IN THIS EDITION:  Have you confronted your personal Fear Factor?  and more...
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Ever confronted your personal Fear Factor?
My Fear Factor
My heart was thumping faster and louder than a centrifugal pump. My throat was suddenly parched gluing my upper and lower lips. The adrenaline was going crazy. But most of all, fear clutched my heart and held it in a vice like grip. To say that I was petrified was the biggest understatement I have ever made. So, what is going on?

Rewind to 1995. My wife, daughter and I were holidaying in Thailand, more specifically, in Pattaya, a city about an hour and half drive from Bangkok and boasting some of the most gorgeous beaches in South East Asia. Pattaya also had its fair share of Water Amusement Parks and it was in the Bang Saen Water Park that I had this rush of blood.

The Build Up
Among the more adrenaline pumping rides that the park boasted (for example diving into a swirling tide of water through a connected series of closed serpentine pipes beginning at a height of forty feet and winding down  - incidentally, I tried out this ride as well!), the one that had me fascinated was this particular one. From where I stood I could see that from a height of a six to seven storied building a water ramp ran down to a small pool. I could immediately see that the almost vertical (as close to 90 degree as it could get) incline was one of the scary elements of ride. I had no idea what other mind numbing twists awaited me on what would prove to be a gut wrenching experience.

Mind, the monkey
I stood about twenty feet away from the foot of the incline and watched a boy (he could not be older than 12-13 years although tall for his age) come down the incline, apparently in a seated position at a speed which, even at that distance was making me uneasy. As he entered the pool in a splurge of water and shortly then got out, it was the first time I noticed something floating in the water. The boy picked up what appeared to be a fiber glass board and walked back to where a flight of stairs led up the highest point from where he came down just some minutes back. As I stood there, the boy did the dash down at least five to six times and I thought to myself: if he could do it so easily, so can I. They say the mind is a monkey and mine was about to exhibit those very traits and in the process reduce me to a nervous wreck shortly.

I walked around and picked up one of the boards which was two feet wide by about four feet tall. I started climbing the zig-zagging flight of concrete steps reasonably confident and quite excited. All these emotions were soon to give way to a level of trepidation and heart thumping anxiety. As I reached what appeared to be the top most part, I glanced up to find a huge board superscribed with the universal cross sign of danger in bold red. Below that read: WARNING! If you have a heart problem, DO NOT attempt this ride. If you do, it is at your own risk.

As I said before, the mind is indeed a monkey. Until this point, it was serving me well and keeping my emotions in check. The moment my optical organs read that warning,they flashed a message to my mind which immediately went into overdrive! My heart beat accelerated and my breath was coming up in short bursts. Mustering up whatever courage left, I moved forward toward the point where the incline started. I saw an operator seated next to the point where the water ramp disappeared down into thin air.

Sir Isaac Newton to my rescue
It was then that I froze  petrified. I had always assumed (and never bothered to check) that the fiber glass board would be anchored with castors to the incline like a winch. But as I looked down at the board I was holding, it had no castors. All it had was a wedge for the feet to push into and two hand grips one on either side. It was then that I realized that I had to depend on Sir Isaac Newton's genius to stay alive as I went over that precipice holding on to dear life  and seated on that fiber glass board.

My fears were getting exacerbated by the disdainful look the winch operator was giving me - he probably was used to hundreds of fear stricken individuals who chose this ride to terrorize themselves. I quickly placed the fiber glass board on the flowing water between the parallel tracks, stepped on the board, squatted down on it wedging my feet (knees up) on the indentures, grasped the two hand grips with such force that my palms ached (for all I knew they and Isaac Newton were the only allies committed to keep me flying off the ramp). I nodded to the operator who without acknowledging, pushed the swing door at the end of the horizontal railings. The flow of water was now carrying me faster and closer to the edge and I could actually see the railings disappear into nothing. I jammed my wedged feet and grasped the hand grips even more tightly. Even before I had realized or was ready for it the flow of the water carried my fiber glass board to the end of the railing where for one frozen moment it seemed to teeter and then the board dipped down that steep incline. In my terror stricken state, I forgot to shut my eyes (they say the eyes are the ones which send crazed thoughts to the brain and therefore the culprit - this is the reason why people on roller coaster or similar scary rides shut their eyes). The fiber glass board traveled down the ramp at breakneck speed while my befuddled mind was busy obsessing about how the only reason I was not being thrown off the ramp was my weight on the board and gravity (that wondrous Newtonian gem!).

