Remember not to forget

Dear reader,

I think Albert Einstein was right when he said, „The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Sadly this happens far to often and far to quickly when one is looking for something and can't find it. At least for me anyway. This happened again actually the day before yesterday.

Normally I keep a couple of things only at very few specific places and never anywhere else. I taught myself to do that automatically with my flat keys for example, to avoid looking for them for long and so I don't lose them. I keep the keys to my dad's flat, say, almost all the time in a certain backpack and in a specific inner pocket there. But a few days ago I had them in a different backpack, haven't been at my dad's, but I was in the neighbourhood and just in case, I had those keys with me. I did see those keys in this other, unfamiliar outside pocket several times the days before two days ago. I knew where they were. In the small outside pocket of the smaller backpack. I had seen them there the previous days again and again when I had the backpack in my hand and the outside pocket had been open. And yet I only checked the bigger pocket and also repeatedly(!) completely emptied the big backpack. It took me almost a quarter of an hour to finally take the small backpack again and for once also check the outside pocket to find the keys again.

Years ago I was looking for glasses once with blue tinted eyeglasses, which I have had. But did I have them still? In the past I had glasses at all times. Only a couple of years ago I started wearing them only occasionally. That's why I never used the sunglasses with the tinted eyeglasses. They didn't have the glasses I would have needed for my eyes sight. Did I have the glasses still? I checked every possible drawer of two specific cupboards in my room, also two drawers in the hallway. Several times. Because it's so much fun and suddenly the biggest things could have become tiny and hidden and be overlooked. I thought of Einstein checking everything the second time. After the third time I cursed myself for checking again, although I had found nothing the first two times already. I thought to myself, “I'll go to the living-room ask my mum. Maybe I don't even have the glasses anymore anyway. Checking a 100 times wouldn't help then. Maybe she knew something. Should I still have the glasses, I trust my unconscious and wish for to just walk up to the right drawer to find them there.” I went to my mum. She knew what I was looking for, but couldn't remember if we still had the glasses or not or where they might be. I went back to my room. Purposefully I stood in front of a commode where the guinea pigs and their cage were sitting on. There is only one drawer there where the glasses might be, in which I keep necklaces and earrings and also a big magnifying glass with a horn grip, too. If the glasses were there at all, it would be in that drawer. The other drawers had paper, note books and notes. I really pulled out the drawer this time and in the back of a corner there really was the small blue paper box in which I kept the blue tinted eyeglasses. I thanked my unconscious for guiding me to them that way.

Many scientists agree now that our brain never forgets and in theory we could remember everything that happened once. The individual information gets displaced by other information and new information and with that they fade into the background so much that we seemingly forgot them. Methods like the memory palace can help to organise and sort through thoughts and memories and find them faster, have them more “handy”.

Dr. John Watson gives a quite good description of how the memory palace works in “The Hounds of Baskerville” (Sherlock season 2, episode 2). Sherlock Holmes knows that he's got important information in his head “somewhere buried deep”. He tells John and Dr. Stapleton to get out, he'd go to his mind palace now.

“His what?”, asks Stapleton confused.

John explains to her, “Oh, his mind palace. It's a memory technique, a sort of mental map. You plot a map with a location, it doesn't have to be a real place. You deposit memories there. Theoretically, you never forget anything. All you do is find your way back to it.

“So this imaginary location could be anything?”, asks Stapleton. “A house or a street?”

“Yeah”, confirms John.

“But he said "palace"”, bursts out Stapleton. “He said it was a palace!”

“Yeah, well, he would, wouldn't he?”, says John almost a bit bored and maybe a bit annoyed that his friend has to boast with a palace in his head.

The way to information or memories is in fact important, too and doesn't have to be a mental walk or visual, seen in your mind. In “Dynamic Learning” by Robert Dilts and Tod Epstein, Epstein describes his work with an old lady. With her eyesight fading, she also had difficulties remembering certain things, which didn't cause problems before. Epstein noticed that the lad was visualising and thinking in pictures to retrieve memories. With fading eyesight, it became more difficult for her to see in hear mind. Epstein helped her getting back to memories through other senses. Which helped her memory getting better again, too. Before reading “Dynamic Learning” I only read in Thomas Harrison's books about the memory palace and after Derren Brown's “Tricks Of The Mind” I started creating a sort of system for myself. The suggestion that the way we retrieve information and that the senses we use for that are relevant as well, was new and an important aspect. It didn't change anything for me personally, not that I'm aware of anyway. Nevertheless it is something especially people working with other people, old people specifically, should keep in mind. Apparent memory loss doesn't necessarily have anything to do with not remembering.

