 Good mental health. I'm your host Matt Kelly. I'm pleased to be joined once again by my co-host, our behavior expert and solutions-focused life coach out of Woodstock, Vermont, Dr. Neil Maranello. Neil is always, it's a pleasure having you on the show. My pleasure too, Matt. I love our topic for today because it feels like it's a natural progression from our other two shows. We started this series with the topic, I am the most important person in the world to me, followed by there is no part of you that is not a part of me. And today's topic is just a natural tie-in, I feel. And that is, each of us lives in our own reality. Neil, why don't you talk about what the thoughts are behind that statement? Sure, sure. Well, to begin with, let's imagine what it's like to be a baby and what it's like to grow up. And you have what I think Locke was the person who called it a tabula rasa, which is Latin for a blank slate. But the truth is that we have certain hereditary characteristics, but the reality is that as babies, we really have very unformed brains. And those brains get fed certain amounts of data. That data is based on the experiences that we have and the way that we interpret those experiences. I talked to I think before about the fact that every baby has two mothers, the one that feeds them when they're hungry and the one that changes the diaper when they're hungry. The reality is that the experience of the child is very simple, but we all grow up and we all grow up experiencing and interpreting things that happen to us as our brains develop and our brains are very undeveloped at first. The other problem is that what we're told by the giants who control our lives, our parents or the other nurturing people in our lives. It's accepted, even if those giants are wrong in what they're saying to us. And the truth is that we may discuss this at some future time. Another basic precept that I have is that there are no grownups at any rate the supposed grownups who are bringing us up are telling us all kinds of things that we accept the same way a computer accepts what you program it with. And the problem is that if you tell a computer that two and two is three, it not only believes that, it also believes that four and four is six. And it develops from that to 400 and 400 and 600 and whatever other levels, it leads us to, which of course pre-exists to a reality which is not reality. It's not what is things as they are. The other thing to be aware of is that there's an argument that can be made that belief is the most strong force in the universe. And so I gave a sermon at our church one time titled beliefs are us. And I talked about the variety of beliefs that each of us accept as truth as fact. People nowadays right in the present, who are dealing with the fact that that that they're ready to die for beliefs which are not provable as fact, which are even questionable. And so you have the concept that goes with the mental health community of a delusion. And then there's basically a fixed false belief. And, but if it's fixed, it's very hard to mess with by virtue of it's being fixed. So you have this difficulty that if you actually believe something to be true. It controls your behavior and it controls what you what you see as reality. So I follow this through and you know try to relate in my own words how this is important, you know, I'm an amalgam of all my experiences from the time I came to the womb to today. And those experiences color my outlook. To use it maybe even as just a more simple explanation. Someone who's color blind or someone who's blind has a very different reality than someone who has sight or the full color spectrum of their site. Someone who is deaf. Who hears no sound has a very different reality than someone who does hear sound. So, you know when we think about that then then that in essence there are seven billion different realities on this planet that that we inhabit. Yes, yes. In fact, perception is often perceived as reality. And what we perceive may or may not be what is, for example, without even going to the deaf blind examples that you gave, we can say what you see as blue and what I see as blue, maybe two different things. We both call it blue. There's no way for you to know that I'm seeing the same thing you're saying. So, the fact is that perception determines what we see as reality. And this sort of goes back to something that you were talking about in our previous conversation which you know it's perception, but it's also, what did you say I think interpretation, how you significant what you see for example. You know someone may be out there who sees racism at every turn and oppression, whereas I myself I look and I see abundance everywhere. But we may be looking at the same city the same society and yet to very different distinct perceptions and to very different realities as a result. Yes, the two words that apply here are significant, which, as I said is kind of a made up word and projection. So, when you see something. You put onto that something that's coming from inside you, as well as whatever it is that you're observing and observations are very clearly different. People seeing the same thing and describing the same thing doesn't look like the same thing. We talked about that before the Basque concept. But the reality is that that even in science, you have the, the fact that placebos are major determinants of what a person experiences. So if you believe something is going to work, it's much more likely to work than if you don't believe that it's going to work. There's a flip side to the placebo which we call the no sebo. And the no sebo is if you expect something bad to happen, something bad is more likely to happen. Expectation can create reality. I've heard before to the time when you were suicidal as a moment in time when you felt that you were inside the tunnel of darkness, I think was the term. Yeah, tunnel of darkness. That particular way of looking at it led you to a suicide attempt that was very serious. If you looked at it from a perspective of you are not inside the tunnel, but the tunnel was inside you. There's just one thing that one way of perceiving things. And that in fact, there's all kinds of other ways of perceiving things. It probably would have been easier for you to keep from trying to off yourself. You know, as we, again, we go back to perception and we go back to reality. We all live in our own reality. And that's the question, the nature of reality and you might then just say the nature of reality is really perception and, and, and there's significant gap. There actually are a variety of philosophers and psychologists that can buy into that concept. And there's some science that backs it up. And at the Heisenberg concept when you look at the fact that anytime you, you look at something you change it. There are constructivists in the psychological community who believe that that this wall behind me is not really a wall. Right. It's something that I'm projecting onto it and the and in the sense, you know, as we get down to