THE LEVEL UP LETTER

Hi All!
Here’s your weekly Level Up Letter. This week we’re talking about pattern recognition and how you can use it to your advantage. Hope you enjoy!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

BAADER-MEINHOF PHENOMENON

⁣Ever look at buying a new car and then start to notice them everywhere you look?Commercials, in the parking lot, driving up and down your street. You’re probably experiencing Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

The Baader-Meinhof effect involves two cognitive processes: selective attention and confirmation bias. First, your brain decides that this thing you’ve been researching is important. It brings it into your field of attention. Now that you’re noticing it everywhere, you begin to believe it’s more prevalent than it was before.

If you have a company you can use it to your advantage in marketing. The more people see your product, the higher brand association they build in their mind. That’s why your social feeds tend to send you the same commericals/brands over and over once you’ve clicked on any of their content.

Understanding the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a great reminder of how much power our brains have to shape our perception of the world around us. And how important it is to pay attention to what information you’re consuming.

GROUNDHOG DAY

• What scenes keep playing out in my own life over and over again?

• What part do I play in repeating them?

• How many days in a row have I had the same feeling come up?

• What if I did the opposite next time?

Just like in Ground Hog Day, changing your behaviors will change the outcomes and you can stop reliving the same pattern.

YOU’RE A PATTERN MACHINE

"Over centuries of evolution, humans’ pattern recognition skills determined natural selection. Hunters skilled at spotting prey and predator and telling poisonous plants from healthy ones offered them a better chance of survival than those blind to the patterns. It enabled the survivors to pass on those pattern-friendly genes to future generations." (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2015)

You can thank your neocortex. It’s a part of the brain only found in mammals. The basic structure of the neocortex is organized around groups of neurons called pattern recognizers estimated to number 300 million. Ray Kurzweil proposed that these recognizers can rewire themselves to one another to account for the new visual, number, nature, word, and people patterns we learn over time.

These neural pathways define our behavior. When you set off to achieve a new goal or change a behavior you have to rewire the pathways. If you’re ready to go after new goals or establish new habits, let us help you build the system you need to create new patterns in your life.