MIND YOUR MATTER

by Scirish

I know it’s early, but grab your coffee and a pen and paper. Ready? Go to the link and see what happens.

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I’m sure all of us have had those moments when we just “knew” what the person we were talking to was going to say. Or, we have had other people finish our sentences for us. Why does this happen? Are we really reading minds?

According to Psychology Today, we are, in a way. “Every day, whether we're pushing for a raise, wrestling with the kids over homework, or judging whether a friend really likes our latest redecorating spree, we're reading each other's minds. Drawing on our observations, our databank of memories, our powers of reason, and our wellsprings of emotion, we constantly make educated guesses about what another person is thinking and feeling. Throughout the most heated argument or the most lighthearted chat, we're intently collecting clues to what's on the other person's mind at the moment. "It's a perceptual ability I call mindsight," says Daniel Siegel, UCLA psychiatrist and author of The Mindful Brain. "It allows your brain to create a map of another person's internal state."

That got me thinking; (very quietly of course) do we have a defense against this “mindsight”? What if we don’t want another person to know what we’re thinking? I believe we alter our physical clues, such as tone of voice or body language to throw the other person off track. But what if we couldn’t? What if we all could read minds? Would we be kinder, gentler people? Or would there be havoc and mayhem? What do you think Owls? If you had a choice, would you want to be able to read everyone’s mind? Would it make a difference in your choice if you were the only one that could do it? I just “know” there are going to be some interesting responses.