Namaste Welcome to Sam-Vad (Together In Conversation) I am Sunil Rao here:
As we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’. Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
Today I will talk about one of the ALL ABOUT ME series, published by Hoopoe books a division of The Institute for the study of Human Knowledge. The series is part of the Human Nature Program of ISHK.
In his foreword to the series, late Dr. Robert Ornstein mentions that the changes to a teen’s brain are similar to the growth of a baby’s brain in the first eighteen months of life. A massive spurt of new brain cells called grey matter occurs, and nerve cells called neurons make new connections. Then slowly, throughout the teenage years and into the early twenties, cells that don’t make connections are trimmed back.
Scientists speculate that this second growth spurt aids us all in adapting to the world. It is that period where we learn a new skill or develop a lifelong habit easily. If you take up a new skill or keep practicing at an old one, your brain will rewire itself to support these abilities at a faster rate than at any other time in your life. No wonder the teen years are such a good time to take up playing guitar or drum, or to learn a new language. On the other hand, you want to avoid getting into some bad habits because they get wired in, too, and will be harder to change later on. Now is really a good time to learn some good habits for dealing with anger, stress and self-control.
Getting through this time in your life can sometimes feel very complicated and you struggle to make sense of the world around you. Maybe you find yourself wondering why you’re suddenly so concerned about what others think. Maybe you find yourself wanting more privacy.
New questions. New School. New styles. You are changing, you’re friends are changing. But you might be able to make more sense of these changes if you have the right information.
It is about how we see, think, and feel; how these abilities work, how they change, grow or get stuck and how reliable they are as we try to make sense of ourselves, our friends, our relatives and the world around us. There is good, solid information readily available and scientifically validated, but a lot of people seem too busy to pay attention to it.
Let us look at some interesting excerpts now from the book:
“What’s the Catch? How to Avoid Getting Hooked and Manipulated:
This book explores situations and examples that help one become more aware of the forces nudging and pushing one-self. There are some interesting activities to participate along the way as you read.
It is available as an eBook and can be downloaded on your kindle.
Now the Excerpts:
Let’s say you are watching some fish in a pond. A small bug lands on the surface of the water. Instantly a large mouthed fish zooms to the surface and snatches its dinner. The fish didn’t ponder its moves. It just acted instinctively. The response triggered by the insect dancing on the water is an automatic response wired into the nervous system of the fish. Thoughtful, deliberate, hesitant fish would probably starve.
Another fly appears on the surface. The fish zooms in, gets its dinner and a hook. The fish got more than it bargained for. It got hooked. The fisherman understood the instinctive (automatic or preprogrammed) behavior of the fish. He used this knowledge to trick the fish and catch his own dinner.
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