We are born cool

And here we are! We would have never imagined this would happen one day. Cooliomind.

We, though, would have never imagined a pandemic, a world upside down, connections disconnected, silence. But the Phoenix, this super cool mythological bird that cyclically regenerates and is born again from its own ashes, is a standing out symbol right now.

From so much shattering and chaos, we can come out wiser. We have reflected and in the slowing down period, opportunities have risen. We read books, articles and the context; we listened to ourselves, to podcasts and to people and thought that part of this disaster can be used to better ourselves. And to help each other to grow from those ashes and shine.

Slow has been our learning. Slower could be the processes of our brain if we knew them, slower then could be our actions and decisions, slower can become the ticking of the clock, slower can become our life, and what's more important than this when we, more than in any other period, know that this time is the only chance?

We think slow has been under-valued for a long time, in fact for far too long this has been an offensive way to describe something or someone.

Everything has gone too fast, the world is living a time when there is no waiting and patience anymore. We order online and it's there a few hours later. Prime delivery, Netflix series. You can have it all and you can have it now. Without mentioning relationships, food, holidays, fashion and social media. We don't have that beautiful feeling of waiting for our first sweetheart's postcard from the holidays with their parents. Their holiday is streaming live on Facebook. There is no wait anymore for the next episode of your favourite series, you can have all of them on your telly and binge them till 4 am in the morning. No sweet anticipation and waiting for that intro, we skip it nowadays.

Italy, my sunny home country, has started the Slow Food movement in 1986, nearly 40 years ago but we still complain when our food is not promptly served a few minutes after the order because we have schedules that are so tight that even pleasure is a chore and a box to tick off. The Slow movement is becoming more popular but only a bunch of hippies is actually practicing it. Why? What are our beliefs about slow?

Our brain consistently learn and

it has learnt through the years that waiting and going slow is bad stuff, is not productive and it's not efficient. But what if we realised that we have been fooling ourselves all this time?

Sternberg once wrote, “the essence of intelligence would seem to be in knowing when to think and act quickly, and knowing when to think and act slowly.” Or even better said, a deficiency in slow thinking could undermine our performance and as Kringelbach said "slowness may even be a hallmark of the ‘healthy’ brain". Maybe then slow can be better than rushed, can be more qualitative than quick, can be more satisfying than fast, can be more full of purpose than rapid.

Our purpose at Cooliomind is to offer you knowledge about the automatic and habitual processes going on in that cool mind of yours, to help anyone slowing the universal fast pace down, so that instead of rushing into life and its choices unconsciously, we can act with full awareness.

For example, if I told you that your behaviours are more or less likely to happen depending from elements of your current and past context (which includes your brain) rather than depending from your motivation? This piece of information could help you to slow down and to analyse what's going on in and around you (so to be able to modify certain variables) and you would not wait for the feeling of motivation before starting a task.

Do you want to know more and join us in this exciting journey?

We are here, to sit down with you and your mind.

#behaviour #neuroscience

References:

Kringelbach, M.L., McIntosh, A.R., Ritter, P. et al. (2015). The rediscovery of slowness: Exploring the timing of cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19 (10): 616–628.

Martell, C. R., Addis, M. E. & Jacobson, N. S. (2001) Depression in Context: Strategies for Guided Action. Norton.

Sternberg, R. J. (1999) The theory of successful intelligence, Review of General Psychology, 3, 292–316.