Sometimes it's best to stop all the clocks, switch off your phone and studiously avoid all mirrors.
Earlier this year, two American bloggers triggered a global media convulsion by embarking on what they called a "mirror fast": covering the mirrors in their homes, and shunning mirrors elsewhere, in an effort to reduce what one of them called "the overriding self-consciousness that's taken up residence in my psyche". Since the social pressure to conform to ideals of beauty falls mainly on women, I can only guess what it's like to be so aware of one's appearance: I assume it's related to what I feel whenever a badly-angled photo reminds me how astoundingly bald I am. But for the fasters, the experiment proved a liberation. "All the other interests in my life – my goals, passions, friends, family, favourite hobbies, etc – have attracted the energy and attention I used to give to my looks," wrote Kjerstin Gruys, while Autumn Whitefield-Madrano said she felt "calmer and more serene". They'd pulled off an ingenious psychological trick. In a world obsessed with appearances, it's impractical just to decide you're going to think differently. What they'd done, instead, was to deny themselves the feedback that fuelled the fixation.
Which is striking, because almost every other approach to health and happiness assumes the opposite: that more feedback is always good. The way to get fit, we're told, is to track miles jogged and weights lifted; to get slim, you track calories; and the first law of time management is to keep a detailed log, to see what you're really doing with your day. Reflecting an increasingly popular approach, the website moodscope.com uses mood-tracking to combat depression. There's an entire "personal informatics" movement, mentioned here previously, whose members use smartphones and other devices to turn their lives into data, so as to identify patterns and make improvements. (Join the fun at quantifiedself.com.) But mirror fasts are a reminder that more feedback isn't necessarily for the best.
In a parallel exercise last month, Steven Corona, a tech entrepreneur from South Carolina, "unsubscribed from the clock": "I dropped my watch right into the garbage. Shut off the glowing green-blue digital clocks that seem to piggyback on every appliance known to man..." He switched his iPhone to a random time zone (and did, he admits, continue to use its calendar to notify him of appointments). Much mockery followed: clock-fasting, critics rightly noted, wasn't an option for those who had to show up at an office by 9am daily. Still, as a compulsive watch-checker, I was inspired. After a few disorienting days, Corona says, his stress levels plummeted; he lost himself in projects, and learned to "read the sun". Insomniacs are advised to hide their clocks, because what doctors call "nocturnal time-monitoring behaviour" is relaxation's greatest foe. Corona simply took that principle to its conclusion.
You, of course, may have no hang-ups about mirrors or clocks. But it can be illuminating to ask if you've got other sources of feedback you might be better off without. Bathroom-scale readings? Bank-balance checking? All have their place. But all are also subject to the problem with personal feedback: once you've developed the habit of measuring something, it's hard to resist the conclusion that that thing matters. Maybe it doesn't. (And even if it does, maybe intuition would serve you better.) Sometimes, there may be data about ourselves we're better off not knowing.
Taken from HERE.
Today society is obsessed with time and physical appearance, according to many mass media we all have to look athletics and be at our best all the time, we see it on social media with Instagram where everyone tries to look the best they can, or even advert with diet product for example.
ReplyDeleteAll of this can be a source of stress for many or even worst sometimes, in society like South Korea for example, physical appearance is everything, with parents offering plastic surgery to their kids for their graduation because they believe their children can only be successful if they look flawless and fit into the beauty standard, which can lead to many case of anorexia and anxiety relate to the obsession with their physical appearance and the feeling to need be enough; Taking a little break from this pressure can be beneficial and allow people to put their focus on more important matter.
It would be a good idea to stop looking at the clocks, staring at the mirrors, and playing our phones. If I get the chance to do so, I would. However, in this period of my life, time is really precious. I need to rush with the hours in order to get all the tasks done and it is really hard for me to have a spare time to rest or just to relax. For me, mirrors and phones are related. People care too much of their appearance for social media purposes. Sometimes, I was amazed by the level of confidence that people are having but sometimes, I am also confused on why people care too much on their appearance and image on social media. I do believe that it is important to be comfortable as yourself and not to impressed others. It is a good idea to stop looking at the mirror and checking our phones and for just once in our life, we can see the real us.
