Impact of words in pain

Words and pain...a lot could be said about these two words and their relationship.

I'd like to highlight an interesting a media release about a recent study titled "Do Words Hurt?" by the Institute of Psychology of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in Germany.

For the first time, the this science team demonstrated that painful memories and associations set our pain memory on the alert for example when a nurse say "don't worry it will not hurt" whilst injecting a needle to a patient. Prof. Weiss said "even verbal stimuli lead to reactions in certain areas of the brain. As soon as we hear words like "tormenting", "gruelling" or "plaguing", exactly those areas in the brain are being activated which process the corresponding pain."

Of course having a memory of painful experiences is beneficial for human being in order to avoid painful situations however what their research results shown that verbal stimuli have a more important meaning than they have thought so far. There is a discussion of this on chronic pain. The team will further study the conversations and their impact on pain.

From your observations, do you think words have strong impacts on your feelings and emotions? Are there any words making you feel instantly uncomfortable or instantly putting you at ease?

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz

Relationship between overlooking and tolerating

My choices make me who I am and who I want to be.

According to William James, "The essence of genius is to know what to overlook". Life is complex and hectic for most of us. It is made harder to live when noise pollution become a matter. I can hardly bare extreme noisy environments. People like me will either neglect those environments or overlook the situation if they had to be in it.

What else we could overlook? I think mistakes or so called failures as I don't believe in failure. The word failure still does not make sense to me after many years of hearing the word almost everyday. I have come across an interesting saying from Doug Larson who claimed "a true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.”

There may be some kind of relationship between overlooking and tolerating. Have you notice yourself tolerating something which you were supposed to overlook? Or vice versa?

Are we responsible for effort or outcome?

Seeing another interesting cartoon of Leunig in the Age with the following words in it, inspired me to say a few words about outcome: "The world is full of outcomes. Each day delivers more. At breakfast time there’s only two. By lunchtime there are four. By dinnertime there will be eight. At bedtime there’s sixteen; So many, many outcomes and I don’t know what they mean. And so we live our lives away. With outcomes big and small. Until the final outcome comes. With no outcome at all."

Outcome is an overused term in our daily lives. It may mean results, consequences or in more scientific terms a phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon.

In Information Technology or Computing fields, outcome could be the result of the performance of a function or process in the system and it is usually measurable and mapped to service levels.

In psychology, it is linked to many factors but two important ones highlighted by the grandfather of modern psychology (William James)attitudes and beliefs obviously play an important role. For example, about attitudes, he said "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome”. And about beliefs he said "Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture”. Let's remember that James was famous with his pragmatic approach in philosophy.

From quality perspective Edwards Deming created the principle that "we should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes”. So my question stands as whether we are responsible for effort or outcome; or both or none of them?
I'd also be interested in your views in my question here.

Reflections on exaggeration

We need many filters to stay sane in this life. One of my key filters that I have to use in everyday life is dealing with exaggerations. Many of us exaggerate things for various purposes. Exaggerations could be mild, heavy or extreme. The mild ones are like making something more noticeable than usual. They could be seen as humour mainly to highlight a point and they usually give us good time with pleasure and learning. The heavy ones are sometimes bearable and sometimes go beyond the limit based on our mood or general tolerance level. The extreme ones are not easy to handle; especially the shocking images in journalism, visual media and meaningless broadcasts in recent digital social media. Showing an ant like an elephant is an example of this.

There are various interesting views on exaggeration from different perspectives that shed some lights on the topic. I like description of love by George Bernard Shaw in this context: "Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else". According to Kahlil Gibran "An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper". Interestingly Voltaire has a more positive approach to is with his definition "Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness".

From behavioural perspective it may turn to habit in some people as observed by Josh Billings who said: "There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying". It also reflects other habit patterns as pointed out by William Alger: "False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis".

What is your tolerance level to exaggeration and how do you cope with it? Hope you can join the debate to answer my question here.

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz

Fast food may cause impatience

It was not surprising to me to read about this research finding of fast food in our behaviour. The study paper is called "You Are How You Eat: Fast Food and Impatience". It has been made available by the University of Toronto freely in this link.

Fast food is in abundance in our lives and they address our desire for speedy life styles. I provided some random thoughts on abundance and speed in one of my previous blog posts. In any design and implementation activities, quality, quantity and speed require a trade off. I believe in relativity and subjectivity in quality, quantity and time. One of the comments by Mr Stuarte Harris was notable and want to cite it here: "Whatever the clock says, whatever the advertising says, whatever anything external says, our perception of time and quantity and quality is purely subjective."

One of my friend (in his late 70s with a lot of experience in management of large corporate organisations) a few years ago asked a question of "Why we humans are in rush all the time" which still resonates in me. I am still searching an answer to this question.

Does Optimism Boost the Immune System?

It is interesting to read a media release titled "Optimism Boosts the Immune System". The study provides some insights to this long debated topic.

Optimism in my life has some merit however in my profession I have to look at the worst scenarios sometimes which may look or sound pessimistic. Any design requires a holistic view of the topic both from optimistic and so called pessimistic aspects.

It is possible to come across paradoxical views on the optimistic behaviour such as to smile when it hurts most.Is this possible and realistic? Having said that, from hindsight we see blessings in disguise for the things seemed horrible to us when we were experiencing them.

Many comments were made throughout the history on optimistic and pessimistic approach. We all may have heard Churchill's famous assertion "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.". Is it really so? As I asked in my another post "Do optimists see the opportunity in every difficulty?" Whose choice may it be?

Regards,
Mehmet Yildiz