Calm Strips

Calm Strips

According to the website above, they used cognitive research that found the ability of our brain to resist temptations by calming down has a remarkable link to living longer and beating many other types of illnesses, including the deadly ones that so commonly kill people these days.

“By having the power to calm down, we can learn new ways to live healthy and fulfilling lives while interacting with others without feeling overwhelmed or worried.”

I’m not sure if you have used them yet, but CalmStrips are something I would be tempted to buy. I use them periodically to help me relax when I don’t have time to calm down before interacting with strangers on the street, when it seems there is nothing I can do to properly explain why I am asking a question or questioning someone.

CalmStrips provide a visual reminder of a standard conversation such as asking for directions, or responding to another person in a situation that we need to understand the situation in so we can continue a healthy and civilized discussion.

Despite seeing many situations through multiple perspectives, sometimes my own mind ends up interpreting situations differently than others. With CalmStrips and some thought, I can help myself and others avoid the cognitive bias of agreeing with other people’s perspectives, or taking things too seriously.

Convincing Thinkers

As you go through life, you will run into many scenarios, debates, and situations where you want to debate what you believe to be right.

According to research, when people decide to argue, they are motivated by four things: the possibility of getting others to agree with them, the goal of persuading others into agreement with them, the need to defend themselves, and being motivated by the situation.

CalmStrips have these effects on you. When you wear them, they will remind you to take a pause to reconsider your decision, calm down, and ask yourself whether you really want to engage in a debate, or are you just debating for the sake of debating.

As you can imagine, having this reminder is powerful. So powerful that when you have them on, it makes you look like a philosopher. When you are debating with someone, they will be wondering what is going on inside your head. Maybe they will decide to debate you, maybe they will think differently about what is going on, maybe they will be convinced to change their mind. It depends on the situation and who you talk with.

Instead of arguing with people, trying to persuade them, or insisting on your position, try to understand their perspective and identify their reasoning behind what they are arguing for. Before doing anything, maybe you can have a calm conversation, try to understand their opinion, and perhaps agree to disagree on this topic.

Hopefully, it will improve your understanding of situations and perspectives, and avoid having a debate that ends up as a debate about debate.

Sometimes, we can be so convinced in our beliefs that we are incapable of hearing something different. It’s difficult to argue with someone who has already decided their opinion and believes they are right. But arguing is one of the best tools you can use to teach someone else their assumptions, their reasoning, and their ideas.

Now, when we can understand another person’s point of view, explain it to them, and try to convince them to think differently, we’ll have more discussions, discussions that bring us to understand more than we ever did before. This is good for our cognition, it’s good for our brains.

Helping Thinkers

Using CalmStrips is powerful because, despite helping you think differently, they will still cause you to think differently. And that’s not good.

Unfortunately, you can’t keep using them forever. Eventually you might decide to stop wearing them, thinking that they are not helping anymore. This is fine, it’s only beneficial for you in some situations.

Otherwise, if you decide to wear them more frequently, they will eventually start