the, you know, what do we call it the quantumness of reality? You know that chair that you're sitting in actually isn't a chair but molecules that are spinning around creating a vibration. And that's the form that it takes. And there's actually more air than matter in that, in that form. There's more nothing than there is anything. And yeah, and I'm not expecting that I'm going to fall through it, but scientifically it's possible. Even so, I don't plan to walk through the wall behind me. And my expectation is that that until I get to the quantum level of things. The assumptions are real, but then you've got things like like Newton's law of gravity, which is stands up pretty well until you start messing around with with Einstein. Well, and so if we go back again to the theme of today's show again, we all live in our own reality, and it's all subjective. Right. And it makes it I would think quite difficult to try to interact with others who are also in their own reality. Well, that's where to me, I get excited, because everybody has a different reality. And if I can get inside their heads and see the world as they see that see it. They have a chance to actually mess with their delusions have a chance to actually change their perceptions in by by showing them that there's a different way of thinking than that the way they have been thinking. And it's very hard for people to change the way they're thinking, but everybody wants to do their best and if they see that what they're doing is not their best. And that's the things that will enable them to to grow rather than travel. Most people will consider that possibility. And that's the key from my point of view to changing people for the better. Speaking with Dr. Neil Maranello here on Good Mental Health our topic today is each of us lives in our own reality. This is a follow up to our first two podcasts we began our series with the statement that I am the most important person in the world to follow by, there is no part of you that is not a part of me and again, our topic today is each of us lives in our own reality and if again I'm projecting forward, what I see and what I interpret from view as this image in front of me again. It bears no basis in actual fact, I guess. And so in a sense if I'm to actually bring that into me. You know, I think I'm an amalgam of my experiences but that's also not entirely full because I'm also an amalgam of people's reaction to me. And the reality that that reaction creates out in the world. That's correct. Let me see if we can make it a little more practical. I'll give you an example. Back in the old days when I could afford a secretary. I had a new client coming in, and I was sitting in my office finishing off with the previous client. And there was somebody sitting in the outer office with my secretary and with the secretary as the new client came in. And the new client. Looked at the at my secretary and said, it's one o'clock my appointment with the doctors at one o'clock. Where is he. And she said well he's, he's right now meeting with someone he'll be with you in a minute. And she turned to the person who was sitting and waiting for the client I was with and said, that's the only chair I can sit in you're going to have to move. I have a bad back. And the person got up and moved to another chair. And even though I was in a soundproof room I could feel the tension in my office and finished off with the client I was with and I ushered that person out. The new client came to the door and I introduced myself. And she walked in and, and soon as I closed the door she said, she turned into a little girl. She looked like a five year old and she looked at me and she said, do you think I was assertive enough. In my mind, I was saying, you're already so assertive that you're more aggressive than 99% of the people I've run into. At the same time in her mind she was a chicken. In her mind she was a child who wasn't standing up for herself enough. And that's the, that's a good example of the kind of ways in which the way you think about yourself controls how you behave and how other people perceive you. I almost felt like saying to her, without going any further. I think I know one of your problems. Again, we, we look at the question here. Each of us lives in our own reality. For me, I think about it and I see why war can can occur because of the self righteousness of the belief of someone's reality. And you gave just sort of an example of it right there with the female client. Yeah. Yeah, I think that we, what most of us don't realize is that the animal part of our brain operates on a survival level. And that existed long before the cerebral cortex. And on the survival level, you basically have the for what they call the four F's in the textbook it reads fleeing fighting. The fourth one is is mating feeding is the third one. So we have feeding fleeing fighting and mating. That's the way it reads in the textbook. The, the bottom line on it is though that those four things are basically primitive animal things, and they are what we turn to in its most primitive state. And when we feel that something very strongly, it's that part of our brain that's reacting. So the bottom line on it is that we're animals reacting as animals that are looking at feeding fleeing fighting or mating as the primary issue. The reality is that very few issues are that primitive. But we see it that way, and we react that way. On the bottom line that comes down to good guys bad guys that comes down to cowboys and Indians good guys bad guys Israelis and Palestinians blacks and whites whatever other combination of you know, super simplistic way of looking at the world that divides it into into a dichotomous way that has everything is one way or the other, and you're on one side or the other and if you're not on one side, you must be on the other. The truth is that that probably one of the truest things that anyone said was when Abraham Lincoln said the best way to destroy my enemies is to make them my friends. When you in fact understand and get inside the mind of your enemy. You have to realize that there's no real difference between that person and you. And so you wind up then being in a position where you can see. Well, it's like in any in any war, the generals truly understand how each other think, you know, they're each trying to out out and over the other. Right. The only way to do that is to get inside the head of the other general. You know, if you're one of my personal beliefs here is that you know it's a life force that connects us all, even though we are, in essence, living our own reality there's a life force that is directly connected to you. For me, if there are seven billion different realities right now, and not, you know, taking into account all the realities that have come before, then life force is having a tremendous experience of itself of these over seven billion different realities that it gets to experience. Yeah, yeah, I think that what makes it a little bit easier is realizing that they're really a limited number