People, mind and physics-related writings

Sell Anything Using a Little Psychology Trick

August 5, 2012

An old man (store keeper), behind the couunter on a vintage shop

You’re entering a brand new department store in your town. You’re looking for a new printer. You need nothing more than the thing to be able to print. So, reached the “Printers Department” (How convenient) and started looking at the printers. You have thousand of different brands, sizes, capabilities. You just need it to print, but you suddenly realized you’re going to spend money on the printer so you need at least one that lasts.

One of the new employee sees you and start telling you about the great capabilities of those expensive good-looking printers and tells you to “Buy this one, because it’s the best”. After a while, not yet decided, another employee approaches and begins talking about all the capabilities in general of the printers in stock. He asks you “what do you need?” just as the previous seller asked before telling you which one to buy. This guy instead starts showing you the ones he thinks will last longer (obviously expensive brands, for that is what they try to sell). He tells you that “Any of these are great”, and then leaves because the manager is looking for him.

Continue Reading . . .

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: Language, Psychology

Quoting Pablo Picasso

August 3, 2012

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
Pablo Picasso

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
Pablo Picasso

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
Pablo Picasso

…And that’s it.

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: Quotes

Your gravitational life…

August 2, 2012

Plastic toy planets on the ceiling

People are always concerned about what others think about them. To be fair, that’s how we were made. We are social creatures that base a great part of our life in how other see us. That can be twisted a bit and we all are free to go against that nature. We all are against it, some more than others. Yet what not so many has thought about is how people see other people.

You think, you listen to your conscious and you are aware of that, aware of yourself as someone who thinks, who imagines, who creates. Not always you think about other people as that. You know they are people and you know that they think, imagine and create as well as you do. But you’re not always aware of that.

What this reflexion is about is that people always base their lives in feeding their ego. We are all centered in living our lives doing things we like. Obviously there are many factors that make that statement to change substantially; you can easily find people who don’t like what they do. But in essence we look for gratification and happiness rather that punishment and sadness. So we tend to gather things (people, actions, jobs, hobbies) that make us happy and push away things that not (people we don’t get along with, actions that have bad consequences, boring or degrading jobs and bad hobbies).

Sadly not everybody know what’s good and what’s bad, what will make them happy or sad, which things will help them or not. People try to learn and collect information about that, worried they’re all “on the wrong track”.

So people have a intrinsic property, called by me “Gravity”, that looks for what the person considers good things around and attract them to itself. This property can’t make bad things go away. People are then like planets on an infinite space, each of us with a unique orbit, each of us with our own size and as so our own gravity. We would look for good things to attract to our planet, so they, in some way, protect us from the bad things that we can’t push away.

Photo by ribarnica.

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: People, Psychology, Thoughts

What we listen to is a reflection of ourselves

July 30, 2012

A guy listening to music with big headphones on a black background.

We have different likes on everything but even more different when it comes to music. You hardly will find someone who likes the same artists and groups you do, the same way you do. Perhaps they like U2 more than you.

Anyway, there are different theories of why is that. The most common and widely spread: “we’re all different”. The problem is that it doesn’t explain me anything. Some theory, or philosophical though I like is one from antique Greece, that said our past experiences are the key for our personality or our present. So then, you could like the things you like now because your personal timeline made you do so.

That gives me the key to write this and explain it. We listen what we feel. That’s why I never listen to the same groups all the time. Right, I can listen to the same 20 songs from Incubus, but that doesn’t mean I will, the rest of my life, listen only to that 20 songs (obviously, no).

Haven’t you noticed you listen to different group or even genres when you feel sad that when you feel happy? It’s an actually good example, one that is easily appreciable; happiness is the opposite to sadness. But that applies to every mood you get. We try to stabilize ourselves with music.

But there are exceptions, something that made me think that it’s not how you are that defines what you listen to, but the other way; what you listen to defines how you are. I just came up with this explanation:

Events in your life defined your self as who you are now, as so what you started listening at some point in your life, and what you listen acts over how you are, in a short-term. Then, those short-terms made you change your music styles to look for real “normalizers” (those which stabilize your moods) and you finished with other likes. Likes that reflects who you are in a long-term, and help you with how you are, in a short-term.

Well, I’m no expert here, and this is a so chaotic thought that I don’t think I could explain it in a better way. Is there something you could add in here?

Photo by kayintveen.

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: Psychology

The Real Source of Creativity. Do we know where it comes from?

July 27, 2012

A estranger painting on the beach

Some people tend to complain about how creativity works, how there are “artists” who copy other artists, what “influence” is all about, and that sort of things. They tend to look for the real source of the idea for such a piece of art (not always considered that way). Some look for “original source” from which the author copied his work, some others look for influences from which the author gained knowledge and inspiration to make his work.

So here we are, with two different points of view: the logical objective point of view (the author copied from other(s)) and the “artistic” or subjective point of view (the author have his own influences that made him evolve as an artist, that had some effect on his technique).

Both sides are well argued.

The logical objective view of arts

Everything is based on a simple gathering of information, of data. Such data will subsequently be used to make the final work. An author base his own work in copying others. There’s no such thing as originality in every human being. On the other hand some point out there are just a few “real” artists.

