, and that you
Speaker 1: see this all the time in people's memories of crimes.
Speaker 1: If they have a particular bias in mind regarding uh uh, say,
Speaker 1: the racial profiling of suspects, then that's going to have
Speaker 1: an influence on how they remember the crime that occurred.
Speaker 1: And then there's persistence, and that's the unwanted recall of
Speaker 1: information that's disturbing and that actually ties in a lot
Speaker 1: with what we're gonna talk about in this episode. So
Speaker 1: there are all these ways that our memory is pretty
Speaker 1: much jack from the get go. And to your your point,
Speaker 1: so many people think it's just all a bunch of
Speaker 1: video information and stored in her head, which which couldn't
Speaker 1: be further from the truth. Yeah, there's that great cognitive
Speaker 1: psychology experiment that was done by Daniel Simon's and Christopher
Speaker 1: Chebery's that showed how selective attention works. You probably heard
Speaker 1: about this. There's a video of people with white shirt
Speaker 1: song and a video of people with black shirt song
Speaker 1: and they were playing I think basketball or something like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched it, but I really wasn't paying that much attention. Okay,
Speaker 1: well then you if you were, if you were doing
Speaker 1: it as as they instructed, you were probably looking at
Speaker 1: the white shirted team, right. You were told to really
Speaker 1: figure out how many passes were made between the members
Speaker 1: of this white shirted team and you probably, as participants did,
Speaker 1: did not notice the gorilla walking through the clutch of
Speaker 1: white shirted and black short players. So this is a
Speaker 1: good example of attention and selective attention and memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a number of these type of pranks that
Speaker 1: you see carried out and that you can find them
Speaker 1: on YouTube once where they'll take say an individual will
Speaker 1: be sort of in the background for a person and
Speaker 1: then they'll like switch out the person playing that part
Speaker 1: to see if they notice. And it's it's phenomenal how
Speaker 1: how often people do not notice. Um. There's a British
Speaker 1: television series called The Black Mirror, which we've mentioned before,
Speaker 1: and there's an episode titled The Entire History of You,
Speaker 1: and in this near future sci fi vision of reality,
Speaker 1: most people have this little electronic device called a grain
Speaker 1: implanted uh in their brain and it basically collects constant
Speaker 1: video of their life and then you can go back
Speaker 1: and replay the video, which of course ends up having
Speaker 1: disastrous um consequences for the characters in this particular episode.
Speaker 1: But it's it's very interesting that model because they they
Speaker 1: in this episode they create a sci fi technological version
Speaker 1: of memory that is in keeping with the with the
Speaker 1: way most people think memory is right, and in fact
Speaker 1: it's not. As you said, there are seven sins of memory.
Speaker 1: And really, if you think about it, we are the
Speaker 1: magicians of memory because we have misdirection and misp misperception,
Speaker 1: and then we try to piece together this pattern that
Speaker 1: makes sense to us, and boom, you have this manufactured
Speaker 1: reality that comes out on a plate for you. Um.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is that we continue to take
Speaker 1: this memory out and look at it all the time.
Speaker 1: In fact, every time you take out a memory, you
Speaker 1: change it a bit. Yes, yeah, I've we mentioned before
Speaker 1: that don't think of your memory as a little stone
Speaker 1: sculpture that you keep in a drawer. It's a sculpture
Speaker 1: made out of clay. Every time you take it out,
Speaker 1: you're jabbing it, you're changing it. You're bringing new information,
Speaker 1: new interpretation into that memory. And then you put it back.
Speaker 1: And so so every time you draw it out, you're
Speaker 1: you're changing, you're getting it a little bit further removed
Speaker 1: from the actual reality. And here's the thing. These memories
Speaker 1: are the foundation of the story of who you are, right,
Speaker 1: and so this is where emotional health and something called
Speaker 1: story editing comes in because there's this idea that you
Speaker 1: can change your memory and maybe even alter your future.