Until next blog,

sarah

Sweet dreams (Father, don't you see that I am burning?)

Dear reader,

let me tell you a bedtime story. One of Freud's clients came to him and told him of a father, who had the following dream (from “The Interpretation of Dreams“ by Sigmund Freud):

“A father had been watching day and night beside the sick-bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, but left the door ajar so that he could look from his room into the next, where the child's body lay surrounded by tall candles. An old man, who had been installed as a watcher, sat beside the body, murmuring prayers. After sleeping for a few hours the father dreamed that the child was standing by his bed, clasping his arm and crying reproachfully: "Father, don't you see that I am burning?" The father woke up and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found that the old man had fallen asleep, and the sheets and one arm of the beloved body were burnt by a fallen candle.”

How could a dream like that happen? One option may be that the father sensed the smoke or the light and integrated it into his dream. That's how we're supposedly dream anyway, we dream of things we experienced during the day and/or actual sensations we experience now creep into the dream. A logical explanation. But it doesn't explain why time and again there are people burning to death in their bed after having fallen asleep with a light cigarette or something. Also they say about hypnosis and trance that if we really have to be awake, because there's danger ahead, we'd be out of hypnosis or trance instantly and ready to act. Without having experienced that personally, I do believe that about hypnosis and trance to be true. But it doesn't explain the burn victims.

Next theory. We enjoy dreaming. Likewise many people enjoy being in a trance. That means that in order to wake up, we need either a strong outside stimulus or the dream has to be so uncomfortable, that being awake seems more pleasant and that's why we wake up. The father dreamed of his son, to be close to him. But the fire was a stimulus that needed to action. So he dreamed of his son waking him up. Sounds logical, doesn't it? Maybe. But much like the paragraph above, shouldn't we wake up with a fire all the time? Either waking up from the fire itself or from dreams forcing us to wake up?

Taking into account the possibility of a life after death or that the soul lives on after death or something like that, the son could also have contacted his father for real in or through that dream. Although personally I rule out that theory. Because I know that Harry Houdini wanted to contact his mother very much. After he was dead, he would have done everything possible, to contact his living wife. Even if he tried, there's no account of him actually succeeding in it to this day.

What then can we make of this dream? Your theories?

Until next blog,

sarah

Sometimes unconscious is better

Dear reader,

I'm very consciously writing about the “unconscious” and not the “subconscious”. The “subconscious” doesn't exist. It's just what many, sadly also experts for example my professors at university used for the word “unconscious”. Even Wikipedia, otherwise despised by teachers and professors points this out. A search for the "subconscious" does get you to a separate page in english, unlike the german website, which just redirects you to the “unconscious mind” with just a paragraph that the word “unconscious” is just everyday speech. Very correct. There are areas in our mind, doing and perception, which are conscious and others are not conscious. Unconscious. But not subconscious. I will not correct or rebuke anyone about it who is using the word “subconscious”. I find it sad that even experts don't use the correct word. I assume it's because everyone knows what it is anyway. So the “subconscious” and the “unconscious” are used synonymously. I for one will write about the “unconscious” now and in the future and not about the “subconscious”.

One aspect, which got into the consciousness more especially because of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is gestures, body posture, body position, facial expressions. It's time and again suggested, in order to get good contact with your dialogue partner (rapport), to adjust your own body posture and body position to the one of your partner. For example if the other person is crossing his or her legs, you do the same. Either crossing the same leg over the other, say both crossing the left one over the right or if the other one has the right one over the left, you have your left one over your right.

Outside features are not the only ones you can mirror. Speaking rate and breathing are also things you can match, among other things. Feel free to read up on that some more, if you're interested.

It's important and correct to notice body posture, body position, facial expressions, gestures, speaking rate and all of that. Especially it's important to notice certain signals and perceive them. Even more so when they are expressions of disagreement or otherwise negative. Everyone should be able to see those signs, to be able to prevent unpleasant processes of a discussion, especially when it's a negotiation meeting.

Far too often people forget to mention that mirroring should be used carefully and not be done strictly all the way through in a conscious way throughout a whole meeting, especially not a long one. If you use it too often and for too long to essentially mimic aspects of your partner, it's going to be a silly copy and instead of positive rapport, it'll give the other person a bad feeling at best and he or she will feel offended. Even if the people don't know or notice exactly what you do. I guarantee you that they will at least get a strange feeling.

