My wife recently competed in the Re/Max Women’s Keel boat sailing championships. Held at the Kelowna Yacht Club. It was fantastic, the wind did what it does here (a bit irregular) but the event was run perfectly.
I had the opportunity to be in the group that listened to protests from competitors on rule infractions and was that interesting.
To protect the innocent I will modify the story a bit. A competitor protested another boat for fouling them. Lets say, boat ‘B’ said boat ‘A’ cut off boat B and sailed upwind of them. A said they did no such thing and A sailed happily downwind of them!
Forget the alleged ‘cut off’, one group said they went up and the other said down and they where very, very sure of their stories. How can this be? The actual “judge” that came into town to make sure we did things correctly said this happens all the time.
He normally goes out on the water with his tape recorder and records all close calls and fouls he sees so when they get back to the protest room he can refresh his memory and have the correct decision, otherwise most of these protests would never get solved.
We had some video from a drone helicopter showing some of these situations and when you hear the boats describe it before you see the video you could not believe it when you actually see what did happen. Lets just say the video normally told a different story.
Why is this? Well it has to do with stress and memory. The more stressed out you get the more of your senses go haywire. But your senses don’t tell you that. So you can literally have one eye turn off and get monocular vision, which will radically limit your depth perception. You can read hundreds of stories of quarterbacks in big games not hearing the crowds yell. They are so focused and wound up their ears turn off, amazing but true.
Then there is your memory, or specifically how you transfer sensory data into short and medium term memory. Put it like this, if you don’t do it a lot, take a race, process it and sort out the ‘facts’ in your short term memory and then push it to medium term memory all while continuing to race, your going to do a poor job. But again your memory is not going to tell you that. Heck even if you do, the judge has been to world championships and the world best sailors have opposing stories as well.
What has this to do with regular life. Well I have spent a few afternoons talking to people about their recollection of past traumas, life events and other various memories. I can tell you their recalled stories are about as true and clear as a sailors. But again their memory is just not letting them know that, and most of us are suffering for it.
Many, many of our experiences are not as good or bad as we think. I encourage you to challenge your thinking and memory. Ask yourself is there any possibility you could be a little, or a lot, off on your recollection. Ask some others about the event and be open to what you hear, because neither of you likely have the story correct.
I am not saying your abuse did not happen or you did not suffer when a loved one died. More the guy that cut you off in traffic was not out to get you. Or the office worker that ‘snubbed’ you for not saying hello, likely was not out to get you either. So many of life’s protests are not exactly as you remember them.
If you want to see how you observe and transfer information to your brain with a few tests try these youtube video’s here.
To see some of the pics of the race click here.
To see a cool drone video of it click here.
Be Well,
Ward Willison
allbodycare.com
Acupuncture & Other Natural Therapies