Action cures fear
Even before the fear factor could solidify itself I was stunned (pun intended) to find myself hitting the bottom of the incline and the water with a loud, jolting splash. I could not believe it - I had actually made it down without any of the horrendous predicaments that my brain was busy manufacturing and it had happened in a jiffy compared to the protracted torturous prologue to my adventure. This was one of the key takeaways for me from that experience. It is said that action cures fear and while there are more healthy ways of taking action against fear than plummeting down heights seated on a fiber glass board with mere gravity to save me, it is true that the moment passes pretty quickly after action is taken. It is about a threshold. If you continuously dwell in that threshold and make no active effort to get past it, you are going to cause yourself nightmares galore.

Have you had similar moments in your life? Note that I am using the word similar. Personally, I would certainly not advocate this particular method of getting over your fear factor. In hindsight, I can say that if only our brains eschewed concocting stomach churning eventualities, it would be so much easier to get over fear. It is this fact that paralyzes us and often leaves us in that state where we never get over that fear all through our lives. Incidentally, one of my desires in life is to  bungee jump - the thought of being suspended upside down and traveling in that state a couple of hundred feet down in a swoosh of lung filling air was sure to get my adrenaline to burn itself out (if there was such a thing!) but I am game. Talk about having suicidal tendencies!

Let me leave you with this comforting thought.
The next time you get an attack of fear, stop your brain cold from its devilish machinations and take action immediately.

You might well have discovered the trick to confront and overcome your personal fear factor.

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Have you ever lost your bearings?
Orientation, where art thou?

You get out of an elevator landing with elevators on either side and you turn right and start walking. But wait this was leading to the toilets! Whoa, hold it right there! What is happening? Have you lost it? Well, nobody has actually lost anything, it is a common phenomenon called orientation. Your awesome brain has just made a miscalculation on spatial awareness.

What is spatial awareness?  It is the ability to work within one's own space; the ability to organize people and objects in relation to one's own body. Spatial awareness requires that we have a model of the three dimensional space around us, and it requires that we can integrate information from all of our senses. Sometimes that mechanism goes awry.

Have you noticed that your brain is not the same when you are reversing your car (particularly if you are a learner!). Everything literally seems Topsy-turvy! For instance, if you need to turn left when reversing, you steer to the right! Talk about being left and right brained! This takes a bit of getting used to. Your cerebrum goes haywire. This is also probably the reason why many people cannot parallel park - the notoriously dicey task of juxtaposing your car between two cars. You will swear by merely looking that it is impossible to squeeze yourself into that space. This, of course, does not stop sadistic motor vehicles authority personnel to get you to go through the trauma with their eyes glittering malevolently!.


Experienced the joy of getting lost?
I started driving an automobile at a time when GPS was heard of but had not shown up in India. So, I have had my own experiences of finding my way to friend's places that I had not been before. Not having the luxury of a GPS however had its upsides. You build up your spatial awareness with a strength that makes finding your way to strange places not stressful in any way. Your orientation gets a strong foundation.

However, many people (who abhor ambiguity) hate to find themselves lost. They just do not seem to like a situation where they are not in control. I am not sure whether it is a upside or a downside but I am unruffled when I am lost. It happens every now and then but I do not freak out.

 
Spatially dumb (if there is such a thing!)
However, I am in no doubt that ever since I started using GPS regularly, that modern day technological marvel has spatially dumbed me down. Now, I do not even bother to figure out the route to a place - just key in the destination coordinates and then in a passive sort of way follow the wisdom of that technological contraption. This has of course not stopped me from getting lost!! No sir, getting lost is probably wired into my genetic code.  It is however amusing that, technologically advanced though the GPS might be, sometimes the simple act of using it without an updated software may direct you to go into roads which apparently do not exist or have been re-routed. Alas, your GPS cannot be as astute as that cerebral organ nonpareil between your ears!
 

Map Vs Actual Terrain!
Yet another (sometimes painful) discovery is that, what shows up on your 4 by 5 inch GPS device screen has no resemblance to the actual terrain. This is the famous phenomenon of the device being a 2D one while the actual terrain is in 3D space. This, while sounding a trifle is far from it. That extra element of depth many times finds you descending down wrong roads or streets in the bat of an eyelid.

At the end of the day, I am not sure that the GPS has solved all our navigation problems. If it has, on the other hand, it has crippled us with a lack of spatial awareness which is frightening to say the least. After all, say, in a trekking tour, there is no way you can carry your GPS device, and then that gross inadequacy in spatial awareness will hit you at all the most embarrassing moments making you wonder whether the four inch by five inch technological miracle is not really a curse.

 
Let me leave you with this thought.
If you have not used GPS much, consider yourself lucky not unfortunate!

It will at least keep your brain in shape and from not mistaking your left for the right and vice versa!
 
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