Dr. Solution: Riding The Wave of Success
 Our fascination with the downfalls, upheavals and misfortunes of celebrities has something to do with our old ‘reptilian’ brain. This good old crocodile brain, the “emotional brain” is located right behind our eyes. Wired for negativity, this crocodile guy doesn’t think, but reacts instinctively to situations interpreted as negative or dangerous.
So, when we are in line to the cashier at the supermarket, what do we do? We look at the bold headlines of magazines located right above big pictures of celebrities. Together with the negative, the crocodile also immediately recognizes human faces. Hence, despite our will and morality, our attention has been aroused and even if we don’t buy the magazine, we might grab it and quickly flip over the cover story while waiting our turn. In essence we see celebrities as somehow a part of us. We identify and many times, live within their fictional screen characters. Take Dexter for example, the favorite serial killer of America. No wonder. Number one TV series character, Dexter is the modern |
sophisticated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. Good the day, bad the night. Dexter’s character symbolizes our human light and shadow sides, and also our capacity of being emotionally cut-off or compartmentalizing our mind and behavior. We feel close to him as we have direct access to his thinking, and emotions by hearing his internal monologues.
Our own internal monologues, often strangely resembles Dexter’s self-talking. Yes, we are quick to judge our own, and others behavior mostly focusing on the negative. What happens is that negative emotions feeding our vigilant crocodile’s brain, are immediately interpreted into words by our evolved logical thinking brain, the “judge” (or “superego” according to Freud). Example, we are on a date, a job interview or at a dinner party. We do or say something and we comment to ourselves: “Look at you, how stupid you look. Why did you need to do (or say) that? Have you seen their faces? And so on…” Not so funny, huh? The good news is that we can fire the crocodile and the judge both together at times. The easiest way to do so, is to take advantage of the very first hours of the day, just after waking up. If we refrain from looking at our emails, watching the news, or even talking to our folks, we can peacefully relax, live and enjoy the present time of our our being with a fresh, open and clear spirit. Natural mindfulness. The longer we keep this blessed silence during the day, the better it is of course. |