Speaker 1: And we'll get more into that, but before we do,
Speaker 1: I want to discuss a little bit about why we
Speaker 1: take these memories out in the first place and sort
Speaker 1: of obsess over them. And in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to Papa Freud. Yeah, and it's great because,
Speaker 1: in classic Freud's style, he goes right to your childhood, right,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. In fact, um, in beyond the pleasure principle,
Speaker 1: Freud actually documents his grandson's particular habit of taking his
Speaker 1: toys and hiding them or throwing them away. And when
Speaker 1: he does that, um, his grandson says forth, meaning gone.
Speaker 1: And then he watches his grandson um taking them back
Speaker 1: and saying, dah, they're here. So, in this one particular
Speaker 1: instance and beyond the pleasure principle, his grandson has like
Speaker 1: I think, it's just like a real with a string
Speaker 1: tied to it, and he's in his crib and over
Speaker 1: and over again he does the dog game. He throws
Speaker 1: that spool away and then he reels it back in.
Speaker 1: And so what Freud says is that the kid is
Speaker 1: actually um marking a cultural achievement here because the kid
Speaker 1: is equating this and just stay with me on this,
Speaker 1: uh that this fort doab has gone and back with
Speaker 1: his mom and his mom leaving him but coming back
Speaker 1: and saying that he's getting far more pleasure from the
Speaker 1: daw part the coming back part, and so he's mastering
Speaker 1: control over his emotions at his mother sometimes disappearing or
Speaker 1: having to leave the room. And this idea that that
Speaker 1: you know, your your main caregiver might not come back
Speaker 1: or come back, that's that's pretty fascinating uh interpretation, and
Speaker 1: especially since the father of a nearly two year old
Speaker 1: who's really into that the whole casting of objects and
Speaker 1: then also playing hide and go seek with like a
Speaker 1: stuffed cat and that we have in the house. It
Speaker 1: really loves to be who go, Where's where's fat cat?
Speaker 1: Where's fat cat go? Oh? Well, fat cats under the
Speaker 1: slide and then it's you know, tremendously um entertaining to
Speaker 1: him defined the cat that was barely hidden. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is a huge lesson for humans that life is ephemeral.
Speaker 1: Things come, things go, people come, and people go, And
Speaker 1: this really ties into the idea of repetition compulsion and mastery,
Speaker 1: and maybe, just maybe that's why we continue to take out,
Speaker 1: in particular traumatic memories bother some memories, and we look
Speaker 1: at them and examine them over and over again, each
Speaker 1: time hoping to get a better understanding. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that, especially according to Freud, those memories are unconscious.
Speaker 1: They are buried and they are hidden, and so you
Speaker 1: just kind of get these little crumbs of your unconscious.
Speaker 1: But then you have someone by the name of Timothy D. Wilson,
Speaker 1: this is a University of Virginia psychologists, who says this
Speaker 1: unconscious or unconscious as he calls it, is off limits
Speaker 1: to us. So it's really only through conscious thoughts that
Speaker 1: we can change the mechanisms of the unconscious world for us. Mm.
Speaker 1: So he has this idea of, for instance, if you
Speaker 1: establish regular acts of kindness, that you could tease out
Speaker 1: progressive changes in behavior as determined by your unconscious. So
Speaker 1: now we're talking about changing your behavior through your story
Speaker 1: of yourself. Yes, yes, yeah, And this is what this
Speaker 1: is where everything really gets interesting here, because essentially we
Speaker 1: are getting into that eternal sunshine of the spotless mind territory.
Speaker 1: But instead of changing your memories through the use of
Speaker 1: lasers or or a little bit of a little tiny
Speaker 1: electronic device that goes in your brain as in Black Mirror.
Speaker 1: It's about thinking about it is that I'm using your
Speaker 1: actual mental architecture as it exists, your actual mental machinery, uh,
Speaker 1: that you have in your head, and using it to
Speaker 1: alter memory, using the weakness of memory as a strength.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and it's really effective, as we will discuss UM.
