Mind Over Matter: Why You’re Capable of More Than You Think – Paneez Oliai (Transcript)

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 Bessel effect, first coined by Wilhelm von Bessel. 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.

Visual Illusions: The Basel Effect

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.

The Checker Shadow Illusion

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 the 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.

The Cafe Wall Illusion

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?

The Psychology Behind Cognitive Illusions

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 this illusion. All I’ve done is show you how your own eyes perceive the world. Why would our brains do this to us?

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, contrast.

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.

The Power of Placebos

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.

A 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.

The Placebo Effect in Action

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.

Introducing Biofeedback

I know at this point you’re thinking, okay, placebos, cognitive illusions, I’ve heard of it all. And 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.

Personal Experience with Biofeedback

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 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.

The Power of Biofeedback

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 Over 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.

The Power of Mind Over Matter

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. It 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.

Applying Mind Over Matter to Daily Life

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.”

I’ve had 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, in 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?

Overcoming Procrastination

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.

Dealing with Catastrophization

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. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, and the incident that you are so stressed out about dissipates. It becomes sand, like the sands of time.

The Benefits of Perspective

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. But 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.

Connecting the Disconnected

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.

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 their sum 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.

The Ripple Effect of Knowledge

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.

Conclusion: The Power of Imagination

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 depth 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.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Paneez Oliai’s talk, “Mind Over Matter: Why You’re Capable of More Than You Think,” explores the powerful connection between our thoughts and reality. Oliai, a student of psychology, history, and political science, presents the concept of Mind Over Matter as a tool to harness personal power and overcome life’s challenges.

The talk begins by illustrating cognitive illusions, such as the Bessel effect and cafe wall illusion, to demonstrate how our minds shape our perception of reality. Oliai then delves into the placebo effect and biofeedback, showing how our expectations can influence physical outcomes.

Oliai offers practical applications of Mind Over Matter in daily life. She discusses strategies for combating procrastination by setting false deadlines and reframing one’s perception of time. She also addresses the issue of catastrophization, encouraging listeners to put problems into perspective by considering their long-term significance.

A key point in Oliai’s talk is the importance of “connecting the disconnected” – finding common threads between seemingly unrelated disciplines or experiences. This approach, she argues, can lead to a deeper understanding of people and the world around us.

Throughout the talk, Oliai emphasizes that by recognizing our ability to influence our perceptions and expectations, we gain more control over our lives. She posits that this realization can help us become better individuals, friends, and community members.

The talk concludes with an inspiring message: our capabilities are limited only by our imagination. Oliai encourages her audience to embrace the concept of Mind Over Matter, asserting that we are all capable of more than we think. She frames this as a source of hope and empowerment, particularly when facing large-scale global issues.

Overall, Oliai’s talk is a motivational exploration of human potential, grounded in psychological concepts and personal anecdotes.

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