Every morning I catch up on what is going on in the world. I check various sources from all ends of the spectrum. One overall theme seems to be being presented as of late.
You are helpless and need X side to help you get through the day. If you don’t have them then your life will be terrible and your family will suffer.
You know what you never hear? “Hey everything is going to be fine even if it is hard for a bit.”
They want you helpless.
If you understand this one leverage point of persuasion and manipulation you will be able to become a more independent thinker. Not what they want BTW.
Why do they want you to feel helpless?
Well your brain does some very interesting things when it is under stress. It become very pliable. There is even a name for this. It is called learned helplessness. When you are in a state of learned helplessness you just stop trying to make up your own mind. You give over your authority to someone who provides what you think is a better idea and become a really good follower.
Learned helplessness does one more thing as well. It triggers the freeze response in your primal brain. You just sit and do nothing. The less motivated you are the more likely you are to want to be led. You want other people to make decisions for you. You become the perfect follower. You will never think for yourself. You start to filter the entire world through the mindset provided to you so that even the most ridiculous ideas sounds plausible.
The whole idea of helplessness is to trigger the survival responses in your brain and get it to bypass the logical creative part of your brain. This causes you to react without thinking to the latest drama filled news item of the day. You end up living a completely reactive life without ever considering if the information you are being fed is just what you are filtering for or if it is fake news. If the fake news supports what you want to believe because you feel helpless then you will accept it as 100% true.
Next is introducing DRAMA. Your brain loves drama. This is why no matter how much you try, you just have to slow down and look at the wreck on the highway AFTER cursing everyone else ahead of you for slowing you down. Drama creates a dopamine cycle. The more you get the more you want. Then your brain does something evil. To get the same dopamine rush it needs MORE DRAMA. That means you need more extreme fake news to get the same feeling of power that will eliminate the learned helplessness.
A helpless person will believe just about anything if they think it will help them feel empowered. What happens then is you begin to surround yourself with only those who agree with your position. You read only news that supports how you feel. You reject anything that challenges any of the information you want to believe.
It does not matter if it is Trump, Obama, Fox news, CNN or your favorite website. You go to the source you want to believe because they make you feel empowered.
What can you do to start thinking for yourself?
What I do is this. When I read something I go to the source that I know has the opposite slant on the news. I want to see both sides.
I consider the source. Facebook is not news. More people are getting their news from Facebook than ever before. If I read something on Fox News I then go to CNN to get their opinion. I then find several other sources on either side before I make my decision.
I know that the end of the world is not going to be predicted by an actor. They get paid to have thoughts and emotions of a writer and director. They are not great independent thinkers. Sports figures are not great sources of information. Thinking is not what they went to school for. Most news is about ratings not delivering good information.
The bottom line…. Everything is going to be okay. It might not be perfect but it will be okay…. once you start making up your own mind and stop giving up your personal power to someone else when making decisions.
Then just walk away.
I know it is hard but I guarantee you will feel better