Speaker 1: Wilson in his two thousand eleven book Redirect, The Surprising
Speaker 1: New Science of Psychological Change, looks at why programs like
Speaker 1: Scared Straight, you know, the taking the at risk youth
Speaker 1: to prisons and trying to scare them straight, why those
Speaker 1: sort of programs fail, and why story editing just having
Speaker 1: those kids change their story, their narrative maybe a far
Speaker 1: more effective strategy. Yeah. Yeah, I've been reading a little
Speaker 1: bit about this, uh to it in regards to children,
Speaker 1: like the dangers of labeling um, particularly reading an article
Speaker 1: on biting and about how just the one thing they
Speaker 1: always advises and dealing with biting, which which is a
Speaker 1: pretty common occurrence with with children, especially as their acquiring
Speaker 1: language and learning how to better express themselves, uh than
Speaker 1: by simply you know, fighting into something is that. But
Speaker 1: there's there's always this danger of referring to them as
Speaker 1: a bitter, because then that comes their story and they
Speaker 1: can interpret interpret that, even at a very young age,
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, I'm a buyer, So I bite
Speaker 1: in the same way that one might think, oh, well
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm destined to wind up in a
Speaker 1: in a prison, so I guess I will. This is
Speaker 1: the this is what I am. I guess that's what
Speaker 1: I'm going to be. Well, you know that's interesting because
Speaker 1: this is that is exactly at This is this idea
Speaker 1: that you you put this narrative in place and then
Speaker 1: you follow it to the letter and you become it.
Speaker 1: And Wilson first discovered this power of story editing in
Speaker 1: the eighties when he found that struggling students had fallen
Speaker 1: for the same old narrative, I'm bad at school, which
Speaker 1: was driving this sort of self defeating cycle. And he
Speaker 1: gave forties students, these students who were not doing well
Speaker 1: in school a new narrative, which was everyone fails at first. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that recast the whole idea, Wait, what I may
Speaker 1: not be bad at school? Everyone fails at first. This
Speaker 1: is a thing. So suddenly these students are being introduced
Speaker 1: to this new idea. And he had the students read
Speaker 1: accounts from other students had who had struggled with grades
Speaker 1: and then improved. There's also videotape footage of other students
Speaker 1: who relay their tales of eventual academic success. And the
Speaker 1: results were pretty astounding. The students who received the information,
Speaker 1: compared to those who did not A were significantly less
Speaker 1: apt to leave college by the end of their sophomore year.
Speaker 1: Be they had a significantly greater increase in grade point
Speaker 1: average even one year after the study. And see they
Speaker 1: performed significantly better on sample items from the g r
Speaker 1: E or the Graduate Record Exam. And this is all
Speaker 1: from a thirty minute session, one thirty minute session which
Speaker 1: had staying power even one year after. And this just
Speaker 1: shows you how important priming is really. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this University Michigan study, and this study they
Speaker 1: had students with the same abilities and perform its splinter
Speaker 1: into two groups. The first was told that men performed
Speaker 1: better than women on math tests. The second was told
Speaker 1: that no matter what they might have heard, there was
Speaker 1: no difference and abilities among the two genders than they
Speaker 1: were given the math test, and in the first group,
Speaker 1: men outscored women by twenty points. In the second group,
Speaker 1: the one that was told no matter what they had heard,
Speaker 1: that the abilities are the same, they were outscored only
Speaker 1: by two points. I mean, that's a huge difference. And
Speaker 1: that's just from that one priming example and indeed stressing
Speaker 1: the point of thinking for yourself and questioning authority, not
Speaker 1: questioning authority in the sense that I'm going to, you know,
Speaker 1: break a law, just because if they were questioning the
Speaker 1: established script that is handed down to us about who
Speaker 1: you are, what you are, what you're capable of achieving.
Speaker 1: And uh, and yeah, there's just something almost endlessly powerful
Speaker 1: about being able to to sort of break free of
Speaker 1: those chains. Yeah. I mean if you think about it,
Speaker 1: like in in Um some of your most um, how
Speaker 1: shows it the delicate situations in life where you were
Speaker 1: really struggling with someone or something, if someone came and
Speaker 1: gave you as script or just even this this idea,
Speaker 1: this other narrative of hey, another perception, how could that
Speaker 1: have changed your life? That's how powerful this is. Now
Speaker 1: another area that this becomes important again you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: how arguably a lot of the stuff is going on
Speaker 1: into some subconscious level. There's there's say a bad memory,
Speaker 1: scarring memory, traumatic memory, even that is keeps popping up
Speaker 1: again and again, this persistent memory, and it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a Rubic's cube, but not a Rubics cube
Speaker 1: that you ever sit down and say, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sit down and solve this thing. But it's one
Speaker 1: that's just always sitting on your desk or is in
Speaker 1: the drawer that you're always opening, and it's there. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's seemingly unsolvable and uh, and you may tinker
Speaker 1: with it for a minute and then put it back.