Personally I'd recommend you to use body posture and that consciously at the beginning of a meeting and once it's going, to just let it flow and keep it going on a more unconscious level, only to be aware of signals, but not to abuse them, only to notice. It can be a lot of fun to have a great talk with another person and to keep it at an unconscious level like that, only to notice consciously how movements and positions are flowing in sync with the other person. It's not only fun to be in a discussion like that, but also to just watch two or more people doing it. All knowledge you could and should have about this to a certain degree, there certainly are reasons why so many things are rather unconscious for us. Some unconscious things are better consciously left unconscious.

In the beginning it can actually help to consciously cheat. I once had to give a talk in an english class. I was very nervous. But I knew enough about body language, to at least give the impression of confidence. At first I was very nervous and very conscious of my body posture. It often helps to fake a body posture to get to the actual feeling. Much like Charlie Brown describes it, as I posted already in my post about “Showing feelings”. My teacher actually gave me that feedback right away that I appeared very confident and sure-footed. She had no idea...

Until next blog,

sarah

M&M: Pan's Labyrinth

Dear reader,

children are often a symbol of innocence. But even though the children may fight to be good and do their best to help, that's by far not what their parents may be like at all. That's certainly and especially true for Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) in Guillermo del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” from the year 2006. Ofelia and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) are on their way to Ofelia's stepfather, the fascist captain Vidal (Sergi López).

The captain strives against the partisans and also shows no heart for Ofelia either. She realises that in their first meeting right away. In the night she can't sleep. An insect, which she has met on her way to the captain, comes up again. It's not a normal insect. Not just because it's so big. When Ofelia shows her fairy tale book to the insect, it turns into a fairy, like one out of that book. The fairy guides Ofelia to the near by labyrinth. In the middle of the labyrinth is a statue of a girl with a baby and Pan sleeping there is waking up. He tells Ofelia that she's a princess turned human and now that she's human, she lost all her memory of being a princess. Her father, the king, is waiting for her. She has to succeed with three tasks, to break the curse.

Doug Jones, who's playing Pan, is in full costume and mask, as in other Guillermo del Toro movies, like Abe Sapien in Hellboy. His character is a rather strange one. On the one hand he helps Ofelia, on the other hand the tasks he sets for her, lead her to be in trouble a lot. The tasks and troubles of the fairy tale world are certainly correlating with the dangers and brutality of the adult world. That's especially true for the stepfather. When he finds out that the housemaid Mercedes and the doctor Ferreiro are actually helping the partisans, the stepfather doesn't hold back at all.

Is Pan on Ofelia's side after all? Or did he use her for his own purposes all along? Does captain Videl have a heart for his stepdaughter in the end? Or did the war turn his heart to stone? See for your self and make your own decision.

I'm mostly impressed how the movie combines true history in a very intriguing way with elements of fairy tales. You can trust Guillermo del Toro with horror and fantasy anyway. The total love and care put into the movie comes through to me. Especially how the creation of the characters and portrayal of creatures of the fairy tales world. Even though the movie clearly uses elements of fairy tales, it's far from being a children's movie. At best it's an adult version of a fairy tale movie. A very intriguing movie, but nothing for the sentimental, squeamish minded.

Until next blog,

sarah

Showing feelings

Dear reader,

German readers are probably still remembering Arno Funke, who under the name “Dagobert” (the German name for Scrooge McDuck) extorted big stores between 1988 and 1994. He worked as a painter of motorcycles and sport cars. To finance a start as self-employer, he extorted money from the stores. Later he said that the fumes from the workplace damaged his brain and lead to depression. In his autobiography (only available in German as “Mein Leben als Dagobert” (My life as Dagobert)), he writes that he wasn't aware of the slow process to depression and the numbness at that time. His arrest and therapy lead him to gain access to his feelings again. Only then was he able to paint again and be creative.

Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft are portrayed as rather cold. In the BBC series “Sherlock” there is a scene in “A Scandal in Belgravia” (Season 2, episode 1) in which Sherlock and Mycroft stand together at the morgue of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Sherlock just identified a corpse as Irene Adler. In the hallway he hears crying people pass by. “They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?”, Sherlock asks his brother. Because although Sherlock has met Irene Adler earlier and was somewhat fascinated by her, her death at Christmas Eve doesn't seem to move him or Mycroft at all. “All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage. Sherlock”, is Mycroft's reply. He does show some feelings for his little brother though, because he gives him a cigarette, although Sherlock endeavours to quit smoking.

Sherlock Holmes is certainly a fictional character. So it's questionable how realistic such a cold person actually is. Although sociopaths indeed have no empathy for others, are in a way cut off from their feelings, especially feelings for others.

