Immune to Reality Essay

â€Å"Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty. † (William Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida) (Gilbert 133)This quote pertains to the mind protecting and or lying to you to not be harmed, which has been proved in test today. Immune To Reality written by Daniel Gilbert is a piece about how the mind can play tricks on us by covering up the truth with a believable lie, how we â€Å"cook facts† (134), and how our mind’s choices can affect our feelings. Throughout this essay I will be discussing a real life situation of my own, and the studies and the outcomes and whether they make sense or not. They say the mind protects us from ourselves, but we also â€Å"cook facts† (134) which happen to go hand in hand. Cooking facts are â€Å"†¦deliberate attempts to generate positive views†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (134) a few examples are failing miserably on the test but tell yourself there is always next time and you’ll study harder for the next one and example from the book being is that your fiance left you at the altar but saying â€Å"She was never really right for me†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (134). The mind tries to protect us from remembering bad things or bad experiences. I’ve seen some of my friends try and deny the fact that his father had died of cancer, he just didn’t believe it until the day of his funeral. But in the end they made it in their mind that he was in a better place and no longer suffering. In my own case, my family and I were coming back from a trip to Florida on a coach bus which ended up being hit by another car and flipped on its side on a four lane highway which ended up being hit by two more cars. I am thankful to say that I was buckled so I only came out of the crash with a concussion, but it still affects me every day. My vision has never been the same, yeah sure I can read really fast when I’m reading to myself but when it comes to reading out loud. It’s a completely different story. There’s no medical term for it but the best way they could put it is that I have an acute form of dyslexia. I just thank to this day that it actually isn’t worse than it could be and this being my cooked facts. To this day I cannot remember anything about the crash, this being the way my mind protects me from pain. Our minds and feelings are always going to have some sort of connection since it is our brain that tells our body us what we are feeling. Studies show that what we choose can really affect our moods for the time being or even throughout a week. On pages 135-136 a study shows a group of volunteers went through a job interview. â€Å"Some of the volunteers were told that their interview would be seen by a judge†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (135) â€Å"Other volunteers were told that their interview would be seen by a jury†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (315) the volunteers not knowing that everyone would be rejected the job. The Pre Rejection Prediction shows that the volunteers wouldn’t have really cared if they were rejected by the solo judge or the jury group, but what the results showed is that the group of volunteers that were rejected by the jury was much more upset than the ones rejected by the solo judge. I mean I’d be upset if 12 people told me I wasn’t capable to do a job, you automatically think that something is wrong with you. But with the judge your mind just makes up excuses to make you feel better, examples being he doesn’t know the real me or I don’t really need that job anyway. The mind is very deceiving, but it is sometimes for the best. When you need protection from yourself or whether it’s to give you a boost. We just need to be able to tell when and when not our mind is doing these things. References: * Gilbert, Daniel. â€Å"Immune to Reality. † The New Humanities Reader. By Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, n. d. 133-50. Print.