You Are What You Eat: The Power of Perspective

Last week, while judging the Simcoe County Science Fair at a local high school, I noticed something that caught my attention. Hanging on the wall in a hallway was a set of posters titled: "What kind of math person are you? Because we are all math people." From that claim, arrows extended to smaller posters with definitions of these so-called different types of math people. If you've judged a county science fair before, you probably know that it is a fast paced experience, so I must admit that I did not linger for long enough to discover what these types of math people are. Despite that, this framing of a curiously sensitive topic got me thinking about something. That is, the way that you frame "truth" in your mind is largely responsible for the reality you experience. 

Math is a weirdly divisive topic (pun intended). By that I mean, people tend to have very strong opinions about it. Some intuitively excel at math and find it genuinely enjoyable. I once had a roommate who expressed how she would be sad if she never got to do physics again after post-secondary school. For many, the experience is quite opposite to that. "I am not a math person" is something we hear time and time again from children and adults alike. Unfortunately, these "not math people" tend to struggle academically, "math people" have a hard time explaining concepts to them, and the notion that they "just can't understand math" gets perpetuated until it becomes their lived truth. 

Of all the forces in the known universe, belief is one of the most elusive, but powerful. What we tell ourselves becomes a habit, and then, over time, it becomes our reality. Growing up, I was one of these "not good at math" people. I didn't pick it up very easily the way it was taught. Tutors couldn't get through to me. I was told "don't worry, none of us are math people" by my family members. This all served to reinforce the belief that I simply was not wired to understand math, and that I should just stop trying. 

Math is only one example of this phenomenon. There are many other self-prescribed (or self-enforced) attributes we perhaps wish we could change, but have resigned ourselves to believing are facts with as much substance as the sky being blue. So often, people convince themselves they aren't capable of meeting a goal because of some uncontrollable limitation. Consider that the power of self delusion is bidirectional. If you spend enough time consistently retraining your brain to believe that you are capable of what was once seemingly impossible, this will allow you to form new cognitive habits, and in turn, a new, self-directed reality. Of course, we cannot change everything about ourselves, nor should we necessarily want to. But realizing that in many cases, you are responsible for perpetuating your own misery based on the beliefs you feed yourself, is freeing.