Speaker 1: You're right, So your mind is tinkering with it mostly
Speaker 1: the unconscious level, but every once in a while it surfaces.
Speaker 1: Can you become aware of this thing that's bothering you?
Speaker 1: So it just this this persistent um a bit of
Speaker 1: annoyance or or even just nagging depression. Anytime when we
Speaker 1: we cover a topic like this, always think back to
Speaker 1: Alan Robe grulay novel Jealousy, and it's a it's an
Speaker 1: experimental novel. Um. I don't recommend picking up and reading
Speaker 1: it unless you know what you're getting into. Just style
Speaker 1: wise because it's a it's a little unorthodox. But the
Speaker 1: entire novel is this this man who owns a banana plantation,
Speaker 1: and he's looking through Venetian blinds observing his wife and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if she's having an affair with
Speaker 1: the guy who runs the neighboring banana plantation. And and
Speaker 1: so it's just him poring over what he knows and
Speaker 1: how little he knows, over and over again, uh, and
Speaker 1: occasionally observing a smeared centipede on the wall and trying
Speaker 1: to decide what he should do. And the in spoiler,
Speaker 1: the entire novel passes and he doesn't decide what he's
Speaker 1: gonna do. He's just this just this endless nagging frustration
Speaker 1: over how little he knows and now and and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what happens in these cases. We have limited
Speaker 1: amount of information. It's kind of like the cock Snowflake
Speaker 1: that we talked about Snowflake episode. There's only so much
Speaker 1: information you may know about a given situation, and unless
Speaker 1: you actually were to go outside of that bubble of knowledge, um,
Speaker 1: you're never going to solve it. So so again, these
Speaker 1: these problems, these memories, these uh, they just exist there
Speaker 1: in the in the peripheries, and and it's only through
Speaker 1: actually tackling them that we can alter them into a
Speaker 1: shape that fits in and kind of vanishes into the background. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how you can actually get
Speaker 1: outside of that bubble of knowledge, change your narrative, and
Speaker 1: perhaps change your life. All Right, we're back, Julie. Have
Speaker 1: you read The Secret, The Secret, The Secret, the one
Speaker 1: with the little like the red wax seal on the cover. Uh? No,
Speaker 1: is that is that a new novel? That's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the self help thing? Right? Oh? Is this the thing
Speaker 1: about like if you put a positive vibe out in
Speaker 1: the world, someone will give you a million dollars? I
Speaker 1: think so. I have not read it myself, so I'm
Speaker 1: not privy to the actual secret, but I understand that
Speaker 1: that's basically the secret that if you put out that
Speaker 1: positive intergy. I think it is. But it kind of
Speaker 1: gets into the same area that you see with a
Speaker 1: lot of self help books, and that's the idea that
Speaker 1: if you if you believe in something, you can make
Speaker 1: it real, that you can you can change yourself or
Speaker 1: even change reality through the strong sense of belief and
Speaker 1: positive vibes and uh, you know, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: there's often a lot of kind of New age hokery
Speaker 1: going on in that. But as we're going to discuss here,
Speaker 1: there's also this core of reality as it comes to
Speaker 1: our ability to manipulate memories. And in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily believing in your narrative, it's understanding your narrative.
Speaker 1: And again, this is why that memory keeps knocking around
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, look at me, I'm flagged because I'm important.
Speaker 1: Don't quite understand what's going on here. This is troublesome
Speaker 1: for me. Right, So there's this other approach to story editing,
Speaker 1: and it is to write and then rewrite your narrative.
Speaker 1: James Penna Baker of the University of Texas has pioneered
Speaker 1: a really expressive writing technique that helps people recover from
Speaker 1: past traumas by helping them reframe and reinterpret those events.
