双语阅读 通过改变你的现实来改变你的心态

Change your mindset by changing your reality 通过改变你的现实来改变你的心态
Early in my career, I struggled with something fairly common: I had a fear of looking stupid in front of my colleagues. This would often result in me getting defensive and outwardly angry when my thoughts or opinions were threatened. In some cases, this merely saw me labeled as “difficult” or “snarky”, but as I progressed as an individual contributor, and started looking to take on more leadership and people management roles, this struggle of mine started to hold me back. Critical leadership skills like
receiving constructive feedback graciously, and accepting contradicting points of view, were difficult for me to do authentically.More importantly, my reactions and behaviours clashed with my core values. Things like compassion, trust, and open mindedness were nowhere to be seen in the way I was handling some of these interactions. This contradiction between my actions and my beliefs was leaving me frustrated, regretful, and ashamed of how I was showing up for friends and colleagues.I had seen it done differently, and I believed I could change. And so, I took on the challenge and set forth on a long journey to understand my brain, train it to think differently, and ultimately, change my reality.Finding your triggerIn first learning to handle unproductive or socially unacceptable emotions, most of us start by leveraging the art of repression — and we usually do this at a pretty young age. We focus on attempting to hide the expression of this emotion after it has already surfaced. While some mild form of this can be helpful, trying to deny yourself the ability to express strong emotions long-term can have a negative effect on your overall mental health. It also tends to be kinda hard, not to mention a contributing factor towards burnout.The more effective approach, I’ve found, is to find
a way to stop triggering those emotions in the first place. For me, personally, that meant not feeling threatened when someone didn’t agree with my point of view; easier said than done. As anyone who’s tried to take on this kind of challenge will tell you, knowing and doing are not the same thing.I had my goal. I wanted to think differently about those types of situations. My approach to doing this was initially trial and error, and I wasn’t always successful. But as I continued to explore the workings of my brain, I got more and more interested in understanding the mechanics of what was going on; how and why I was perceiving things in certain ways. As I learned, I also became more successful in my attempts to respond differently. One of the most important discoveries I made along that journey was that “reality” isn’t the concrete truth we think it is.Understanding your realityMost of us tend to believe that we’re interpreting life in real time, and that everything we see, hear, smell, and otherwise sense is the absolute truth, but that’s not actually accurate. In reality, the time it takes for our sensory organs to receive stimuli from our sense organs, convert that stimuli to electrical impulses, and then send those electrical impulses to our brain for processing,
results in an approximate 50–100 millisecond delay.The problem is, this isn’t good enough. We need to react to the world around us in real time. That 50–100ms might sound small, but it makes a huge difference in situations where your body needs to mobilize a quick response to the world around it. Imagine something as simple as catching a ball. Your hands need to be in the correct position to catch it at exactly the right moment, not 100 milliseconds later.In an attempt to fulfill this need for real-time reaction, your brain does something pretty cool. Instead of just processing those electrical impulses and reacting to it as is, it uses that data to form predictions about the future. Those internally generated predictions leverage the sensory processing areas of your brain and become what you experience as reality. This bears repeating: what you perceive as reality is actually what your brain predicts will happen 100ms+ into the future.Take a moment to pause and think about that. Think about all the ways this might go wrong, all the very small ways your brain might predict a reaction, a facial expression, a statement, or a piece of data differently from someone else. And then, how all those very tiny and seemingly inconsequential differences might compound and stack
together to create subtle variations in the literal reality each of us experiences on a daily basis and believes to be absolute truth. It starts to become a little easier to understand why we might hold different opinions.To really drive this home, some scientists have even gone so far as to suggest that our general understanding of reality is nothing more than “controlled hallucination”. They suggest that hallucinations, as we tend to think of them, are really nothing more than a mistuning of a brain’s ability to create calibrated predictions. What we generally refer to as “reality” is more of a fuzzy collection of predictions that are more or less similar.Taking control of your predictionsI must admit, that’s a little unsettling; but it’s also foundational, because finding ways to fine-tune what your brain is predicting is a much more effective way of managing those emotions. Instead of trying to control the emotional response to that predicted reality, we can change, ever so slightly, the reality that’s being predicted in the first place.This was a pretty mind-blowing discovery for me, and it led me down a different path in my attempt to reach my goal. I updated my objective to reflect this new insight. Instead of predicting that my acceptance in the group was