The artistic subjective view of arts

Everything is based of “influence”. An artist was influenced by this and/or that artists along his way of producing an artwork. Creativity exists, as the influences are just something to tell the artist which road to ride on. Creativity tells him how he should go, in what way. Everybody has creativity inside, but most just hide it.

The real source of creativity

People are creative, everyone. Yet creativity is presented in different degrees. We create since we were children when we painted colored dogs, or distorted houses. The simple fact of have painted a red or blue dog makes me believe children are creative.

But where does it go? With time people stop being creative, in elementary school with each year there are less drawings and colors. For the time people reach high-school that’s been forgotten. Just a few remember how to use colors. Just a few are able to write something by themselves not copying others’ work.

So creativity does exist: there are sites like Flickr (photography), deviantART (arts) where anybody can create an account and upload his or her own works. And people do.

But here we crash against the giant wall of time influence. Time and trends make people create just copies of others. You can see Instagram (photography with filters) a thousand one pictures of eyes, shoes and other things most people take pictures because everybody else does.

My little argument

Recently I participated on a “little” argument against a guy who can’t believe in anything unless facts and results are shown to him (Imagine how annoying that may be and multiply the result by 10). The discussion was about Sutori Manga, a blog in which manga writers post articles relating the creation of manga and that sort of things (spanish, here you can see the mentioned argument). The argument followed an article that talked about some old psychology works application on the characters creation. He argued that those kind of articles were useless as they haven’t shown any results.

I followed the argument pointing out some flaws in his writings and “deductions”. He stated those flaws are not as they were not facts that second the theory. Anyway the whole argument ended up being about how people are or not creative, if they can or can’t be, and if there was any method (Now I hate the mere word) to be so, to produce.

There are no methods in creating, no logical methods: we create in a chaotic way. I even tried to point it out in the article about the lines of thoughts I wrote last year, in which I try to propose a theory on an organized way mind is supposed to work. To understand your mind is something difficult. That difficult that still no one can say for sure how it works. There are just hypothesis and a few theories: psychology is just behavior science, to understand the methodology your mind follows is another story.

The real source of creativity is still unknown. Yet I think anyone can have its own way of understanding. If you feel you are more attached to one or the other, please feel free to start a discussion.

Photo by Jose Dreamer.

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: People, Psychology

Quotes on Creativity

July 27, 2012

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try”
Dr. Seuss

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
Aristotle

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while”
Steve Jobs

One that I should have used on “The Real Source of Creativity” article (Yes, will be posted in an hour!)

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
Albert Einstein

And one which could have been used in the previous “Looking for perfection” article:

“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it”
Salvador Dali

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: Quotes

Looking for perfection everywhere, even people

July 24, 2012

Since I was a kid I was always looking for perfection. In studies, drawing, even while playing Legos. I always felt we live in a perfect world. So perfect, it doesn’t allow perfection: it is perfect by making everything imperfect. Imperfect, not bad. We could have a “perfect” painting, but we all know it could be better some way. That’s what I like about life: everything, and everyone can be improved.

Yet the latter is a little more complicated.

“People don’t change” is what Dr. House always says on the series and it can be believed, but this is how I think it should be: people tend not to change, but to stay the same. I don’t think Gregory House would say that, so great he sticked with the first one.

People tend not to change their looks, their minds, their actions because we all are constantly building our own image. And to have to change it is frustrating: we feel that building it costed years and years of “behaving” as it. And we’re not wrong. The amount of information you can gather from a person is the same as the information anyone can gather about the same person. We all have “public information” that most of it we let people know. Obviously we share different things according to the social circle, but in a matter of information, there will be some thing you haven’t said to anyone and that you won’t, ever. The rest is public, even when said as a secret.

“About what hasn’t been said, and hasn’t been written, no one regrets.”

So our image, as we see it, is a mixed salad of our personal private information, and our public information. What’s important to know is that there are more public things than private. We are social beings, so sharing is like breathing. Yet we are careful by nature to keep some things private, and as so you will always give more importance to that private information: it’s the only thing we know for sure define us as a unique human being. No one knows about it, just us. It’s like a password to our soul, the only thing that keeps others out of your person. It doesn’t even matter that others have the same ‘password’.

So people are perfect by being imperfect, by having secrets and unique not-so-unique thoughts. Call me too emotional with this thought. But I actually find people perfectly made. Being made by God, the Big Bang, Arceus‘ or whatever, I find people perfect. Yet it doesn’t stop me from disliking other people (How ironic is that?… It’s logical).

Now seeing perfect as a concept. What the heck is it? A drawing can be perfect, or perfectly done, the first talking about impression, the latter about procedure. A computer can be perfect while talking about design, or inside hardware (and yet, it’s always improving). But can it, really, be called perfect? That’s why I consider everything imperfect, and therefore perfect. It’s easier to handle the concept. At least for me.

Everything can be well-done, not perfect, and that structure of try/fail/try-better is great. That’s what I see around. The only thing I can’t still stand are school tests, that rate a student’s “intelligence” or knowledge, or anything. Can you actually rate something 10/10? Is it actually perfect? Be realistic!

Photo by Spreng Ben.

Any thoughts?

By Mathias San Miguel | In: People, Thoughts