Speaker 1: And there's a link that if you just search for
Speaker 1: writing and help some practical advice, you will see this
Speaker 1: prompt for writing in the idea is that for four
Speaker 1: days in a row, fifteen minutes each you take a
Speaker 1: topic that you that's been bothering you, um, that you
Speaker 1: really want to explore more about, and you just write
Speaker 1: about it, and you write really as honestly and as
Speaker 1: fully as you can. Yeah, and now what would you
Speaker 1: write about? Some of the examples they give would be
Speaker 1: to write about something that you're thinking or worrying about
Speaker 1: too much. So maybe you're worrying about, you know, taxes
Speaker 1: coming up and to you know, settle down and figure
Speaker 1: those out. Or uh, you're something that you're dreaming about,
Speaker 1: Say you wanted to actually do something about that nagging
Speaker 1: dream where you forgot that you signed up for a
Speaker 1: class in school until right at the end at finals,
Speaker 1: you know, or or the the you know, the wearing
Speaker 1: underwear or nothing to your math class kind of dream.
Speaker 1: Other possibilities to write about include something you feel is
Speaker 1: affecting your life in an unhealthy way, be it something
Speaker 1: you know, like a personal habit, or something outside yourself,
Speaker 1: or something that you have been avoiding for days, weeks,
Speaker 1: or years. Tackling at fifteen minutes a day for four
Speaker 1: days in writing form. Okay, so it's interesting because what
Speaker 1: happens is that the first time you write, you will
Speaker 1: might write the thing that's bothering you, and you might
Speaker 1: touch on the thing that is actually the thing that's
Speaker 1: bothering you, because most often when you think that there's
Speaker 1: a topic that that's really the problem, there's an underlying issue,
Speaker 1: and so returning to that issue four days in a
Speaker 1: row it gives you more insight. You're peeling away the
Speaker 1: layers of the onion of of that actual problem, and
Speaker 1: in the process you're creating some sort of understanding for yourself.
Speaker 1: You are reframing that narrative so that it makes sense.
Speaker 1: If something bad happened to you in your past and
Speaker 1: it keeps coming up again and again, writing about it
Speaker 1: really forces you to reflect on it and not say, oh,
Speaker 1: this was justified, it should have happened. That's not what
Speaker 1: we're saying here. It just gives you more of an
Speaker 1: understanding of why it happened, and hopefully people suffer less
Speaker 1: as a result. That's the idea. Yeah, it's um. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because anyone who's ever engaged in your writing, you
Speaker 1: see versions of this, say, in trying to create poetry,
Speaker 1: like any kind of poetry that has like a personal um,
Speaker 1: a bit of energy to it, And I feel like
Speaker 1: most poetry of any work does. But one of my
Speaker 1: poetry professors in college I remember them saying, and this
Speaker 1: wasn't like a across the board rule, but they tended
Speaker 1: to imply that you're generally better off removing the first
Speaker 1: four lines or so of your poem, because the first
Speaker 1: four lines are your poem. Are you trying to write
Speaker 1: what you think you're going to write about, and then
Speaker 1: after you get past those first four lines, then you
Speaker 1: start writing about what's really going on. So so the
Speaker 1: first four lines are in this case are the thing
Speaker 1: that you think you're afraid of, and then you begin
Speaker 1: to get after that into what you're actually afraid of.
Speaker 1: I think about it is the quick and dirty way
Speaker 1: to psychoanalysis. Yeah, yeah, because and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: share with you what I wrote about, because that would
Speaker 1: be like revealing a dream and everybody would get bored.
Speaker 1: But I can tell you that when I did this,
Speaker 1: you know, it was about this one thing that I
Speaker 1: thought it was about, but really it was about social rejection.
Speaker 1: And then it became like, well, what are my relationships
Speaker 1: like in my life? How's how has this colored this?
Speaker 1: And when did this happen? And when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: was it like this, And we've discussed about the teenage brain,
Speaker 1: about how social rejection is processes actual physical pain, and
Speaker 1: maybe these things stay with you and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. And those four days I got a lot
Speaker 1: out of this one tiny little thing that I thought
Speaker 1: I was bothered by, but I couldn't figure out why
Speaker 1: I kept dreaming about this thing. And that is really
Speaker 1: a very effective strategy at trying to get at your
Speaker 1: memory and trying to re contextualized your your narrative in
Speaker 1: your life and ultimately perhaps solve this Rubik's cube or
Speaker 1: create a solved Rubik's cube out of these memories and
Speaker 1: then you can put it on the shelf and it's
Speaker 1: not gonna bother you anymore. Uh. When we were prepping
Speaker 1: for this one, we brought up the whole situation of
Speaker 1: why does why does it bother us so much when
Speaker 1: we overhear part of a conversation. We've talked about this before. Uh.
