Suspicious Mind

Thinking based on suspicion is only a small part in the skills of thinking. One day I paid a visit a friend of mine in his shop house. A shop house consists of a shop on the first storey and a dwelling place on the second storey. In Singapore, shop houses are being refurbished for their architectural uniqueness as part of keeping our past and most importantly to attract more tourists here.

As I was approaching his shop my friend was holding a camera and in the process of taking a picture. When I saw that he was about to take a picture of a pedestrian who himself was taking a picture of my friend’s shop, I became very curious of my friend’s behaviour. He was not taking the sunrise or the sunset. He was not taking a picture of a beautiful woman. He was neither taking my picture. But he is just aiming the camera directly at the man across his shop.

Upon enquiry, my friend told me that since he was running a profitable shop he thought the man across his shop who was taking a picture could be a thief planning to rob his shop. I asked my friend what made him to think in that manner. He said he based it on suspicion. My God! The man could have been a tourist taking some pictures of pre war houses and a probable customer to his shop.

In our every day life it is best to check our thinking process. Are we thinking correctly at this point in time? It is understood that the mind taps from the self organised pattern to process thinking. If you want to be an analytic thinker you need to learn the skills of thinking. If you are taking a serious decision you need to put the plus and minus of your decision. The greatest legendary of rock and roll Mr Elvis Presley said in his song that ‘We can’t go on together with suspicious minds and we can’t build our dreams on suspicious minds’

Suspicious mind works excellent in policing. But if you use too much suspicion in daily living life becomes very miserable. The basis of suspicious thinking is greed. The objective of getting something and keeping it to oneself makes it difficult to let it go for others. If you have S100, 000 dollars in your bank it is OK to give $10,000 to the needy party. :)

We are too self-centred and self-indulgent. Suspicious mind blocks our networking with people. The quickest way not to indulge in suspicious thinking is by becoming an extrovert. Extroverts get gratification from outside the self. Read here for more tips on extrovert.

Real happiness is acquired through selfless approach to people. If you take a little care for others it is possible that you can give something voluntarily. Try not to put your needs above others. This habit of self centred approach with people makes relationship sloppy when your needs are thought to be pushed down the line.

Have you called someone in his or her hand phone and the recipient just cuts off the line? I have many experiences like that. Though it is a terrible way of showing that the other party is busy, it is the suspicious mind that keeps on dwelling on the darker side of life.

How Your Brain Works? Part II

In Part I we have concluded that behaviour of one self is directly related to the function of the mind. The mind basically creates two reservoirs of patterns. One is the reactive pattern and the other is the analytic pattern. The former is formed by the conditioning of the brain to a fixed way of thinking and coming to a conclusion.

Analysis is all about breakdown, dissection, division, inquiry, investigation and religiously speaking it is all about reasoning.

A manager of the building received a telephone call from his tenant that the tenant’s child was locked in the apartment. The manager rushed to scene and heard a loud cry of the baby trapped within her own house. The mother was standing outside in tears holding an access card key of the apartment.

After much scrutiny, the manager realised that the handle to the door was missing and the complainant informed him that she had taken out the door handle, which has dropped due to shoddy riveting, and left it on the side table inside her apartment. As she got out of the house, leaving the baby inside, the door shuts behind her. She managed to put the card access inside but the door could not be opened without the door handle.

The above was a real life incident that I faced when I was a manager of a residential building. I received many suggestions from my working colleagues such as:

Tie a rope and swing into the apartment
Break the door with an axe
Call 911

The impediment to analytic thinking is emotion. The mother’s worry, the crying of the baby and the panicky commotion of my colleague are all emotive behaviours. It will not solve the problem. If you want to use the analytic part of your brain you have to avoid all emotion- if not the negative ones.

The brain is just like the shredded ice ball. If you pour hot coloured liquid sweetener over it a depression is formed on the ice ball. Pour red colour – a red depression is formed. Yellow depression is formed by the warm yellow liquid sweetener. Blue depression is formed by pouring the hot blue liquid sweetener. Similarly the patterns in the brain are created by the experience we have had in our daily lives from birth.

You can also read about reactive thinking here . Proactive is a vague term. Thinking analytically gives you the boost to think in an acceptably detail manner.

By staying calm, I had gained access the analytic part of my brain to solve the above mentioned problem. The crying of the baby is not a problem. The teary mother is not a problem. The noisy colleague is not a problem. The missing door handle is the core of the problem.

I unscrewed the neighbour’s door handle and was able to open the door of the complainant and managed the problem well.

How Your Mind Works?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different kinds of people around you? Have you ever wondered why there are people who are more successful than many others? Why there are people who are merely struggling with everyday life? Why there are people who are experiencing enriching lives?

Sometimes you may be asking why your life is the way you didn’t want it to be. I have seen many people who are so well educated and yet did not match up with the successful ones. When I say successful I mean that that individual has reached a fulfilling life and display happiness within as all of his or her wants and dreams have been fulfilled. I mean that person is having a fulfilling life. A life that is happy. He or she is at the peak of happiness. Are you are happy at every tick of your time!

If an individual can be able to function to his or her fullest potential provided if he can behave and take action appropriately he or she can experience enriching life. You can see all the videos here for a basic understanding of the anatomy of the mind.

Two graduates having a certified public accountant degree with a similar background of a family life ends up in different destination. How can that happen? Both are given a more or less an equal first step but have different ‘fate’ at the end of their career path. One has an accounting firm. The other is still an employee.

The brain has the faculty of thought, memory, imagination and consciousness. Psychology is the study of how a human being behaves? Human behaviour is the product of a healthy mental state. It is the state where an individual uses his cognitive and emotional capabilities to function in a society or surroundings and meet the ordinary demands of a daily life. The thinking process emanates from brain matter. A ‘healthy’ brain means a healthy mind. The result will be appropriate behaviour in a group or society for the sole reason to survive.

As how our pre historic ancestors behaved to the stimuli of the environment and build the steps for the continuity of the human race we have to train and develop our mental capacity to continue in that survival race.

Thinking process is both reactive and analytic. You need both to experience life. Reactive thinking is a built-in ‘coded’ formula for a stimulus. A stimulus is enforced by way of sight, smell, sound and touch. You do not have to learn to touch a fire to realise the pain it causes. But a baby will not know of what it will be like during the first touch.

Once the pain is encoded in the ‘reactive’ oasis of the brain then it comes natural during the second touch. The baby knows that it causes pain to touch a fire. The baby avoid going near to the fire.

Only with analysis we become a better individual. A stumbling block to analysis is our emotion. If used intelligently, emotion and analysis are the key to enrichment.

The story of our mind is never ending one. It is like the universe. An evasive mechanism of the mind can be further analysed by illustrations in Part II