Mind over Matter: Why You're Capable of More Than You Think | Paneez Oliai | TEDxGeorgetown

sometimes I'm not sure that I'm capable of doing something until I'm already doing it we all have examples of that within our own lives things like acing that test earning that promotion or the one that truly terrifies and strikes fear Into the Heart of all of us adults getting virtually anything done at the DMV but in all seriousness times these things can feel unattainable to us but maybe they shouldn't my name is panis olei and I'm here today to demonstrate to you why you're capable of more than you think now I know what you're thinking

oh great another one of those motivational speeches that sounds so nice but ultimately does nothing but like you I understand how difficult it is to summon the courage we need to achieve our dreams and so today I'm going to do something just a little different today as a long time student of psychology I'm going to offer you a tool we call this conceptual tool Mind Over Matter and I'm going to use it today to help you harness your very own power now we'll be starting off with a couple of examples from that beautiful science of

the mind that we call psychology next I'll take you through the findings of those examples why does it matter that there's a connection between our minds and our bodies what is the connection of Mind Over Matter mean about ourselves about each other and about the world around us and finally I'll tell you about how you can apply the concept of Mind Over Matter to your lives and the lives of those around you now the first thing I need you to remember and this is really important Don't Let It Go is that Mind Over Matter is

absolutely everywhere it is in our daily lives in the air that we breathe and the light that we see don't believe me let's give it a shot so on the screen before you you'll see what's an illustration of the basal effect first coined by Wilhelm Von bezeld it's a pretty simple picture isn't it you have two main objects on the screen one is a background and as you can see it is much darker on one side my right than it is on the left it's a gradient easy peasy in the middle of this background is

a rectangular bar and that rectangular bar also looks like a gradient it is much lighter on my right side than it is on my left it's an inverse of the background now I know you're seeing the same thing that I'm seeing you're asking yourselves why is she explaining this I can see very clearly what's going on but if you'll just give me a moment I want you to look very closely at what happens next because when I remove the background you'll see that this rectangular bar in the middle is actually one solid color it's not

a gradient at all it is a solid shade of gray let's try that again now you see it the gradient and now you don't all right let's try something else out this is another one that is very very popular in terms of its fun cognitive illusion test this is an illustration of the Checker Shadow illusion coined by Edward Adelson this is also a fairly simple picture as you can see there are two squares marked on this checkerboard one is marked with the letter A and the other one is letter b a as you can see

just as plainly as I can is much darker than b you can probably guess what I'm going to do next if I just remove everything else you'll see that A and B are the exact same color to try that again A and B clearly two different shades and all I've done is remove the background now if your head is spinning and you're upset at me removing the background I promise for this next one I'll make it a little easier on you for this next one I'm not going to be changing anything at all I'm not

removing any context you'll have the slide in front of you as long as you like this next one is a particularly big favorite of mine this is an illustration of the cafe wall illusion talked about because it was first seen on the outside of a cafe wall simple picture right you have a couple of black and white squares alternating and you have different rows of this pattern slightly offset the offset I'll give you a hint is what makes this illusion so much fun as you can see there's something just slightly off about this picture all

of the horizontal gray lines running through this picture are slanted they're kind of wonky they look like they're on the verge of running into each other but if you look at each individual row you'll notice that all of these gray horizontal lines are perfectly parallel there's no slant to them at all zoom out for a moment see the Slants and zoom in for a moment focus on one individual row at a time and you'll see what I mean what do all of these examples mean have I just brought you here today to show you how

evil psychology is to make you wonder why I'm making you question your perception of reality I promise there is no evilness of psychology involved in fact as such a beautiful discipline psychology exists to show us why we have these cognitive illusions I promise this is no magic trick I haven't secretly changed the lines while you weren't watching and I certainly haven't changed any of the colors in the solution all I've done is show you how your own eyes perceive the world why would our brains do this to us is there is there something wrong with

the way that we're seeing the world not at all you see a long time ago it was vital to our very survival to be able to distinguish between one object and another all of these tricks rely on the way that we perceive darkness and brightness light Shadows and of course contrasts our brains rely on that because they help us to see and understand the world more quickly and as you can probably imagine the faster you can distinguish between one object and another the likelier you are to survive the faster you can figure out what is

a threat to you and what is harmless the likelier you are to get out of that dangerous situation and so our brains have evolved this miraculous and incredible ability to quickly distinguish between objects just to help us now what you've seen today are a couple of perceptual Illusions but I'm going to take it a little step further I'm going to talk to you about something that might seem fairly familiar placebos now you've seen some perceptual Illusions you know so far that your mind informs your reality the way that you see things but placebos are a

fun little example of how your mind can change reality for those of you who don't know a placebo is a very simple concept it is a treatment that actually has no medicinal or therapeutic value in essence it does nothing to your body few examples of this are some fake pills they're often made out of sugar fake injections things like Saline and they even have fake surgeries where they put you under but they do basically nothing to you why do these treatments exist well there's this very fun phenomenon called the placebo effect pretty fitting name huh