Speaker 1: The reason supposedly is that you're not getting all the
Speaker 1: information about the scenario, and your mind desperately wants to
Speaker 1: make sense of this nugget of weirdness that you just
Speaker 1: listen in on. And that's what some of these memories
Speaker 1: are like that were our mind wants to understand why
Speaker 1: did this happen to me? Why? Why am I afraid
Speaker 1: of this? You know, these questions linger with these troubling,
Speaker 1: persistent memories. Our brains want to figure out the puzzle.
Speaker 1: They want the extra information to make it, make it lock,
Speaker 1: to make the Rubik's Cuba clear out. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And what these experiments are about are about taking the
Speaker 1: time to fill them out and to and to add
Speaker 1: the necessary information to make them whold. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: why these why these writing pumps are are so effective. Now,
Speaker 1: Wilson says, a third approach is the do good, be
Speaker 1: good method. And it's the principle that our attitudes and
Speaker 1: our beliefs follow from our behaviors rather than precede them.
Speaker 1: So if you want to change your narrative, then you
Speaker 1: should change some of the things that you do so
Speaker 1: that it sort of informs your unconscious Like I'm a
Speaker 1: good person and I volunteer you here, and I'm doing this,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm trying to cultivate the following traits
Speaker 1: in my life and everything else should follow well. And
Speaker 1: then I mean also that, in my opinion, often has
Speaker 1: the added benefit if you are if your your problem
Speaker 1: is that you're too much inside your own mental space,
Speaker 1: if you start concerning yourself with other people, then you're
Speaker 1: getting out of that that that self inflicted cage of
Speaker 1: self a bit so, and it is the cage of
Speaker 1: self really really, uh So why does this work? There?
Speaker 1: You know, there's no definitive like it's it's doing this,
Speaker 1: it's engaging the following part of your brain. Probably this
Speaker 1: is the best guess is that it works because again,
Speaker 1: you are completing that picture for yourself. So your brain,
Speaker 1: if you if it doesn't have to red flag and
Speaker 1: memory because it understands it in the context that you've
Speaker 1: put it into the narrative and it's happy with that.
Speaker 1: It can move along and go to the next thing
Speaker 1: that you flagged in your brain. So that's the idea
Speaker 1: of why it works. Yeah, I guess you just need
Speaker 1: to make sure you form the correct, a helpful, finished
Speaker 1: version of that memory. So like if I was concerned
Speaker 1: about the guy about a hot dog from yesterday being grumpy,
Speaker 1: like I would want to frame that in the forum
Speaker 1: of well he was he was probably having a bad
Speaker 1: day and just took that out on me, rather than
Speaker 1: I'm a bad person, and therefore hot dog vendors are
Speaker 1: mean to me. They are generally like they I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know, but they have a little slip
Speaker 1: that they circulate among them. That says Robert Lamb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. There's a great article called Revising Your Story
Speaker 1: by Kirsten Weir and uh. She says, basically, if you
Speaker 1: you doubt the story um powers here in these story prompts,
Speaker 1: you should look at this um example by researcher Daphne
Speaker 1: being Nicktoll at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She
Speaker 1: works with parents who are at risk for child abuse,
Speaker 1: and she added some story prompting to home visits of
Speaker 1: parents with newborns, and the prompt involved getting parents to
Speaker 1: reinterpret why their babies were cranky or difficult. So parents,
Speaker 1: for instance, might blame their babies babies and say, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just trying to provoke me. So the home visitor
Speaker 1: would ask parents if they could think of any other reasons,
Speaker 1: prompting them to attribute their baby's behavior to situational factors
Speaker 1: were talking about like maybe you didn't burp him enough,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, giving them a different narrative
Speaker 1: and among both a control group and those who participated
Speaker 1: in this program about of the parents physically abused their children. Now,
Speaker 1: in the group that got the story prompt giving them
Speaker 1: these these other versions of why their babies might be
Speaker 1: acting the way they were, their percentage dropped to four.