being threatened when a colleague disagreed with me, I wanted to instead predict that there was a tantalizing piece of knowledge being offered.I wanted to predict that obtaining that knowledge would help me grow and become a more valuable member of my team. My hypothesis was that the same “reality” which had originally caused me to get defensive and angry —and probably actualized some exclusion from the group —would instead have me curious, asking questions, and naturally drawing closer.So how exactly might one approach the task of retraining a brain’s prediction module? Well, it probably helps to first understand a little more about how those predictions are being made in the first place.As it turns out, making those predictions is hard work and time-consuming, so our brains have evolved a few shortcuts. Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, does an outstanding job of outlining the vast array of heuristics and mechanisms our brains use to make decisions (you can check out Mark Looi’s quick summary here). The general goal of these mechanisms is to keep us alive; to make decisions quickly and mostly accurately (i.e. “close enough”). These mechanisms evolved in a time where the threats we faced were predominantly things like being eaten by a predator or
ostracized from our troop; they were fine-tuned to help us operate quickly and stay alive long enough to mate, reproduce, and raise our young —extreme accuracy was not the priority.What’s more, these mechanisms don’t operate alone. Much like machine learning technologies today, our brains need vast amounts of data to train those mechanisms over time. In our case, that data comes from every single experience we have, memories we form, pieces of information we consume, and thoughts we generate over the course of our lifetime. That’s a lot of data, and that data hasn’t necessarily been curated to result in an even distribution of actualities.Retraining your brainAnyone who’s been involved in the development and training of machine learning systems like facial recognition or optical character recognition (OCR) software will tell you that the data used to train them can vastly alter the way they function. In 2008, Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru published the “Ge nder Shades” study, where their research showed that disparities in the testing data used to train 3 prominent facial recognition platforms resulted in significant racial and gender biases.It’s not hard to imagine, given the vast differences in our life experiences — and, therefore, our
collected years worth of training data —that our brains might make slightly different predictions from person to person. Unfortunately, it’s also easy to see why we humans are plagued by biases just as easily as our machine counterparts.But how is knowing all this helpful? How could you possibly overcome a lifetime’s collection of potentially flawed or biased training data? Even if you’re young and you start now, that feels close to impossible; and you’re not wrong to feel a little daunted, it’s a really tough thing to do, but not impossible. You don’t need to completely replace a whole lifetime of experiences. Most of what you’ve accumulated is probably still very useful. You just need to find the data that’s contributing to the undesirable prediction and focus your attention there. Plus, we can leverage some of those decision-making shortcuts to our advantage and make things much easier.There are 5 generally accepted types of heuristics your brain uses to speed up decision making:Availability Heuristic — Judging that something is more likely if examples can more easily be brought to mind.Representativeness Heuristic —Using stereotypes or categories to group something along with similar mental examples.Anchoring Heuristic — A tendency to
mentally gravitate towards initially established thoughts.Affect Heuristic — Judging that if a decision feels good, then it’s the right mitment Heuristic —Believing that if we’ve already made a decision, we should continue to stick with it.While there are ways to leverage all of these heuristics, the two I’ve found easiest to use to my advantage are the Availability Heuristic, and the Representativeness Heuristic.Leveraging these two heuristics and applying them to my original narrow problem statement, I established for myself a very tangible and actionable objective: to create a collection of experiences that associated acceptance and belonging with gaining new perspective. While that might sound difficult, and admittedly, it isn’t easy, it is actionable and possible with dedicated ongoing effort.Cultivating your personal datasetFrom there, I started reading and researching, attending webinars, and seeking out interactions; all in an effort to cultivate the dataset my brain needed to make those predictions. Over time, ever so slowly, I started to see change. And the beautiful result was that the changes I was making were also actively contributing more positive experience data points into the collection I was building. With every experience that
resulted in the prediction I wanted, I was reinforcing that outcome and making it easier for that prediction to occur again the next time. At first I had to work hard to keep reminding myself of my desired outcome, but over time, it became easier and eventually second nature.It took me years of dedicated and focused effort to see that transformation. I’ve made very intentional career decisions, am careful of the media I consume, and am mindful about the people I spend my time with. I am slowly creating the reality I want to experience; not looking to ignore the darker or more difficult parts of life, but to find a way of approaching them that leaves me content with my ability to uphold my values and stay true to what’s important to me.And I’m by no means perfect. I still have moments of frustration that I later regret, and I occasionally say something mean or hurtful that I wish I could take back; but perfection is not the goal. The goal, for me, is the choice. To know and believe at the end of the day, that I have the means to control my own reality, and the responsibility to take ownership for that.
在我遇到了一些相当普遍的问题：我害怕在同事面前显得很愚蠢。

