Embracing psychological skepticism

One of the areas of the brain that’s most active during dreaming is the amygdala - the part of the brain associated with the survival instinct and the fight-or-flight response.

One theory suggests dreams may be the brain’s way of getting you ready to deal with a threat. Fortunately, the brainstem sends out nerve signals during REM sleep that relax your muscles. That way you don’t try to run or punch in your sleep.

One theory for why we dream is that it helps facilitate our creative tendencies. 

Without the logic filter, you might normally use in your waking life that can restrict your creative flow, your thoughts and ideas have no restrictions when you’re sleeping.

David Hume understood that the various beliefs and ideologies that sound reasonable and logical on the surface, are in fact irrational and emotionally driven deep down. 

This way he could argue about or doubt practically any belief or thought process.

David Hume was completely at ease with contradictions. This way he could avoid getting into extremities. 

He used to contradict himself by providing a counter-argument against his own statements. This way, no matter how contradictory it sounded, it provided an insight into life, which itself does not follow a linear, logical path.

The typical explanation is that our brains take shortcuts to save energy:

• Statements presented in as easy-to-read color are judged as more likely to be true.
• Aphorisms that rhyme (like “what sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals") seem more accurate than non-rhyming versions.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. ”

When we hide our pain and isolate ourselves, we throw away the most powerful antidepressant: loving support from people who care about us.

You don’t need coping strategies when you’re sad discouraged, or helpless. You need people. You need support. You need someone to give you a hug and listen carefully to your story.

Most of us hesitate to push back and stand up for ourselves because we’re afraid of being perceived as aggressive or rude. And so we default to being passive.

But there’s a middle road between being passive and aggressive: You can be assertive. It means standing up for your own wants, needs, and values, in an honest and respectful way.

"Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them."

• Increases focus;
• Deeper level of learning, order, action, and release;
• Holding thoughts still so they can be changed and integrated;
• Releasing pent-up thoughts and emotions;
• Empowerment;
• Bridging inner thinking with outer events;
• Detaching and letting go of the past;
• Allowing you to re-experience the past with today’s adult mind.

It is an external strategy for keeping track of what we need to do and accomplish.

By creating and maintaining a reliable organizational system, we give ourselves the best possible chance of efficiently processing the day-to-day Have-Tos, so that we have sufficient time and energy to focus on the Want-Tos (the things that really matter to us).

Repression is of two types: primary and proper.

While the primary one takes into account the fact of hiding undesired thoughts or facts, the proper one takes place whenever an individual becomes aware of the thoughts that had initially been hidden and tries to hide them again.

The objective of hiding our undesired thoughts in our unconsciousness is to feel less anxious.

However, Freud stated that this process can backfire at any point, as these hidden thoughts or feelings can still create anxiety, eventually leading to psychological distress.

It’s normal to feel anger towards your offender. But unchecked anger often leads to unhelpful amounts of mental elaboration over the wrongs done to you.

When you notice yourself feeling angry, pause briefly and acknowledge the anger, then ask yourself if your anger will do you any good in the long-term. Just because your anger is justified doesn’t mean it’s helpful.

Acceptance does not mean endorsement or justification.  Acceptance means acknowledging that you don’t have power or control over the past.

Accept the offense against you without excusing it. The key to taking control of your future is choosing to let go of the desire to control the past.

• Time: We think differently about events that are far in the future, compared to activities in the near future. For events in the distant future, we use abstract terms that lack concrete action.
• Space: We use abstract terms to describe events within a physically-near space than events that happen in a space further away.
• Social distance: When we describe someone that is different to us, we use abstract qualities (them and us).
• Hypothetically: We use abstract words and terms to describe events that may not happen compared to events that are more likely to happen.

Executive functioning is the set of abilities and behaviors that is controlled by the frontal lobe, including:

• Goal-directed and planning behaviours, such as deciding how to get dressed.
• Inhibiting responses such as waiting your turn.
• Monitoring your behavior and correcting mistakes.
• Changing your behavior in response to a change in the environment.

Executive functioning helps you to regulate your emotions better, which gives rise to psychological distancing.

• Humorous information receives increased attention during the perception stage.
• Improved encoding. Our brain gives preferential treatment to humorous information when it comes to storing it in our memory.
• The use of humor serves as a distraction from negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety, that people might experience when processing certain information.
• Reading or viewing something humorous has a positive and energizing effect.
• Adding humor to the information that you are presenting can make it more interesting to others.

The use of positive, nonaggressive humor is associated with 

• improved learning outcomes, 
• a relaxed learning environment, 
• better student evaluations, 
• an increased motivation to learn, 
• improved information recall, 
• an increased degree of student satisfaction throughout the learning process.

The use of negative or aggressive humor, especially if aimed at particular students, will produce the opposite effect.