Manic

Do You Do Manic?
By H. Bernard Wechsler

The headline in Science Daily read, How Manic Thinking Makes us Happy, Energized and Self-Confident. Does that arouse your curiosity and even make you smile as you think – weird? Are they suggesting we reinforce a new style of craziness?

The first thing I searched were the credentials of the authors behind the research; too many articles get published that are bad-science and later die a horrible death.

Dr. Emily Pronin of Princeton, and Daniel Wegner of Harvard, are well documented researchers. The article is published in the respected journal of the Association for Psychological Science, in the September, 2006 issue.

So What

The authors conclude: when people are made to Think Quicker, they report feeling happier, their mood improves, they become more creative, more powerful and self-confident.

We call it Speed Reading, see what you think.

The scientists made half the participants read a series of statements twice-as-fast as normal, and the other half twice-as-slow as their ordinary reading. Next, they had the folks in the experiment read depressing text like, I want to go to sleep and never wake up, and the other half read positive-statements, including, Wow, I feel great.

Conclusions: regardless of textual content, depressing or elating, if you intentionally read twice-as-fast as normal, you change your emotions and your experiences. You get an immediate dose of mental energy, happiness, and feel self-assured in what you are doing.

Manic

The word is associated with psychiatric disorder, and includes excessive physical activity, impulsive behavior, and rapidly changing ideas. Manic is a synonym for frenzied, agitated, freaky and nutzy-fagin.

Manic-Depression and Bipolar Disorder are mental states of folks with Racing-Thoughts. Mentally healthy people also experience Manic thinking when they are In-The-Flow, In-The-Zone, and enjoying Peak-Experiences of creativity.

Have you ever engaged in group brainstorming and really gave it your creative heart-and-soul? Your consciousness blocks out everything in your environment except solving the problem in front of you. You become a mono-maniac and often discover the most brilliant genius-like ideas of your life. You cannot be distracted from your goal.