Speaker 1: That's again how powerful it is to replace one narrative
Speaker 1: with another. Very cool, Very cool. Now this flows in
Speaker 1: nicely to this idea that Carol Dweck presents, this idea
Speaker 1: of fixed versus growth mindset. You want to lay that
Speaker 1: out for everyone here. Yeah, we've talked about Carol Dweck before. UM.
Speaker 1: She she's a psychologist who has talked about the praise
Speaker 1: paradox um. You know this idea that empty praise can
Speaker 1: give your child this for self esteem problem. You think
Speaker 1: the opposite. You think you're saying, hey, you're doing great,
Speaker 1: that your kid's gonna have tons of self esteem, But
Speaker 1: really empty praise isn't constructive and anyway, it builds up
Speaker 1: this whole idea that your kids might be doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: Carol Dwet kind of goes a little bit further into
Speaker 1: this idea of self esteem and um success and she
Speaker 1: talked about how some people have a fixed mindset. They
Speaker 1: believe their intelligence and traits are set in stone, and
Speaker 1: this actually gets in the way of how they see
Speaker 1: the world and they move through it. And she said
Speaker 1: that these people they typically try to to look smart
Speaker 1: um and not make any mistakes, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they don't take any risks. And now, she says, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you have something called a growth mindset,
Speaker 1: and this means that you're willing to change your narrative
Speaker 1: and cultivate new ideas and talent through effort and instruction.
Speaker 1: So in this way, you see obviously there's a flexibility.
Speaker 1: There's this willingness to say I don't have all of
Speaker 1: the information and I'm going to change my story. And
Speaker 1: she says this allows people to be both more resilient
Speaker 1: and vulnerable at the same time, and able to take
Speaker 1: on more challenges and just kind of, like I said,
Speaker 1: change that narrative of what you your life to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's it's a really interesting way
Speaker 1: to look at to two types of people. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea that am I looking at myself as I
Speaker 1: am now, as the finished product, you know, or or
Speaker 1: is it an ongoing journey? And that's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that kind of sounds a little new a
Speaker 1: g and hippy dippy, but but really, I mean, life
Speaker 1: is a journey. We continue to change. We're always changing physically, emotionally.
Speaker 1: The person we are now is not the same person
Speaker 1: we were a month ago, a year ago. And and
Speaker 1: so if you if you try and approach your life
Speaker 1: as a fixed object, yeah, you're just going to run
Speaker 1: into increasing um frustration because you're gonna come up against challenges.
Speaker 1: And if you if you think that this is what
Speaker 1: I am and this is all I am, then a
Speaker 1: challenge is an affront to your strength. But if you
Speaker 1: see yourself as changing, as you see yourself as perpetually evolving,
Speaker 1: then a challenge is just another opportunity to grow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She says that some people have fixed mindsets for for
Speaker 1: some of the things in their life, and then growth
Speaker 1: mindsets for for other things. Yeah. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: one of those self checks of well, you know, my
Speaker 1: flexible in this one area of my life and inflexible
Speaker 1: in the other. But the main thing, she says is
Speaker 1: that things do not come naturally, and that thinking that
Speaker 1: they do is a male adaptive mindset of mal adaptive
Speaker 1: mindset and that we we are looking at it entirely wrong.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but think of the stories that
Speaker 1: we consume, that we feed feed on, you know, to
Speaker 1: to inform who we are and how we fit into
Speaker 1: the world, because there are certainly we can think of
Speaker 1: any number of movies, TV shows, stories, myths in which
Speaker 1: there's an individual with a natural talent, and then how
Speaker 1: healthy is that too? To absorb that story and then
Speaker 1: compare it to our own. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the matrix, the one. Are you the one? Were
Speaker 1: you born? The one? But then that idea is very
Speaker 1: old and has been perpetuated for for for thousands the
Speaker 1: thousands of years, and I think it's ultimately why we
Speaker 1: we want a film where where we want a story
Speaker 1: where a hero has to work for it, uh, where
Speaker 1: a hero has to has to actually go through a
Speaker 1: training montage in order to defeat the villain, because that's
Speaker 1: more in keeping with life. You're gonna have to work
Speaker 1: for the things that you achieve well and not to
Speaker 1: keep going back to Star Wars and I feel like
Speaker 1: that's been the theme today. But Luke Skywalker, right, didn't
Speaker 1: just fall on the womb, you know, with the force.
