Psychology. A subject that I guess I've always had some interest in, I mean I'm usually fascinated by how the mind works because it is so complex and strange. Nevertheless I must state now that I am no expert, in fact I don't know the first thing when it comes to Psychology. But I have two instances in the past week or so that I think require a mention.
First of all, Ebay psychology. I say this because I have become acquainted with this website recently and I am somewhat hooked. It is nothing serious but I just feel like it has a significant effect on me. Right so Ebay is all about bidding. Put short, the bidder with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins. So fairly simple you may think. So first, pick your item - one that you particular want. So I picked a game. I have learnt about Ebay sniping, where you wait and wait until the last minute to bid, if there is an item you want, there is a good chance that somebody else will also want it. So I was involved in this last minute bidding frenzy for a game that I wanted. I put in my bid of 1 pound with 1 minute to go. I next saw a big of 1.50 on my screen, so I had been out bid. 30 seconds to go, there was like a sudden rush - an excitement. I put in my bid of 201 pence. and I won the bid. I soon looked out on whether if the guy had tried to bid again, and he did, 200 pence. So, I won by 1p - and for some reason it was exhiliarating. I have no idea why, but if I had gone to the shop and bought the game for 2 pounds - I would never have been as happy as I am now about the purchase. That extra 1p made all the difference, plus the fact that I outsmarted the other guy by bidding an extra penny to beat him/her to it.
Next is self destructive behaviour. I feel that it describes me in a way. I only noticed it yesterday actually, while playing Tetris. Now, I am an avid tetris player, and probably play at least once a day. But I found that against my opponents, whenever I was doing really good I thought to myself 'wow this is going good, I'm probably going to win' - a moment later I make a horrific mistake. See, if this happened once, then fine I made a mistake - but EVERY SINGLE time I felt I was doing well, I made an error. It got me thinking to trying to examine which reasons I had in sabotaging this simple game, of course I wanted to win, I always want to win and I'd say I'm quite competitive. So why did I always do the same thing? I thought about it a while later and figured that actually - I do it all the time, not just in petty games, but in so many other situations. If ever there is something good happening in my life I will not continue it, I won't let it run it's course, instead I seek to stop that good thing and return to normality. Quite strange I feel, I looked up on wikipedia. And one of the reasons was that the subject wanted to have the challenge of 'reaching the top'. And that is true - I always feel like I do better if I start from the bottom - things are not worth achieving if you don't work hard for it. I don't know.
I'm quite sad because I had my last day at Imperial today - it has been a good 6 weeks and the people there are lovely. Hopefully I'll keep on working on the project while I'm away at Warwick but we shall see!
1 comment:
As I understand it, you are still working for Imperial!
Shame we never met up at Imperial. Perhaps I had actually gone in and saw you, returned some books that I should have returned a long time ago, I wouldn't have been fined £4. haha!
You were talking about that tetris thing? I get a similar but slightly different feeling with archery. Shoot 6-arrow ends, right, say 5 of them in a row has hit the gold (9 points!) Your final arrow, in that case, is the hardest ever to shoot. You obviously COULD, but it's just that you'll start believing there is a repulsive magnetic field in the middle of that gold. You know from statistics that you've never shot 6 golds before, and you won't now. You'll know that your arms won't be as steady as when you were fresh for the first arrow.
Errors will occur at SOME point. But the art, of course, is to control that, and maintain composure and consistency throughout. Errors are fine, so long as they don't cause other errors.
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