Ambrish's Blog!

The origin of the word meta is Greek (meaning change) and phobia is Greek (meaning fear). Medically speaking this particular phobia is considered to be rare but practically speaking, we all suffer from this in general. We all strike a low note in an otherwise harmonious symphony when we want to try something new. A patch in the fabric of life where we don’t feel comfortable or homely.

Let me share a little episode from my personal experience to start of things. It all dates back to this one ted-talk I was viewing where the speaker was telling the audience about the benefits of learning new languages. How adversely it affects your brain! How vividly it affects your personality. We all know that our behaviour and persona are affected by what language we are conversing in; the point here being how the speaker in that particular talk convinced me to try this new thing, learn a language. Personally speaking, everything that challenges my brain in any way that I haven’t experienced before intrigues me. Consequently, I was hooked and wanted to ‘try something new’. I wanted to learn Spanish.

I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that trying something new is not the problem; the problem is adjusting to something unfamiliar, re-shaping our routines and mannerisms for this new interest. The pressure we feel when we want to be so good at this one thing, be a part of a new world and inherently excel at it is not something we can overcome. There are forces inside us that stop us from participating and being a part of new things. Forces so powerful that we can’t even think about things let alone learning anything or having fun.

This is where our phobia kicks in, we fall prey to it and give up eventually. Whether it is speaking in public, learning a new skill or playing a new sport. But things are a bit complicated here. The other side of this otherwise bleak story is the fact that there’s nothing more satisfying and riveting than mastering something you so wanted to be good at, getting rid of a habit, meeting new people or anything that you so wanted to do. We all crave dopamine, don’t we? The soothed thoughts and the intense joy we experience when we do something, we so wanted to do is incredible.

So why can’t we as individuals just make up our mind and do whatever we want to? We all know this evergreen rhetoric that life is short, live it to the full. Well, for starters life isn’t short! Life is long, very long actually. And if you are not living in the moment then it can be painful as well. We all need solutions, solutions to everything. A very simple solution to everything stated above is ‘You need to start living your life’.

May I break your bubble?

There’s always a thing about metaphors. Subtle yet so effective. Sometimes it is hard to find a metaphor to explain something but there’s nothing more soothing than finding the right metaphor for a particular situation. ‘Bubble’ here is one such metaphor.

What is the scope of this article? It is certainly not connected to the physical sense of ‘breaking a bubble’, it is way more philosophical than that. There are many theories as to how your brain works or how you perceive things and how you react to things. One such theory is the ‘The working of your subconscious mind’, i.e., how your subconscious mind conceives everything and what it does with the said conceived data. Now, everything you feel or all your beliefs, reactions, perceptions all stem from the roots of your subconscious mind. Everything you are from the outside is a result of your subconscious mind. Seems pretty sorted and easy to collect, isn’t it? All of this? Whatever is your personality type today, is a result of how you fed things to your subconscious mind and the way it groomed you and will continue to do so. But then there’s the catch!

We don’t realize what sort of information we are feeding to our subconscious mind and what not. Most of us don’t even realize what we have been thinking or maybe believing and unknowingly it shapes us, affects us. Notions like “Be Positive. Think positively”, “All’s well that begins well”, “Keep faith in God and everything will be alright”, and many more find full justification with the above theory. Faith is a completely different thing. Faith is something that gives you strength. Faith is a topic of discussion for some other time.

Coming back to the topic, your perceptions, opinions, views about any particular thing or even about yourself are always debatable. Lots of us think about what is justified and what is not. Lots of us debate about such things. But there are times when we don’t realize what is right and what is not. There are times when we don’t consider the situation’s we are in. We just assume whatever’s on our mind is accurate morally, philosophically and substantially.  

That is what we call living in a bubble.

It can be anything. Your interpretation about something, your perception about something or someone, your assertions, reiterations over any subject. Most of us when we make a decision in our mind don’t want to overthink it, reconsider it. That is when we reside inside a bubble.

Breaking a bubble simply means reconsideration or re-evaluation of what you have been thinking or what you have been made to believe. Social pressure and dominance are things that persuade a lot of us to believe something, we, in our sane minds won’t. Even if you have a logical sense of judgment and assessment, there’s no harm in reconsidering your stance is there? Think more about everything you believe in today and as to why you believe in them. Give yourself time. Make and have opinions instead of following stuff. Stand out and ask yourself what is logical and what is not.