Are They Lying To Us?
Books can be full of shit.
— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!
You see, this story was going to be on the relationship between daydreams and neuro-associations, a term coined by Tony Robbins in his book, Awaken The Giant Within. But it isn’t.
Just so we understand the technical jargon, neuro-associations are the emotional connections we link to things, whether pain or pleasure, that then drive us to action. No one is a natural masochist, so we’re better off forming pleasant “neuro-associations” with tasks we find difficult so we accomplish great things, and ‘awaken the giant within’.
Now the thought process for the intended story. Since daydreams and fantasies are essentially living a desired present or future in our heads, it makes sense that daydreams would have a relationship with or an effect on neuro-associations. And I mean, there are so many TED talks that preach the ‘power of visualization’ or the ‘power of imagination’ in achieving goals, ambitions and that kind of stuff.
I believe those TED talks (though whether it’s because they are TED talks or because the preached power is true remains unclear). So, in the spirit of learning by reflection, I wrote a draft — a 3-page handwritten note — about the brain-transforming effect of daydreams.
I was going to type, edit and publish but I thought, “experience is not law”, so I googled ‘neuro-association’. Turns out that the concept of neuro-associations is based on the principle of neuro-linguistic programming, NLP for short. Yeah, great stuff; who can’t google?
Then boom:
“There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience.”
I’m sorry, what?! This stuff is fake?
And what is pseudoscience? I’ll help you:
According to Wikipedia (a credible source of information),
“Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias (emphasis mine) rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.”
In the flourishing era of cognitive psychology, NLP has been deemed as a bunch of baseless claims?! You see, I am alarmed. This widely popular notion of neuro-linguistic programming — Awaken The Giant Within has sold more than 1,000,000 copies worldwide — does not work?! (Just read the entire Wikipedia page.)
Are we then just swallowing information without bothering to fact-check? Are we just gullible consumers drunk on marketing lies and propaganda? Good lord. No wonder Ponzi schemes are largely successful.
I find it alarming that books can be a well-cooked pot of lies, propaganda and inaccurate claims. But this isn’t news, right? I guess it goes without saying that we must question everything before running with it; a google search at the very least. I now understand why people run from self-help books.
Now, the moment where I make my decision. Am I going to keep reading?
You bet I will.
Why?
Because science is progressive. What was false yesterday may be true today. Or maybe that’s just me lying to myself. I mean, over a million people have read it. Why do they keep coming back? Guess I’ll find out.
Ciao,
Dayo