psychology is good at those but the thing about the placebo effect is this if I have a raging headache and I'm in a lot of pain and someone gives me a pill telling me that this is going to relieve some of my pain I will take that pill with that expectation and lo and behold even if that pill is made of sugar it will actually reduce some of the pain that I'm feeling remember there's no medicinal or therapeutic intervention in this case all that's happening is that my expectations are changing my reality quite literally what

happens when I take that pill is that I expect to feel better and so what does my body do it tries to match that expectation in my mind my brain releases things like dopamine a chemical that will help it to feel good my body releases things like endorphins a hormone that reduces stress and relieves pain and before you know it just like that I'm already feeling so much more healthy and optimistic and in case you forgot there was no medicinal or therapeutic intervention involved all that happened was that I had a belief that's all I

know at this point you're thinking okay placebos cognitive Illusions I've heard of it all but I'm going to give you one last psychological example that you might not have heard of and this is the example of biofeedback now biofeedback is this incredible intervention that psychology and Medicine have constructed let's say that we have a patient maybe someone in this room who is experiencing a high heart rate their heart is going far too fast that's dangerous they want to lower that heart rate as much as possible and they want to have it Be an Effective and

quick treatment the healthcare provider in this case can attach a couple of sensors and electrodes to the patient and hook Those sensors and electrodes up to a device the device will emit noises or lights or show a number on the screen that corresponds to the person's actual heart rate so all this person is getting is some feedback about how their heart is doing I actually did this exercise right before my speech with an individual who is also a speaker today because you know people get anxious even the best of us and we need something to

calm us down I'll tell you a little bit about more about that in just a second but what happens next is something that the machine does not control at all the patient is fully in control of their heart rate they watch the screen the numbers the flashing lights or they listen to the noise the sound of their heart rate and just by watching or listening and concentrating they lower it and it works there is nothing that the machine is doing but just giving them feedback about their heart rate without even knowing it the patient listening

to their real-time feedback starts to relax their muscles they start to control their breathing and moreover sometimes they even think positive or grounding thoughts again in case you missed it the machine has done absolutely nothing but the patient's heart rate is lowered the implications for this are astounding biofeedback can apply to lowering your temperature or raising it if you like it also applies to your blood pressure to headaches and migraines that you might have and even to your brain activity just by concentrating on the real-time feedback that your body is sending out you can actually

change your physical health again your body starts to match your expectations if that's not an example of mind never matter I'm not sure what else is because the truth is all of these examples show how powerful your mind is at controlling you and your reality it doesn't just change how you see the world it changes the physiological reality of your body that is incredible When someone tells you don't worry about it it's all in your head just relax chill out that phrase now has so much more meaning is all in your head and that's the

beauty of the concept of Mind Over Matter this puts the power back in the hands of the individual but I know at the same time that you're wondering why this matters you're asking yourself why does it matter that I have a little bit of control over my head or over my body for that matter why does it matter when there are so many more serious issues in the world that we find hard to address in this life we are in control of so little at times I despair about the things that I cannot control I

think about things like International politics like violence inequality just to name a few and when I start thinking about those things even things like climate change it is easy to lose hope but the question of why does it matter can be answered basically within the very foundations that we've just talked about it matters because I am one of the few things that I control in this life and that applies to all of you we might not be able to control much but if we control ourselves we control our perspectives our expectations and the way that

we interact with other people then we control much more than we previously thought we were ever capable of now at times again you might be wondering how this comes into play for me just thinking about the concept of Mind Over Matter has made it much easier to manage my life and now I know a bunch of you sitting out there students and professionals have probably experienced the horrible anxiety-inducing debilitating terrifying problem that is procrastination it's exhausting and you have to admit it I see a deadline that's a month away and I'm like oh great that's

a month away you type plenty of time the problem with that is that I relax kick back for an entire month and the night before something is due I panic I stress out I start to cram and type out as much of that paper as I possibly can it's unhealthy and for a lot of us and both of our academic and professional lives it is a debilitating issue but once I realized that mind over matter is a powerful enough concept to change the way we see things I realized that it's all in my head so

all I really need to do to fix procrastination is to just you know change my perception of reality easy right like piece of cake but the truth is it does become easier when you think about the very power that you hold what happens when you think about mind over matter is that you realize that you have power over your entire view of reality and I use that to my advantage and I hope you can too what I did was set a couple of false deadlines sounds simple right that thing that was due a month from

now is now due in a week and man if I can convince myself that that item is due so much earlier than I thought it was then I will feel the pressure to complete it I started making myself believe these false deadlines by plugging it into everything I came across planners calendars and even sticky notes and once I convinced myself that something was due much earlier than it really was I got started a little earlier I saw that I was able to complete the things that I wanted to on time was I still a little