当我的想法或观点受到威胁时，这通常会导致我变得防御和外在的愤
怒。

在某些情况下，这只会让我被贴上“难相处”或“狡猾”的标签，但随着我作为个人贡献者的进步，并开始寻求承担更多的领导和人员管理角色，我的这种挣扎开始阻碍我。

重要的领导技能，如慷慨地接受建设性反馈和接受相互矛盾的观点，对我来说很难真正做到。

更重要的是，我的反应和行为与我的核心价值观相冲突。

在我处理其中一些互动的方式中，无处可见诸如同情、信任和开放思想之类的东西。

我的行为和我的信念之间的这种矛盾让我感到沮丧、遗憾和羞愧，因为我对我在朋友和同事面前的表现感到羞耻。

我看到它的做法有所不同，我相信我可以改变。

因此，我接受了挑战，踏上了漫长的旅程，以了解我的大脑，训练它以不同的方式思考，并最终改变我的现实。

找到你的触发器在第一次学习处理无用或社会不可接受的情绪时，我们大多数人都是从利用压抑的艺术开始的——而且我们通常在很小的时候就这样做了。

我们专注于在这种情绪已经浮出水面之后试图隐藏它的表达。

虽然一些温和的形式可能会有所帮助，但试图否认自己长期表达强烈情绪的能力会对你的整体心理健康产生负面影响。

它也往往有点困难，更不用说导致倦怠的一个因素了。

我发现，更有效的方法是找到一种方法，从一开始就停止触发这些情绪。

就我个人而言，这意味着当有人不同意我的观点时不会感到威胁；说起来容易做起来难。

正如任何尝试接受此类挑战的人都会告诉您的那样，知道和做并不是一回事。

我有我的目标。

我想以不同的方式思考这些类型的情况。

我这样做的方法最初是反复试验，但并不总是成功。

但是随着我继续探索大脑的运作方式，我对理解正在发生的事情的机制越来越感兴趣；
我如何以及为什么以某些方式感知事物。

据我了解，我在尝试不同的回应方面也变得更加成功。

在那段旅程中，我最重要的发现之一是“现实”并不是我们认为的具体事实。

了解你的现实我们大多数人倾向于相信我们是在实时解读生活，我们看到、听到、闻到和其他感觉的一切都是绝对真实的，但这实际上并不准确。

实际上，我们的感觉器官从我们的感觉器官接收刺激，将该刺激转化为电脉冲，然后将这些电脉冲发送到我们的大脑进行处理所花费的时间，导致大约 50-100 毫秒的延迟。

问题是，这还不够好。

我们需要实时对周围的世界做出反应。

50-100 毫秒听起来可能很小，但在您的身体需要对周围世界做出快速反应的情况下，它会产生巨大的差异。

想象一下像接球这样简单的事情。

你的手需要处于正确的位置才能在正确的时刻接住它，而不是 100 毫秒之后。

为了满足这种实时反应的需要，您的大脑会做一些非常酷的事情。

而不仅仅是处理那些电气冲动并按原样对其做出反应，它使用该数据来形成对未来的预测。

这些内部生成的预测会利用您大脑的感觉处理区域，并成为您所体验的现实。

值得重复的是：你认为的现实实际上是你的大脑预测未来 100 毫秒以上会发生的事情。

花点时间停下来想一想。

想一想这可能会出错的所有方式，您的大脑可能会以与其他人不同的方式预测反应、面部表情、陈述或数据的所有非常小的方式。

然后，所有这些非常微小且看似无关紧要的差异如何混合并叠加在一起，在我们每个人每天经历并相信是绝对真理的字面现实中产生微妙的变化。

它开始变得更容易理解为什么我们可能持有不同的意见。

为了真正把这个带回家，一些科学家甚至提出我
们对现实的一般理解只不过是“受控幻觉”。

他们认为，正如我们倾向于认为的那样，幻觉实际上只不过是大脑创建校准预测的能力失调。

我们通常所说的“现实”更多是或多或少相似的预测的模糊集合。

我们通常所说的“现实”更多是或多或少相似的预测的模糊集合。

控制你的预测我必须承认，这有点令人不安；但它也是基础性的，因为找到微调大脑预测的方法是管理这些情绪的更有效方法。

与其试图控制对预测现实的情绪反应，我们可以改变，哪怕是一点点，首先要预测的现实。

这对我来说是一个非常令人兴奋的发现，它引导我走上了一条不同的道路，试图实现我的目标。

我更新了目标以反映这一新见解。

当同事不同意我的观点时，我并没有预测我在团队中的接受度会受到威胁，而是想预测会提供一个诱人的知识。

我想预测获得这些知识将帮助我成长并成为我团队中更有价值的成员。

我的假设是，同样的“现实”最初让我变得防御和愤怒——并且可能实现了一些被群体排斥——反而会让我好奇、提出问题，并自然而然地拉近距离。

那么，究竟如何才能完成重新训练大脑预测模块的任务呢？好吧，这可能有助于首先更多地了解这些预测是如何做出的。

事实证明，做出这些预测既费力又费时，因此我们的大脑进化出了一些捷径。

丹尼尔·卡尼曼(Daniel Kahneman) 在他的《快与慢思考》(Thinking Fast and Slow)一书中出色地概述了我们大脑用来做决定的大量启发式方法和机制（您可以在此处查看 Mark Looi 的快速总结）。

