“Distortion is when we make things either much better or much worse than they really are. We do that using our imagination. So this can be useful or not useful for us. If you think about something going well, how does it usually make you feel?
And if you think about what might go horribly wrong, how does that make you feel?
So, we know that thinking about bad stuff will make us feel…bad. And thinking about good stuff will make us feel …good.
Who here has ever made themselves feel bad because of a bad thought – it could be a thought about a bad thing from the past, a thought about a bad thing that might happen?
If you’ve ever read a good book and had some idea about how the characters look and how their voices sound, you are using distortion, because unless the book has pictures, you are just looking at black letters on a white page, but you use your imagination to make the story come to life.
I’m going to give you an example of how your brain can also make sense of things that are already distorted.”
I hand out sheets with this on and ask the people who can make sense of it to read it out
“Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!”
