As a child we are often told on how to identify what is wrong and what is right. At school we are instructed to do our homework or learn a certain method of solving the problems. Problems that we have learnt to identify from our day to day lives, not just limited to school, that prevent us from acknowledging or even trying to solve the real problems in life.
Over the years these continuous instructions not only from educational institutions, but rather from all sources of information; religion, culture, history, social media, have made us perceive certain things as the norm and anything else to be abnormal. This has led to our entire perception of good and bad, leading to the conditioning of our brains. So even though our parents and teachers mean nothing but good, these repetitive opinions derived from raw data that haven’t been recessed according to relevancy then wire our brains to do a certain thing and/or react in a certain way when posed with a situation. Therefore creating for us a comfort zone that does not allow us to think and explore for ourselves.
Have you ever applied for a certain position and been rejected even though you met all the specifications because of your race perhaps? The employer didn’t even bother looking at your credentials just because you are an Asian/African and for generations they have been told that Asians/Africans are bad maybe because they might have had one bad encounter. So now they believe in that mentality because they’ve been conditioned to believe that. They follow the set instructions of not hiring a person from a particular race without giving it even the slightest consideration. Do you do this too? Is it right to do so?
So is conditioning good or bad? It all comes down to self-awareness. If you are aware of what is exactly taking place and you weigh it to be helpful then conditioning can be good. However if all we do is blindly agree to everything fed to us then conditioning can be really bad as it stops you from thinking for yourself and keeps you caged. Like a tamed animal in the zoo. The answer to the question is then made quite simple; whether conditioning is good or bad will depend on the extent to which and why we allow our brains to be wired and to the type of information we allow our brain to be conditioned to while being consciously aware of it.
Society will constantly feed us with information that will lead to habits but it is us who have to be keen in understanding what we have been fed with and filtering out what needs to stay and what should be trashed. This can only be done if we get out of our comfort zones, the sooner the better. We need to think for ourselves, process and access and the information at hand. In short it is time we think outside the box, outside the social bubble that may seem like it has made life easy for us but in essence how you perceive and react to this information should be decided by no one but YOU.
Train your brain into thinking positive, train it to understand and accept change when required, train it to be useful and productive, in a way that leads to growth, in a way that creates positive life force and most importantly train it to reassess your perception, why do you think of something the way you do?. Transform your habits by training your brain and being aware of your conditioning; be aware of what information you’re absorbing from your senses and learn how to process it. It could be through following a really strong gut feeling, self-reflection, being informed, and challenging propaganda, being curious, and being honest with your own self.
“I think, therefore I am” – Descartes