Hard and annoying as it may be sometimes, to be overwhelmed by our own feelings. In the end it's probably better still and more human, to have feelings and to show them. There is a German saying literally “An Indian knows no pain.” Meaning that one must be brave and not be over-sensitive to pain. It's totally absurd. Girls and women are probably more emotional generally. They, after all, are mainly responsible to take care of the children. So it makes sense that they can show feelings easily and read them in others, in the children and react accordingly. That doesn't mean that consequently the boys and men have to be “tough” and mustn't show any feelings at all. Feelings are part of life. Feelings are part of being human. Whether we like it or not. In the long run, it's not good to hide feelings or swallow them. As shown in the case of Arno Funke, something like that is likely to lead to something negative and we lose something. Even though feelings sometimes keep us from doing things and overwhelm us and we can't think straight, although we wish we could. Feelings are like a river, they change. A situation totally wears us out at one point, but in time we'll get over it and we move on.

In case you do want to feel down or depressed once, follow Charlie Brown's lead:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTeUoxESw_oxFbTBn55jRstKMrG9z1PsQrZJHeEmF3ZYEKHJK_Z6Dvjj_FBOZa_1tyN6cXTs7Og5lGMGnefUDTPlww5proAa6qdQjXpXshGu7khPNcKq90i1eWMtBMXWWbBOk-vpKNLM/s400/snoopy.gif

Until next blog,

sarah

My wonder garden (or Sleeping fast part 2)

Dear reader,

I already wrote about what may help to go to sleep faster once (Sleeping fast... if you want it and remember...). Today I want to share with you a method, which has helped me some years ago. I don't use it much these days, because I can go to sleep fast and easy and the methods I described in my earlier post help me sufficiently enough. Nevertheless the one I like to tell you about today is also very effective. When I started using it, I didn't know it is actually a hypnosis method. Only later on when I read about hypnosis, did I recognise this method again. What I am going to describe now, is purely my own imagination. Of course you're totally free to change elements of it as you please and envision them.

I'd have my eyes closed and would imagine a staircase out of bricks in a building of bricks. Something like a hallway in a castle. The staircase were clearly visible, although the hallway wasn't lit as such. I never counted the steps and didn't walk them very consciously. Sometimes I would sit on the top step for a while and wait a moment, before standing up and starting to go down. Sometimes, after a few steps down, I'd just “be” at the bottom. At the end of the stairs there'd be a closed round wooden door with a door knob.

Behind the door is a garden with a path with a bend. The garden is blooming with lots of colourful flowers. The reader might enjoy bending down and take a sniff at some of the flowers. Are there butterflies in your garden, too? Let's go further down the path. First a bit more straight on. Then there's the bend. A bit further straight ahead. The path leads to a sitting area with a couple of chairs and a bench.

It's always a pleasure and surprise for me to see who's sitting there at the table waiting for me. Sometimes the two chairs that I have there are taken and also the bench has one or two persons sitting there. Sometimes there's just one person there. In any case never a person I really know, but always people I'd assume to be enjoying their presence or people I'd like to have conversations with or that might inspire me. Magicians like the “psychological illusionist” (as he calls himself) Derren Brown, who himself uses a lot of hypnosis and could “hypnotise” me to sleep. Although so far nobody spoke a word in my garden. Or Teller of the magic duo Penn & Teller. During performances he never speaks. If he does speak, it's always with his back to the audience or with his mouth covered. But on YouTube you'll find videos in which he does talk. So I do know his voice. In the garden he wouldn't speak though. Most of the time I'd find him there with a coin in his hand and he'd roll a coin across his knuckles. His decades of practise and experience make tricks like that look much easier than they are for me. With him it's a flowing movement and he could do it en passant. Charming. Bewitching.

After sitting there for a bit and watching Teller with the coin or just enjoying the presence of people there, I'd fall asleep. If the bench is free, I might lay down there and go to sleep in the garden and for real.

Like I already wrote above, you are free to create your own garden and take from mine what you like. Still I'd like to give you a couple of things to consider to get the best effect from this: 

• If you want an exact number of steps to the door, I'd recommend 20.
• Also I'd suggest to take a sniff in your garden and sense smells at least once, even if you don't specifically bend down to a flower. Far too often there's talk and suggestions only about visual aspects in exercises and methods like this. It's a fact however that we find it easier to get into a situation, the more senses are activated. Smell and taste usually are ignored. By smelling a flower, you'd have at least have smell in a bit once.
• Of course a sitting area is no must have, neither is having one or more persons sitting there. Create your own surprises for yourself, like I keep surprising myself about who'd be sitting there.
• For sort of “security reasons” I'd recommend to you, if you have persons, to make it people you don't know and are rather very unlikely to ever meet. Known persons may hurt or disappoint you some day. Those persons are not very likely to be in your garden anymore. Generally it's still better to not have people you know in places like that garden from the start. That way the garden is forever a safe place full of joy. 

