The power of the brain is so immense our own minds can hardly perceive its own capabilities. Our brains are composed of hundreds of billions of neurons and interconnections. Our brains can process over two million bits of information in 1 second and it never forgets anything we’ve ever seen, heard or experienced. This is such an enormous capacity it is no wonder people experience an unseen force of the mind, which directly alters their experiences. One scientific example of this force or power is what is called the placebo effect. A placebo effect is a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment.
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Just in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were experiments and studies beginning to be performed. One of the earliest was in 1898 by psychologist Norman Triplett, who found that cyclists performed with better times when they were competing against others in races as compared to when they raced alone. The power of the mind is seen in every aspect of our lives. But it is especially effective in sports, where athletes are constantly pushing their emotional and physical strength past their normal abilities to such a point where only the powerful ability of the mind can be harnessed to push them past even the strongest most skilled competitors. So if the mind is such a powerful tool, how does it do what it does? Our minds are constantly gathering information from environmental stimuli, such as smell and sound, then interpreting this information and storing it for later recognition, thus forming perception. Perception also includes how we respond to the information. Completely, perception is a process where we take in sensory information from our environment and use that information to interact with our environment. Of course there is the great unknown as to what is the difference between reality and perception? A person’s perception of something is his or her reality but this perception of the same thing can differ for someone else’s perception. So …show more content…
Speaking from first hand experience of participating in organized sports, I can agree that I have experienced differences in perceived exertion within myself depending on different variables on any given day, even though I may have been exerting the same amount of effort each time. For example, my motivation can directly influence how hard I perceive a workout is. During basketball practice if I was having a particularly positive day and felt excited to go to basketball practice I would practice very hard but it wouldn’t feel that hard or painful. Then if the next day I wasn’t feeling very motivated to go to practice, I would put in the same amount of effort as last practice but it would feel significantly harder and I would feel the pain in my muscles a lot more. The day I had a good practice, I was excited and happy. These feelings of emotion helped me to be more positive during practice, which altered my perception of it. Instead of seeing practice as hard I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was easy, feeling like I could run forever. But the next day my unmotivated emotions influenced me to experience a hard practice because that’s what I was anticipating and therefore perceived and
Just in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were experiments and studies beginning to be performed. One of the earliest was in 1898 by psychologist Norman Triplett, who found that cyclists performed with better times when they were competing against others in races as compared to when they raced alone. The power of the mind is seen in every aspect of our lives. But it is especially effective in sports, where athletes are constantly pushing their emotional and physical strength past their normal abilities to such a point where only the powerful ability of the mind can be harnessed to push them past even the strongest most skilled competitors. So if the mind is such a powerful tool, how does it do what it does? Our minds are constantly gathering information from environmental stimuli, such as smell and sound, then interpreting this information and storing it for later recognition, thus forming perception. Perception also includes how we respond to the information. Completely, perception is a process where we take in sensory information from our environment and use that information to interact with our environment. Of course there is the great unknown as to what is the difference between reality and perception? A person’s perception of something is his or her reality but this perception of the same thing can differ for someone else’s perception. So …show more content…
Speaking from first hand experience of participating in organized sports, I can agree that I have experienced differences in perceived exertion within myself depending on different variables on any given day, even though I may have been exerting the same amount of effort each time. For example, my motivation can directly influence how hard I perceive a workout is. During basketball practice if I was having a particularly positive day and felt excited to go to basketball practice I would practice very hard but it wouldn’t feel that hard or painful. Then if the next day I wasn’t feeling very motivated to go to practice, I would put in the same amount of effort as last practice but it would feel significantly harder and I would feel the pain in my muscles a lot more. The day I had a good practice, I was excited and happy. These feelings of emotion helped me to be more positive during practice, which altered my perception of it. Instead of seeing practice as hard I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was easy, feeling like I could run forever. But the next day my unmotivated emotions influenced me to experience a hard practice because that’s what I was anticipating and therefore perceived and