这些机制的总体目标是让我们活着；快速做出决定准确（即“足够接近”）。

这些机制是在我们面临的威胁主要是被掠食者吃掉或被我们的部队排斥等
威胁的时代演变而来的；它们经过微调，可以帮助我们快速操作并存活足够长的时间来交配、繁殖和抚养我们的后代——极端的准确性不是首要任务。

更重要的是，这些机制并不是单独运作的。

就像今天的机器学习技术一样，我们的大脑需要大量数据来随着时间的推移训练这些机制。

在我们的案例中，这些数据来自我们拥有的每一次经历、我们形成的记忆、我们消费的信息片段以及我们一生中产生的想法。

这是大量的数据，而且这些数据不一定经过整理以实现现实的均匀分布。

重新训练你的大脑任何参与过面部识别或光学字符识别(OCR) 软件等机器学习系统开发和培训的人都会告诉您，用于培训它们的数据可以极大地改变它们的工作方式。

2008 年，Joy Buolamwini 和Timnit Gebru 发表了“性别阴影”研究，他们的研究表明，用于训练 3 个著名面部识别平台的测试数据的差异导致了严重的种族和性别偏见。

不难想象，考虑到我们生活经历的巨大差异——因此，我们收集了多年的训练数据——我们的大脑可能会做出因人而异的预测。

不幸的是，我们也很容易理解为什么我们人类和我们的机器同行一样容易受到偏见的困扰。

但是知道这一切有什么帮助呢？你怎么可能克服一生收集的可能有缺陷或有偏见的训练数据？即使您还年轻并且现在就开始，那也几乎是不可能的；你感到有点气馁并没有错，这是一件非常艰难的事情，但并非不可能。

你不需要完全取代一生的经历。

您积累的大部分内容可能仍然非常有用。

您只需要找到导致不良预测的数据并将注意力集中在那里。

另外，我们可以利用其中一些决策捷径来发挥我们的优势，让事情变得更容易。

您的大脑使用 5 种普遍
接受的启发式方法来加快决策速度：可用性启发式——如果可以更容易地想到示例，则判断某事更有可能发生。

代表性启发式——使用刻板印象或类别将某些事物与类似的心理例子一起分组。

锚定启发式——一种在精神上倾向于最初建立的想法的倾向。

影响启发式——判断如果一个决定感觉良好，那么它就是正确的决定。

承诺启发式——相信如果我们已经做出决定，我们应该继续坚持下去。

虽然有多种方法可以利用所有这些启发式方法，但我发现最容易利用的两种方法是可用性启发式方法和代表性启发式方法。

利用这两个启发式并将它们应用到我最初的狭义问题陈述中，我为自己建立了一个非常具体且可操作的目标：创建一系列将接受和归属感与获得新视角相关联的体验。

虽然这听起来可能很困难，而且诚然，这并不容易，但它是可行的，并且可以通过持续不断的努力实现。

培养您的个人数据集从那里开始，我开始阅读和研究、参加网络研讨会并寻求互动；所有这些都是为了培养我的大脑做出这些预测所需的数据集。

随着时间的推移，非常缓慢，我开始看到变化。

美妙的结果是我所做的改变也积极地为我正在构建的集合贡献了更多积极的体验数据点。

对于导致我想要的预测的每一次经历，我都在强化该结果，并使该预测下次更容易再次发生。

起初我不得不努力工作以不断提醒自己我想要的结果，但随着时间的推移，它变得更容易，最终成为第二天性。

我花了多年的专注和专注的努力才看到这种转变。

我做出了非常有意识的职业决定，对我消费的媒体很谨慎，并且很注意与我共度时光的人。

我正在慢慢创造我想要体验的现实；不是要忽视生活中更黑暗或更困难的部分，而是要找
到一种方法来接近它们，让我对自己坚持自己的价值观并忠于对我重要的事情的能力感到满意。

我绝不是完美的。

我仍然有沮丧的时刻，后来我后悔了，我偶尔会说些刻薄或伤人的话，但我希望我能收回；但完美不是目标。

对我来说，目标就是选择。

最终要知道并相信，我有办法控制自己的现实，并有责任为此负责。