256. the longest journey
The longest journey any of us will have to take is one from our mind to our heart. From letting our thoughts be our guide, to what we feel to be true inside.
It’s coming to the realization that what is going on in our head is often influenced by the voices and opinions we surround ourselves with. It’s understanding that in our need to fit in, to be a part of something, to belong, we often compromise who we are and what we truly want.
The conflict that arrises between our thoughts and feelings should cause us to pause and ask ourselves if what we are about to do is truly the right thing for us. The sooner we can align our actions with our true feelings, the sooner we can live a life guided by our heart.
our thoughts are no longer our own
Interesting ideas from the book Hardwired: How Our Instincts to Be Healthy are Making Us Sick by Robert S. Barrett
Not even our thoughts are our own anymore…
So powerful is our desire for social relevance that many of us follow the crowd and adopt their identity simply due to an eagerness to belong — this is a powerful theme with modern social media. We quickly adopt the narrative of the groups we want to fit into, hoping they will accept us, even if the decision to do so is completely irrational.* This effort to conform is known as Normative Influence, which results in conformity for the sole sake of belonging. Because we are all lost in autonomy, we are willing to bend our narrative just for a chance to fit in.
The modern world has magnified the appeal for belonging. Studies into normative social influence demonstrate that conformity is much stronger in public than in private, and because our lives are increasingly public, we tilt more and more to what we find will make us the most acceptable. From posting photos online, to uploading our children’s birthday party videos, to taking selfies at work, we are subtly shifting our true voice or story to fit the greater narrative we wish to be a part of.
In the famous Asch conformity experiments, when subjects were able to write their answers down anonymously, as opposed to stating them in front of the group, they were honest nearly all the time, unencumbered by the social pressures to conform to the group narrative.
Popular social media apps are rendering our private sphere public, and for many of us, conformity with online social media trends means greater peer acceptance. Conforming to group norms and attitudes are a hardwired trait, as we all want to belong. In one study, when teens and college students were shown social media images while in an fMRI, the images that elicited the greatest response in the brain’s reward center were the ones that had the most likes by others.** This suggests that we are not entirely free-thinkers when it comes to stating what we like or dislike any longer, but are subconsciously seeking to follow the trends of the group so that we don’t get left behind.