Has this ever happened to you? You have a free evening and you sit down with Netflix or Hulu or Sling and you look at the endless list of possibilities and your mind blurs. It feels impossible to choose. And it seems like no matter what I end up choosing I still don’t feel satisfied and I find myself wondering what I am missing out on. What I really want is to find the exact right thing to watch.
The same can be said for nearly everything in my life. Music, Books, Restaurants….I just wish someone else could go before me and help me find the best of everything. Lucky for me and for us, from what I understand that is the future. CURATION. A lot of sites try to do it by algorithm. You clicked here and there and liked this song and read this book so you will like this comedian. Trouble is, algorithmic curation doesn’t work very well and we hate it. We are slowly rejecting it as a society. (Sometimes it’s nice to see technology lose.) The wave of the future is for personalities and figures that you love to become the automatic curators of your life. The influencers. Oprah is the greatest one of these of all time. I don’t have to tell you about Oprah.
Here’s the thing that makes me interested enough in curation to tell you about it: We have been curating an experience for ourselves on a daily basis since the day we were born. The things we see, hear, taste and touch are creating an impression of what we are. It doesn’t take an amazon music catalog of 600,000 songs to know there is a lot of information out there. Right now just immediately in front of you there are roughly 100,000,000 pieces of data. They are being perceived in all kinds of ways. But only 40,000 bits of data get processed and perceived. Essentially, your brain and your subconscious are working together to curate your life experience. Had they gathered different pieces of information from the 100,000,000 bits available you would have had an entirely different experience.
So how do you decide what you ultimately pay attention to and what gets thrown away? It’s largely based on your underlying fundamental beliefs. Your brain, clinging to your ego, works constantly to prove whatever theory you have about you or others or life itself. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what mental gymnastics it has to do, it will find and use data to prove you’re right. It’s the same kind of dogged passion I use when there is Cap’n Crunch in the house. You and I both know there is ZERO reason to ever put a bowl of that poison in our bodies. But my mind will do a serious number on me that has me eating the whole box in a day like it’s not even a challenge. If only my subconscious felt as passionately about squats.
Whatever your deepest darkest belief about yourself is, you will end up curating the information in front of you to make it a reality. Do you think you’re a worthless old sack? Everyone you meet and everything that happens is going to prove that. Do you think other people are out to get you? You’ll find yourself getting ripped off more than anyone. Are you an idiot bound to make stupid mistakes? Get ready to fail.
So what is it? In the bottom of your soul where you hope no one else looks, what do you really think about you? Do you think you’re an idiot? Do you think no one gives a shit about you? Do you think you are unlovable or worthless? Therapy can help you discover what these beliefs are and help you start to curate a life you’d much prefer to live.