Speaker 1: He had to work at it, and Yoda made him
Speaker 1: look a fool over there in Dagoba. Yeah, he lost
Speaker 1: a hand, he did made him a lot of the
Speaker 1: characters in his hands really dark. Did they lost hands?
Speaker 1: If you go through again my daughter's encyclopedia, you will see,
Speaker 1: you know, so and so had their hand repaired. But well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's Luke, there's Vader. Yeah, um, some dude in the
Speaker 1: bar and the first one Lungin. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think you just got run through that one. I'll
Speaker 1: ask my daughter, Okay, get home, all right, Well there
Speaker 1: you go. Story editing. I think this is a great
Speaker 1: episode because it really lays out a very achievable way
Speaker 1: to uh to to do something that might otherwise seem
Speaker 1: like something out of science fiction, a way to change
Speaker 1: our memories, to change the way that we interpret the past.
Speaker 1: Um and uh and so I challenge, you know, anyone
Speaker 1: who is is dealing with with some sort of problem
Speaker 1: in their life to consider trying this out. You know,
Speaker 1: don't see it as your only solution, but but give
Speaker 1: it a go and see what what can be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you again, you want to check out that
Speaker 1: story prompt by James Penna Baker. Just google his name
Speaker 1: and then perhaps writing and health some practical advice. All right,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over here and do a quick
Speaker 1: bit of listener mail. All right, we have a quick
Speaker 1: one from Alex. He says, Hello, Robert and Julie. I
Speaker 1: hope your day is going well. I've been a listener
Speaker 1: of stuff to ab All your Mind for about four months.
Speaker 1: I loved your podcast so much I even went back
Speaker 1: as far as two years ago and listen to your
Speaker 1: allowing your podcast. H First off, let me thank you
Speaker 1: for being so respectful when you talk about cultures and religions.
Speaker 1: This personally means a lot to me. I am not
Speaker 1: religious really, but I am very aware and sensitive when
Speaker 1: talking about religion or culture. Also have a topic for you.
Speaker 1: Guys are sociopath slash psychopaths biologically and neurologically doomed. Is
Speaker 1: there any hope for these unlucky people born this way?
Speaker 1: Is a sociopath psychopath the ultimate apex predator of our species.
Speaker 1: I think this would be a really interesting study, to
Speaker 1: say the least. And Uh. Alex goes on to say,
Speaker 1: thanks for your time, keep doing what you do. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Alex That is very interesting because we talked recently about
Speaker 1: how Luis c. K has a bit in his stand
Speaker 1: up about how we're really lucky that we got out
Speaker 1: of the food chain. We are the apex predator. Now
Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about it, but you know
Speaker 1: one another, we're sort of a problem. We know that
Speaker 1: we tend to main and kill each other. And then
Speaker 1: there's this idea psychologically, is someone who's a sociopath who
Speaker 1: has no community ties, a lack of empathy a predator
Speaker 1: in a sense. Yeah, that's it's certainly a topic we
Speaker 1: could explore. I know they were for certain there were
Speaker 1: at least a couple of really interesting studies to come
Speaker 1: out on sociopaths uh in the in the past year
Speaker 1: that that I'd looked podcast on at some point in
Speaker 1: the future. Indeed, yes, and maybe that will show up
Speaker 1: fairly soon. All right, So there you have it. If
Speaker 1: you have anything you would like to add on this
Speaker 1: topic on other topics, then you know where to find.
Speaker 1: It's got to stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mothership. That's where you find all the podcast episodes,
Speaker 1: all the videos, all the blog posts, all the lists,
Speaker 1: all the galleries, and links out to our various social
Speaker 1: media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler and Julie. If
Speaker 1: one wanted to get in touch with us UH in
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Speaker 1: Send your narrative to us that blow the mind at
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