E.S.P. – Excellent Sensory Perception

In each moment of our lives our internal computer, our brain, is making thousands of decisions based on the information it receives via our external receptors. These are our sight, hearing, feeling, taste and smell which collect information and relay it back to our bank of previous experiences to see if there are any familiar patterns.

For example, if we were to see flames, hear crackling, feel heat, smell burning and taste charcoal in the air we would cross reference this experience with fire.

The context of this fire would then be examined. Is this a fire safe i.e. housed in a hearth surrounded by brick? If yes, our brains will slow down our breathing, relax our muscles and produce calming chemicals that allow us to relax and enjoy the experience.

However is this fire dangerous i.e. has it been started accidentally and is burning the wood of the stairs? If yes, our brains will create our “Stress Response” also known as “Fight or Flight” and consequently speed up our breathing, heart beat, produce adrenaline and nor-adrenaline and increase and polarize our five senses in order to deal with the situation.

The fire is an extreme example to demonstrate a point, but it illustrates how our perceptions of situations are very important. Fire in fireplace = good, fire outside of fireplace = bad.

What if during our lives we created incorrect perceptions? For example, within a dating context I hear people make judgments based on peoples hair or its colour. Blondes have more fun. Dusky maidens are sexiest. You can’t trust men with beards. Shaven headed men are aggressive. From a psychological perspective this is untrue. However, if these people, with the different hair colours or styles, are treated differently because of other peoples misconceptions they may begin to believe this realty and allow it to become their truth.

When I meet somebody new I start with a blank slate, this often takes a moment or two because I have my own bank of experiences and perceptions but I also allow myself to get a “gut feeling” for things to protect myself from harm.

The interesting thing about “gut feeling” or intuition is that it is predominantly right when you are relaxed and predominantly wrong when you are in a state of stress.

Your stomach is one of the most important internal feedback mechanisms you have, every emotion can be felt to a greater or lesser extent in the body, coupled with other physical elements like your skin and muscles. When you are in love or excited you feel butterflies in your stomach and lose your appetite, when you are worried or nervous you have the same physical experience but your physiology and mental processes differ. When you feel guilty or ashamed it’s like a heavy sinking feeling and so on.

One of the reasons people overeat or drink alcohol is to suppress this response from the cells in the stomach. Effectively changing the way they feel by either filling the stomach with food to block the chemical messages from the cells or drinking alcohol which numbs these responders which is why we feel hungry when we’ve drunk a significant amount of alcohol.

I have spent a significant amount of time fine tuning my sensory perception in order to be the best I can be as a coach and therapist, because I feel it is my job to know what is going on in people’s minds before they do.

The only time I get it wrong is when I allow myself to get stressed, I’m only human and I work as much on myself as I do my clients. I feel that if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me! :0)

So my message today is learn to relax, develop your gut instinct and intuition and have an open mind with an awareness that occasionally some people will attempt to get you to do things that aren’t in your best interest and a lot of the time the opposite is true.

Whatever you think the world is, that’s your perception, your truth, your reality!