of ways of thinking. And so you may have seven billion different experiences of reality, and that is true. But there are only so many ways that those seven billion people can categorize their realities. It has to do with how the brain functions, how the minds function, and the assumption and life force that you're talking about, I would call the subconscious I would call the soul I would call the part of us which is not quantifiable but is clearly there for any of us that operate on levels beyond what is tactile and materialistic. So it's a little simpler than that. Otherwise, I couldn't do my job. In order to do my job, I really need to think the way the person I'm talking to was thinking. And it's basically a curiosity issue but I keep asking questions, and I keep checking out I keep hypothesizing, you know, what I think I'm good at is, if everybody is a puzzle that's 100 pieces. I'm pretty good at if I get 25 or 30 pieces kind of painting and the rest, but I'm always open to the possibility that one of the pieces is doesn't fit the way I have it. And the flexibility that's required to change my perception of your perception is what enables me to hopefully help you. And, you know, I want to again then just bring this back to our general audience here in terms of what why is it important to kind of keep that concept in in the forefront of our minds that each of us lives in our own reality. You know I think I can see why it's important but share with us why you think you know others should try to keep that as as a as a concept in the forefront. Because otherwise you wind up in that primitive part of your brain. Otherwise you wind up deciding that you're a good guy and someone else is a bad guy. Otherwise you wind up playing around with with good versus evil or crazy versus good versus evil. The simple reality is that if you understand that everybody has their perception of reality, and that the real issue is are they hurting anybody that perception. That seems to me to be the cross cut. The truth is that when you really look at the issues of mental health mental illness and that kind of stuff. They're just labels they're just categories. They're just things which need to be judged based on how much of a problem a person is to other people or to themselves. There's something that I realized a long time ago which is that there are many more people walking around the earth with perceptions of reality that are completely different from reality. Then there are people in mental hospitals who are called crazy. The real determination of whether you wind up in a mental hospital or a jail is how much of a pain in the ass you are. To the extent that you bother other people or yourself. You wind up getting categorized labels and sent into an institution or getting getting categorized in such a way that you wind up not being able to be free to do your own thing. And that feels today like what part of our problem may be is that it feels as though others are demanding that other people accept their version of reality and conform to their vision of reality. And like you said, making the other person wrong for not accepting your framework of reality. Yeah, the whole idea of I'm right, you're wrong. Doesn't make any sense to me unless you unless you determine it on the basis of who's getting hurt and how much. And it's not that that it's not right to hurt people because it is, but my belief is that it's not right to hurt people unnecessarily. If hurting somebody is the only way to teach them something they need to learn. Then, to a great degree, I'm a teacher because I do hurt people who I meet with, especially if they are hurting others or themselves. And that I then again is probably the the tenets of this question here is that each of us lives in our own reality and you're welcome to it and free to live in it as long as it does not harm others or require others to accept your version of truth. Yeah, it's that we talked about it before the concept of laying your trip on someone else. It's your trip. Yeah. You know, people don't don't really understand how much laying their trip on someone else can be a problem. You know, trying to think of a historical example. The pilgrims wound up going into Holland and walking into the bars in Holland and screaming you guys should not be drinking. And as you can do just about anything with the Dutch people except take away their freedom to get stoned. And the result was that they got kicked out and wound up coming over here and laying their trip on the Indians. Excuse me on the Native Americans. But you have this this entire idea of what I believe is what's right. And what you believe is what's wrong and that gives me the right to lay my trip on you. Whether you're Great Britain or whether you're you know the cowboys or whether you're you believe that might makes right. You believe that how wealthy you are determines whether you're right or wrong. That's all a bunch of crap. It's just it's a real issue is that what's right is what your gut tells you was right. That doesn't hurt yourself or other people. And speaking with Dr. Neil Maranello, our topic today is we each live in our own reality. The topics are picked from tweets that Dr. Neil Maranello posts on his Twitter page you're welcome to follow him directly at coach Dr. Neal. And you know why don't you wrap up our session here today with your final thoughts on the topic. And how you know we can apply that to our everyday lives and use it to move us forward in our everyday lives again the the topic is each of us lives in our own reality. I think the basic idea here is to accept that your perception is not reality. But to the extent that your perceptions give you permission to harm yourself or others, you need to re examine them that in any situation you either grow or shrivel. If you stay the same. You're, you're dealing with the most important prayer that anybody ever developed from my perspective, which is the serenity prayer. And that is someone wants to ask me how do you do what you do how do you see as many people. As many problems as you see and still stay in a positive space. And my answer was, I think I understand the serenity prayer. I accept what I can change I change what I can, and I'm smart enough to know the difference. Not always, but I do the best I can, and everybody is doing the best they can. So, if you want to do the best you can be aware of the fact that your perceptions are not reality. And I love this because it segues right into our next week's conversation, which is no one is better than anyone else, and you sort of just touched on it there. And I just I love the way that our conversations go because they naturally continue and and follow into our next topic. I think that good mental health we do this each and every week if you have a question of Dr. Neil Maranello, you're welcome to ask the question in the comments section. We also invite you to subscribe and like this podcast and join us next week. On behalf of Dr. Neil Maranello, I'm that Kelly wishing you good mental health.