When you see sirens in your rear view mirror, it tends to heighten state.
We’ve been conditioned that those flashing lights and those specific noises means something is happening – be alert.
It turns out, each activity we do or engage in creates an experience.
And that all of these experiences can impact our state in a similar way – either up-regulating the nervous system (eg fasting, sunrise, fast music, traffic noise), or down-regulating (eg food, sunset, lying down, slow music.)
We also know that certain states help memory and also “sharability” of an experience.
We are likely to talk about the sirens more than we would talk about some relaxing music in the doctors office. State impacts virality.
So it makes sense then that we can choose not only the types of states we would like to experience ourselves, but also the types of states we would like to elicit in others, such that there is more chance that:
a) The idea spreads, or
b) The experience is memorable and people want to come back.
Of course, we have a slippery slope. On one side of this is we create an experience worth talking about – a great concert, an awesome vibe at the gym. Then on the other side we create senseless hype and frenzy.
Understanding the intention behind why we would choose to influence state is important.
How do we want people to feel?
From here of course, we need to ask the question of how do we want to feel – not just in the short run, but over a long time frame? Learning to see when we get ourselves trapped into one end of this spectrum through a self-created frenzy in daily life is not as easy as it sounds, but a helpful tool.
