#Swimmers Body Illusion

When a situation occurs (for you or the people around you) and you notice that situation. The Brain analysis it in many possible ways by the end concludes with a statement regarding that particular situation which you believes all your life.
     
                                                                  Lets say for example , If your friend scores high percentile of marks reading a specific publication material then your brain firmly states that the percentile of marks obtained by your friend is result of the material he used. So when you go out to buy some material for yourself then your brain suggests that specific name without any delay.

Just analyse it twice? Is that the potential of your friend made him score high or the material is solely responsible for his high score? There are ample of similar situations in everyone's day to day life where incorrect brain analysis occurs.

Recently while reading a book called 'The art of thinking clearly" by Rolf dobelli i came across a concept called "The Swimmers Body Illusion" which gave me a clear outline of why very frequently out brain commits mistakes in such type of analysis.

The Swimmers Body Illusion :

This Concept describe the thought process we go through when we see an athlete with a perfect physic. Assume yourself looking at a professional swimmer with a perfect physical structure. Your brain makes a statement that the swimmer has got good physical structure because of  intense training and it makes you believe that by continuous training even you can achieve the same results as that swimmer, Which is not true.

Elongated arms help you to be a champion swimmer

A Champion swimmer need Long arms, Broad shoulders etc, There is nothing to do with training to make your arms long right? So the champion swimmers do not have perfect bodies because of swimming but they became champion swimmers because they have perfect body.

This illusion occurs because we ignore the selection process. In order to be a champion athlete we need to go through a selection process where we must meet the basic criteria required for that sport/game.

Examples :

• A min leg length of 99 cm to be a pilot
• A min height of 7 feet to be an outstanding NBA player.

The best NBA players are minimum 7 feet height so that they are trained well to play more efficiently, but no player with 5 feet height can perform best in the same sport with same training provided. ( Not to insult short people here but this particular sport needs height to take an advantage out of it )

Make an advantage of what you have

The similar illusion occurs in case of best colleges or universities. Are they the best universities because they produce best students or they are best universities because they have best students??

Go through the above statements once again.. The universities provide only facilities but the real potential are the best students who choose to be in that particular universities. The university select the best students around the world by selection process and thus becomes the best university.

This type of illusion is the basic idea of behind the Advertisement. By repeated ads they make you feel that you can be a champion by their training but see how many turn to be champions at the end of the day. Many of us returns home as loser not because we were not trained well but because we did not choose the field fit for us.

This theory doesn't stop here but comes into real life as well. Recently i have joined my Niece in one of the so called best colleges here to study +2 in medical stream. Along with her i saw many ( Like thousands of people ) joining their daughters to become doctors. I have understood the reason for joining that so called best college is either one of the parents or the daughter have strong belief that the college can make anyone a doctor by their training methods. But what the ultimate results prove is that not the training methods but the potential in the individual to make use of their training makes them doctors but not the training solely responsible for them to become doctors.

Many of us are going in the path laid by  these illusions and trying to do something which do not belong to us. You have got certain special abilities which can make you unique , trust them instead of these illusions and achieve your goal.

So, Instead of following illusions like this follow your instincts and Choose your field based on your abilities so that you can make an advantage out of it.

#Trust your abilities #Not Illusions    #MindMac