ReplyDeleteI found this experiment very interested, because I am the kind of person who do not like to be dependent to material things. I have done something similar in the past trying to “stop all the clocks”. In my case, I decided to delete my social media accounts because I realize I was losing too much valuable time in just scrolling through them. I am a proactive person who hate feeling like I am wasting my time. I also think that social media have a negative effect in the psychological health of the people by making them bad feel about their current situation thinking the life of the other people is perfect. People tend to show off in social media the best moments in their life, making other people feel less because they cannot afford certain lifestyle. In my case, I decided to close all social media platforms for one month, and dedicate that time in better activities such as reading, studying and exercising. I have to say the first days were hard, but after one week I got used to that and the result were very positive.
ReplyDeleteI find to be very interesting especially with the so called obsession people being overly self conscious about their appearance. For me personally I think the main purpose of this experiment is to decrease the amount of thoughts in our minds about being too self conscious and thus decreasing the time we would spend catering to our looks and instead use that time to other meaningful activities or things. Although the clock experiment puzzled me quite a bit. I have a lot of questions running through my head like how would I be in time for classes if I can't look at my watch or a clock, how am I supposed to do my prayers if I don't know how to tell time by just looking at the sun. I guess that's why these are only experiments and not actual things that people devote themselves too, it is interesting I'll be honest but I don't think that these experiments are for me.
ReplyDeleteI find experiment in this article quiet interesting and make me want to try it myself. This experiment to limit any feedback I can get from constantly checking something. For me I don’t really care about my appearance but I do have some problem with looking at clock constantly especially in a class. It something that become a habit if I have nothing to do or I am bored to death. When I did that I felt time really slow that 10 minutes can feel like an hour. I don’t know why I felt like that either I lack of feedback or I just bored. If I want to try this experiment myself, I need to find a good date like a long holiday so my experiment will effect my grade and my study. I hope after experiencing this experiment I can find what kind happiness I really want in my short life.
ReplyDeleteNearly all of the technology these days depends on clocks. Computers have clocks inside, cars have timing belts, and so on. For instance, electricity is no longer generated, and we end up with this: If the electricity supply ceased and we had no more oil, how long would the human race survive? The answers are pretty grim. You can't transport food, so cities starve. And industrial areas become polluted by compounds that are easily contained if you have electricity. Chlorine gas/liquid, for instance, is easily refrigerated and stored to the point where it is a minor safety concern. But if allowed to warm up, it escapes from the tanks and produces a life-killing poison cloud miles long. Nuclear power plants meltdown. Time-locks seize up. The internet fails. Any personal electronics with a micro-controller (camera, phone, music player, video game, GPS, etc.) no longer works because the chip is dead. Mechanical tools and basic electrical circuits work if you have electricity from batteries, but anything with an AC circuit is unreliable since you cannot produce regular 60-cycles-per-second current if electronic clocks refuse to work. This would be an apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that a lot of us tend to look at the mirror a lot of times throughout the day. We see ourselves in the mirror to look our best for the day. Although nobody really cares about our looks in my opinion, we spend a lot time getting ready for our looks. Well looks are important for many people, but I don’t think it really matters to me, in fact I am even too lazy to comb my hair. Another issue discussed in this article is the tendency of always looking at the time. I just can’t imagine what will happen if I never have the chance to see the time, having to do my activities with pure estimation of time. I’m sure it will be difficult if that happens though, as I can’t keep track of the duration of all the activities I want to do, including sleeping. Also, it is highly likely that I will be late for most of my classes. However, it may be a different story if I knew how to ‘read the sun’ like an expert. If I have the skill to ‘read the sun’, this kind of lifestyle might be worth a try after all.