stressed out maybe did I still rush to finish within that week sure but it changed my life to such an extent that I can say that I'm a much less stressed out person now I can focus on the beauties of life and enjoy the time that I have with friends and family and even just myself all because of a minor change that I made while recognizing how powerful the concept of mind over matter is another way that the concept has helped me is by helping me look at the bigger picture we all have this problem

psychologists will often refer to it as catastrophization now catastrophization is something that I think many of you will be familiar with this notion that the moment something small goes wrong you get a grade that you don't like on an exam you miss out on an opportunity or even you lose something that is a treasured object you start thinking about the worst case scenario your mind starts going down the spiral of anxiety and all you can think about is the horrible thing that could happen in the future you think about the absolute worst that can happen

and it's agonizing what hurts us even more is that the worst case scenario often doesn't happen and so we waste time and energy and emotional burden just dedicating ourselves to thinking about the worst case scenario that is hardly likely catastrophization is a problem for many of us but the way that we can reframe our reality comes into play even here the question that I constantly ask myself when something doesn't quite go right is how much is this going to matter I start to stretch time in my mind how much is this going to matter a

year from now maybe a bit maybe I'll be walking around and thinking about oh I really wish I had not missed that opportunity that would have been nice five years from now well I don't know I'll be starting on my career I'll probably be thinking about I don't know what I'll be having for dinner and a million other things will be on my mind I'm not sure how much I'm thinking about it stretch that out even further 10 years from now 20 years from now and the incident that you are so stressed out about dissipates

it becomes sad like the sands of time there are so many grains of it so many moments in our lives that we can stress out about but don't need to and when we stop agonizing and catastrophizing we become healthier the research has demonstrated that we live longer lives quite frankly and the theme that I'm going to keep coming back to is that we enjoy our lives more enjoying our lives more makes us better people better friends and better community members and so already from such a small quick question that you can ask yourself you have

contributed to making the world a better place I know that's dramatic but bear with me for this last one the last major tip that I wanted to share with you all today was the concept of connecting the disconnected just like those connect the dot games where you produce a beautiful Fuller picture I've come to realize how important it is to connect the parts of my life that previously meant nothing to each other the many students academics and Professionals in this room can all attest to this we think of different disciplines as distinct things like law

and Medicine math and philosophy all of those things feel like separate categories to many of us and even if we work in a field where we combine those the common themes that they share aren't always on our minds but take it from me a student of psychology history and political science these subjects all have more in common than you could possibly think for me thinking about the different themes that these topics share has made me realize that at the core of all of these disciplines are people I love people and just by connecting the dots

by thinking about what psychology history and political science all tell us about people even if they disagree just by doing that I have made myself someone who can hopefully better understand relate and spend time with people the thing that matters to me most in life and so just by doing that I'm able to create this new Common Thread that had never existed before we call that Synergy when two separate Concepts come together and there's some is so much more so much more profound than it could have been separately so by connecting these dots as disconnected

as they seem we all have something to gain for me that meant passing on a piece of advice to my sister my sister is my favorite person in the entire universe the light of my life and I hope growing up as her older sister I've been able to use this ability to connect the dots to teach her more about people today she is one of the most wise well-informed people I have ever met and her relationships demonstrate that to me as we know that trickle down or ripple effect is quite the real one she constantly

instills that same value amongst the people that she meets and it helps to create a better community at her school in her neighborhood and in her work going forward as a nurse long story short this small connection of the dots that I realized passed on to my sister and that she'll pass on to her friends community members and her patients that makes a difference but all of these three tips that I've shared with you today are just a few examples of how you can use the concept of Mind Over Matter there are so many different

ways to imagine that concept and I cannot wait to see what all of you come up with all of your brilliant diverse experiences culminating in this Web of Knowledge so ultimately what does mind over matter mean it means recognizing that sometimes the boundaries between the body and the mind are blurred and that that is a beautiful thing it means recognizing that the way that you perceive the world even just your expectations they make a difference and it means that we are not static unchanging people with limited abilities we are profoundly complex liminal transient people who

move between our capabilities our complexities and our potentials there are Limitless possibilities before us because if your expectations inform your reality then the only limit is your imagination you and I and everyone is capable of so much more than you know than you have ever thought and perhaps more than you will ever know you are capable of immense growth and complexity and that is what the concept of Mind Over Matter teaches us in the depths of the terrifying and enormous problems that we see in our daily lives inequality violence climate change you name it it

is easy to feel alone to feel isolated to feel helpless but the fact that you have control over yourselves your lived realities and that you can influence others gives you so much more power and agency than you ever thought possible to all those out there wishing to make a change in your life and the lives of others you are capable of so much more than you think and the science the science proves it thank you [Applause]