Humor

*Ahem*

Ok, ok, stop laughing already. This is a serious tweak, dammit! Don’t you care about the plasticity of your brain, expanding your creativity, and so on? Oh fine. Keep giggling if you must.

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Even though I’m running around like a over-wound reindeer this Christmas Eve-Eve, I didn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten you, dear MindTweakers. So here’s your holiday gift: unasked-for-advice on how to un-train your brain!

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It’s not a brain-training program.
It’s not a productivity tool.
It won’t make you more creative.

But it is immensely amusing and SO perfect for MindTweaks that I can’t believe it took me three years to discover it…

What is this astounding bit of excellence?

Psychonauts: a video game that involves both collecting and going inside other people’s brains! I ask you… Does it get any cooler than that??

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…In which your humble blog author bravely puts herself in harms way to provide readers an abject lesson of what not to do. Ok, I admit I may have taken reverse engineering a bit far with this one. Don’t try this at home kids, we’re (un)trained (non)professionals here!

I had good intentions: carefully pulling the poison ivy out of the garden so someone else didn’t wind up with a bad rash. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I’d hoped, and I wound up with that lovely allergic reaction we all know and love. My reaction to the ivy made my seasonal allergies worse, and soon the whole thing cascaded into a cumulative effect of Severe De-Tweakage. Here’s how it happened:

The brain needs sleep to work well, and I wasn’t getting enough.

It’s hard to reach deep REM cycles when you wake up every 90 minutes scratching, and the allergy part of the rash causes problems too… apparently, histamine helps regulate sleep patterns, by making you alert, and allergic reactions involve an increased histamine production (that’s why antihistamines can people sleepy).

Established routines are important for the mind to work at its best. I know this, but in my sleep-fogged state, I disregarded it.

I decided I would just sleep a bit later, sneaking an extra hour or two of rest between itch-cycles. Nice idea, for the first day or two… but since the rash took 2-3 weeks to reach its worst and start healing, NOT such a great idea. My body began to adapt to “poison ivy hours” as the new standard, staying up late and sleeping in, further fogging my brain.

Sunshine helps the mind and body to function well, lift spirits and speeds healing

… but I was boycotting nature. Evil nature. Nature was responsible for this misery, and I was not going to grace her with my presence!

The rash made me feel like I had a bad sunburn, and so I instinctively shied away from the light - - and besides that, my new night-owl hours and afternoon spring storms meant there was very little sunshine available to me.

Water, good food, and exercise are all important to top-notch mental functioning.

Since I was exhausted and wasn’t feeling well, I decided to cut myself a break. I’d eat comfort food. I’d ignore the bottles of water in favor of Diet Coke (I love the bubbles when I’m allergic). I wouldn’t start my new exercise routine, and I’d minimize movement. After all, it was pretty uncomfortable, brushing my blistered forearms against things whenever I moved.

Luckily I didn’t have any Twinkies in the house (and I was too lazy to go and get any) but even without the sugar-overdose, I managed to do everything wrong brain-health wise.

It’s a no-brainer: stay on your regular supplements/medications when sick.

Of course, by this point, I practically had no brain. With my routines so disrupted, I started forgetting not only my vitamins, but the St.Johns Wort that keeps my mood up these days, the Valerian that could have helped me to sleep, and even the daily antihistamine dose that would help with the poison ivy reaction. I wasn’t motivated enough for even the simplest self hypnosis, guided meditations or software aids like Pzizz or Mind Stereo. I settled into a grumpy funk.

All of my self indulgent choices would have been fine for one day, but the end result was that for the two weeks when I most needed to be doing everything *right* to get well, I was slacking off and doing all the wrong things. The less I did right, the worse my mind worked, and the harder it was to do *anything* right.

Now that the rash is healing and the itching is at a minimum, I have to pull myself out of this downward spiral, so it’s back to basics for me.

Advanced mind-tinkering is good stuff. I’m soooo all about alpha waves and hypnosis and neural path ways and meditation and framing and new perspectives, but even the best aftermarket brain-hacks don’t amount to a hill of neural synapses if you neglect the basics of mental maintenance.

I’ll keep you updated.

MindTWEAK: Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
- Johann von Goethe.

A friend of mine recently announced his latest grand plan: marketing the ultimate spiritual-woo product. He made me sign an ironclad non disclosure agreement, so I can’t share the details — but let’s just say its the equivalent of selling bottled sparkling air via electronic download. It is brilliant, I have to admit.

Since I’ve made a casual study of psuedo-scientific-psuedo-mystics, I thought I’d jot down a few tips for him on how to best tune up his image for his new role.

1. Adopt An Ancient Culture.

Associate yourself with an Ancient Culture, and you gain instant credibility. Be sure to do your research — it’s ooh-so-awkward when the descendents of your chosen culture crop up out of no where, start screaming about your misrepresentation of their great great great grandparents.

No worries, though… you can always just point out how far they’ve fallen from their family tree, and how disappointed their ancestors are in how they’ve turned out. (You ARE in otherworldly contact with their ancestors, right? Get out that Ouiji board, son!)

2. Cultivate a Fatherly (or Motherly) Demeanor.

Study Parental Archetypes. Watch old episodes of Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Happy Days. Alternatively, you can watch Sylvia Brown and Deepak Chopra — they have this one down pat.

Strive to project an air of paternal indulgence, with a side order of unchallenged authority. Be someone who isn’t afraid to send a child to bed without supper: stern, but tolerant. Your goal is to inspire trust, loyalty and love from your followers. Like any parent, you are all about their growth. (And their worship of you. And their money.)

3.Mention Quantum Mechanics.

You don’t need to understand Quantum Mechanics (no one really does, anyway). Just mention it, casually, as supporting your theories. The combination of “Cutting Edge Science” with your “Ancient Culture Connections” provides you the true Alpha and Omega of authoritative wisdom.

Sure, a few scientists will turn up now and then to give long winded explanations of how wrong you are, but no one will really understands what they say anyway. If they really start causing problems, you can break out the Ouiji board again and tell them how disappointed Einstein and Tesla are in how they’ve turned out.

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