ReplyDeleteI have great interest in Psychology. In my opinion, Psychology is a very broad branch of study. The experiments shown in this article involved a lot of talks about psychology and I found it absorbing. Based on my observation, in today’s society, people just care too much about others’ opinion. People worry too much if someone might criticize or found something embarrassing about them. For instance, right now, most people, both teenagers and adults, care too much about their look and physical appearances. People want to look slim and fit; that’s not actually a bad thing. However, in most cases, people try to achieve this by doing some nonsense diets that would just burden their lives. Even worse, the obsession of having a slim and attractive look might lead to ‘anorexia nervosa’, a psychological disease that cause eating disorder. This is because there is a perception in society that people with slim body are more attractive. Which in fact, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So, what I’m trying to say here is that, let’s try to not care about others’ perception and start loving ourselves. Let us shut the social media, break the body scale, and think positive.
ReplyDeleteThis article feels very psychological, of course, and I like it very much when I find new things about how the human mind works. Never have I though of fasting myself from seeing the mirror or measuring the time from my watch or clock before. I mean I also have annoying habits that other millennials also have such as checking my phone whenever a notification pops up or checking for Instagram likes every now and then after I post something. However, I have tried to resist doing them by checking notifications later when I am doing something important and I can say that I’m improving every time. At some point I am actually also interested in doing the mirror fasting just for one day but maybe some time later when break starts since I have to look fashionable everyday when going to uni. I don’t think that I’m pressured by society standards or anything when dressing up, but I personally feel happier and more confident when I wear clothes that are fashionable, unique to the eyes and also that matches with my own personality.
ReplyDeleteIn this modern era, humans are so attached with their gadgets, busy with their social media. We spent hours on the web, on social media and this is the reason why we are getting more and more anti-social. Humans are social being, we need eachother. Time is another thing to keep in mind, we do not live in this world forever, we are not immortal; we need to stop fussing about things that do not matter. There are a lot of problems out there in the world. why do we focus too much on our appearances? the experiment in this article is very interesting and definitely something that we should try. Although I have questions regarding the clock, it is necessary for us to check on the time because obviously we have schedule; but this experiment proves otherwise. This kind of experiment requires a lot of time, we might be able to try this experiment during holiday and who knows, we might get an interesting result. Maybe looking at the clock is not that necessary after all.
ReplyDeleteIt was a really interesting article, I should say. We are now living in the world where every little thing could be judged just from what you see on the screen of your smartphone. I believed that nowadays we often compare our lives with the people we see on social medias and it’s not rare for us to feel envious of them. It’s also not uncommon for us to do things from what we see on the social media, it is as if we based everything off of it. I have always wondered would I still be the same person if I don't have any social media? Would I still reflect myself on what I see on social media? It would be great ideas if I could just stop using my phone, stop looking at mirrors and stop looking at my watch. I would be my own self and not myself based on other people. I wouldn’t have to impress anyone and I wouldn’t have to think what he or she thinks of me. Maybe one day I would try to do this.
ReplyDeleteThis article is very interesting. People are too busy to change their appearance, while to me, I chose to feel grateful with everything that god has given to me. And I think it is a good idea to take a break from all of the things that are being mentioned in the article above; to stop looking at the clocks, staring at the mirrors, and playing our phones. I think it is a good idea to try two of the three ideas. Things that I would like to try is to stop looking at the clocks and staring at the mirrors since I already play my phone a lot. It will be a good idea to take a break from staring at the mirrors to often, try to be confident about myself without worrying about something while I am staring myself in front of the mirrors. It is important to feel confident about yourself and not to worry about our flaw.
ReplyDeleteAffirmation is something almost everyone aims for. To be recognized by the people around, to have that confirmation of your existence. Mirrors in a hypothetical way is a way how people get affirmation from seeing their own reflection. Although it’s a one-way interaction between yourself, but you got that sense of having to follow such requirements of how you look. I agree that beauty standards fall more on woman, because I experience it first hand by seeing the images of ‘beautiful people’ I see has got me thinking about my own physical appearance, thinking that I was never enough. I then realize that I was never going to fulfill that level of satisfaction of myself. I had been through that phase where I couldn’t even see myself in the mirror or look through people in social media because of the pressure to be that certain kind of person. The experiment of stopping all clocks and forgetting time is a way to reconnect with your surroundings and feel alive at the moment.
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