My hypnosis friends (you know who you are) might have other suggestions to consider. Maybe I'll add more in my text depending on your comments or if I think of additional important aspects. For now that's it for me. I wish you much fun and joy in your garden and sweet dreams. If you like, you can share your experiences here.

Until next blog,

sarah

We're all humans

Dear reader,

on july, 1^st this year Barbara Frost wrote in the Guardian an article entitled Two girls died looking for a toilet. This should make us angry, not embarrassed, in which she told about the sad destiny of two cousins, 14 and 16 years of age in india. They two of them were raped and later killed looking for a toilet. Everybody should safely have access to water and a toilet.

It was only a couple of days later when it took me almost two hours to get to my dad. Usually it takes me about 30 to 40 minutes, unless it's sunday with longer times between to trams arriving. It was a week day that day. At first the time when the tram would be arriving was wrong. The next should be arriving in 1 minute. I waited 20 minutes in the end. There was no sign or announcement, as there usually would be. If I had know this, I'd have walked to the next station. Would have taken me 10 minutes and I'd have to change trams there anyway. I waited for the connecting tram for another 10 minutes then. Four stops before my final stop, the tram came to a hold. I can hardly believe that I'm hesitating now and that I'm desperate for words here, to write this. I hope and think that readers of my blog know how I mean this though. A group of students had been on the tram, too, and one girl had made fun of a black man, who ended up pushing her. The tram got stopped and the police was called. I was annoyed from all the delay my travel had cost me already and got out to walk the final bit to the train station down the shopping street. The last thing I noticed was that the black man apparently only spoke english. Which seemed to made it bit more difficult to communicate with him.

Last year I was in france with my dad and sister for what would have been my mom's birthday. As I got out of the train in paris, a police man stopped me at the platform. I didn't understand what he said to me in french. He asked me in english, if I spoke english. I didn't get to answer him. My dad had come back and my sister, too. As the police man saw the two, he just let me go. Only much later it occurred to my dad that maybe my shawl, which I have had around my shoulders, could have been the reason for the police to stop me. The shawl is grey with black squares connected with black lines the squares. You could think it had an arabic or muslim pattern. I got stopped for a shawl I had? I don't know if this actually was the reason, but it's indeed the only one I can think of. Thinking back I resent that I didn't ask them about it. I would have liked to know. What does it matter what someone is wearing for the character of a person or what that person thinks or what they might do?

Some time ago I heard on the telly a story about a french woman, if I remember it correctly. She studied islamic culture or arabic language or something like that and wanted to go to america once. They wouldn't let her in. I don't remember if the reason was mentioned or not. Probably they feared she might be a potential terrorist, what with her studies.

Many years ago I had contact with someone using a chat program and he was living in an area where they practised voodoo. I don't remember where he lived exactly. I had deactivated the profile pictures on my program. He had put up a picture of himself. He was black. He really liked me and he wanted me to be his girlfriend. Sadly his english was rather poor. So I had difficulty explaining to him that with me living in germany, it would be impossible for me to be his proper girlfriend. He got angry. He said it was his skin colour. I would despise him now, because he was black. I tried to make it clear to him that until just now I didn't know he was black, because I had the pictures deactivated. He didn't understand me, no matter what simple words I used to explain it to him. He insisted that his skin colour was the reason for my rejection. He was certain. He said, he'd go to a voodoo priest to curse me. So I'd be forever unhappy and something bad would happen to me. You'll see, he wrote.

And then there's this song Prejudices by Tim Minchin. As far as I know it came from an incident after he performed an older version of a song in which he sings about black people. Actually it's precisely that very point, that there is no “the black” and they “all” do this one thing, because they're black and all black people do it. After a concert some black people came up to him and told him to not sing those lines anymore, or else... Sad really, because it seems they didn't get the point of the song. The song is called “If you really love me” and the lines went, “We go together like a cracker and brie, like racism and ignorance, like niggers and R&B.” He makes a similar, to me equally important point, in the first part of his song Confessions. Women should not be afraid to walk the streets at night and fear for their life.

Penn Jillette of the magic duo Penn & Teller published short videos, vlogs, years ago. I don't remember the title and can't find a certain one online anymore. In it he talked about the fact that he doesn't judge people by their skin colour. In the end we're all equal. We're all humans. The skin colour says nothing about my behaviour. Our behaviour reflects our character. The character of a person has nothing to do with skin colour. I wish more people would think like that. The skin colour of a person should never be an issue.

Until next blog,

sarah