This doesn’t have to turn into something


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In 1944, an absolutely fascinating study was conducted.

Fritz Heider and Marianne Simme showed a group of people a short video that included two triangles, a circle, and a square.

It’s only 90 seconds long, but I can already tell how you’ll probably respond.

I don’t want to spoil the outcome, so please watch.

It doesn’t even have audio, so you can watch anywhere, and think about how it makes you feel.

We Love Stories

Now that you’ve watched it…what’s going on?

As explained in David Eagleman's “The Brain - The Story of You”:

"When people watched this short film and were asked to describe what they saw, you might expect that they described simple shapes moving around. After all, It's just a circle and two triangles changing coordinates.
But that's not what the viewers reported.
They described a love story, a fight, a chase, a victory. Heider and Simmel used this animation to demonstrate how readily we perceive social intention all around us.
Moving shapes hit your eyes, but we see meaning and motives and emotion, all in the form of a social narrative.”

We humans LOVE stories and will automatically apply narrative and emotion and feeling to inanimate objects even if they don’t exist:

Heck, I wrote Level Up Your Life, about looking at your own life through the lens of the famous “Hero’s Journey” narrative structure.

(By the way, I reacquired the rights to my book, and will be putting out a revised version of it in 2025!)

I can’t think of a more important and relevant example of this than our relationship with food.

Let’s say you ate a donut for breakfast this morning.

If you’re currently “on a diet,” then you might have a narrative or apply a story to this decision:

“I’m a loser who can’t stick with my diet, I have no self-control, I’m a failure who is addicted to sugar, today is ruined, I'm a bad person.”

Here’s the thing: Even though we’re wired to apply narrative and story to everything…

We can decide that not everything needs to be a story, or a narrative. Especially when those narratives aren’t serving us.

Is this story serving you?

Sometime around 170AD, the emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius wrote a note to himself in his journal (We now know this journal to be called Meditations.)

In that journal, he wrote a reminder that’s as relevant now as it was back then:

"You don't have to turn this into something.
It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves."

Every day things happen around us, or to us, or we make a decision or take an action, and our brains react to those things in a way that will dictate how the rest of our day will go.

Let’s look at our donut example from before. What if we decided this doesn’t “have to turn into something?”

“I wanted a donut. I enjoyed each bite, I ate it slowly and noticed the texture and flavor. Not only that, but I was with my kids that I only get to see every other weekend.
And then we all went for a walk and I ate a salad for lunch.

Just because our brains invent a narrative doesn’t mean we need to accept it as truth. Remember, “the past isn’t set in stone.”

In both events, the same event occurred.

In one instance, we let past stories dictate our future behavior. In the other, we decide to question that narrative, decide to not let it “turn into something.”

What’s a story that’s no longer serving you, and how can you change it today?

-Steve

Level Up Enterprises Inc. - 1831 12th Ave S. Unit 271, Nashville, TN 37203
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Hi there. I'm Steve.

I founded Nerd Fitness way back in 2009. Wherever you are coming from, I’m glad you are here. Every week, I send out a short email that’s guaranteed to make you live a tiny bit better, think a little deeper, and overcome the obstacles that get in the way.

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