We’re all familiar with the placebo effect in medicine and the highly scrutinized but mystifying success that has been experienced using it. It is a procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than the physiological effect, and sometimes the results are quite amazing. In the best selling book Mind Over Medicine, author and M.D. Lissa Rankin goes into great detail on this phenomena and the amazing results of the power of the mind.
It’s become clear that the expectations of the patient play an important role in the placebo effect. This is what lights up for me in this scenario. I’m seeing the placebo effect not only in terms of the power of the mind, but the power of perception as well. Patients perceive that they’re getting better, and in many documented cases, they do. Mind Over Medicine goes into great detail on this. So why not utilize this cognitive anomaly in another fashion?
The Problem
You continually see yourself as a sideliner in many social and business atmospheres due to a lack of confidence spurred on by your feelings of intellectual inadequacy in all too many areas, thus, you label yourself as a potential introvert and more importantly see yourself as invisible.
The Solution
Take the placebo effect and give it a twist. Swallow the “insane amount of confidence” placebo-pill and give yourself a mental boost by; 1) understanding more clearly that every individual is just as limited as you in many ways. 2) turning yourself into a whirlwind of inquisitiveness which boosts your desire to approach any conversation. 3) striving to creatively visualize some sort of counterintuitive approach to engaging in the subject at hand. 4) listening hard and becoming a master at thought-provoking questions. 5) honing your skills at seeing alternative commonalities to the subject matter which you’re able to bring up and expound upon. 6) embracing emotional labor, that part of you that brings adventure and risk to the table.
Each one of these steps is easily attainable with a simple decisional change of “mental” attitude, congruent with the mental aspects of a successful placebo. With no basic change in your intellectual capacities, your ability to become a more socially involved individual in any situation expands greatly. You’ve simply changed your perception of yourself by implementing a placebo type strategy coupled with a little extra thinking on your part. And the research shows that placebos do sometimes work. What have you got to lose here?
Some Thoughts
To be clear: I hope you can see this is not about trying to enact false impressions, or becoming a well crafted fabricator of details. We’ve simply opened up a few new communication devices that were previously not within your grasp under the guise of striving for that insane amount of confidence.
Also, I believe that in terms of the placebo effect, one’s “belief system” seriously comes into play. Let me quickly expound on this.
As an example, let’s take the statement; I believe I can quit smoking. The overtones of that statement need to be acknowledged. If “I’m” hearing someone make that statement, by no means am I convinced in any way that it will absolutely happen. What I hear is someone’s intention to quit smoking, and time will tell whether it comes into fruition, or not. The word “believe” in their statement is acting as a goal rather than a reality.
There is a vast amount of documentation out there that empirically states for that goal to actually become a reality; it will have to move from a conscious state of believing to the subconscious state of a belief. This seems to be at the heart of the placebo effect, having that subconscious belief that it will work.
In terms of this new perception of yourself, it goes beyond just believing you can do it to owning the belief that you can do it. The semantics get a little tricky here, but the point is well made. And in terms of having a better understanding of that new perception of yourself, (especially as related to my solution) let me leave you with few words to consider from the man.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Albert Einstein
