Hey reader

Ever happened that you hear a very famous song, and at the first impression you totally feel disconnect with the lyrics or the melody or the artist or the emotions or to the song itself? But when you listen to it for the second time, it just hits the gut cord and you put it on repeat, and listen to it again and again and again until you can feel each note, each word and each silence between the notes? The second impressions, whether it be of a song or a person or a place or anything, are magical at times, aren’t they?

When I first listened to Gravity by John Mayer, or the first time I listened to Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree, I definitely wasn’t amused much. However, I listened to it for the second, third, fourth time, and so on… and it’s now been hundreds of times I’ve played these songs since I played them first, and every time they are just awesome, such a treat it is to hear good music.

We are not helpless in the face of our first impressions. They may bubble up from the unconscious – from behind the locked door inside our brain – but just because something is outside of our awareness doesn’t mean it’s outside of control.

– Blink

This isn’t just with music, the same traits can be found in many other spheres of life, be it first solo-trip experience, diary writing, believing in someone with all the trust, or the first relationship. It can happen anywhere that we feel hurt, bored, depressed, or sad with the very first impression.

I recently read an amazing book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, and interestingly, it answered many of my curious answers. When we experience anything for the first time, say tasting a new flavour of Ice Cream, we start thin-slicing it behind the locked door of our brain, which we call our unconscious mind. We can not explain our thin-slicing. We can not define anything that comes out of our unconscious mind, and hence we can not provide feedback of why we liked or not liked something at the very first place.

Though, it doesn’t means that our first reactions or impressions are always incorrect. It varies. These could be rational sometimes, as I mentioned about ‘instincts’ in my previous blogs, i.e. the thought that comes out of our unconscious within nano seconds is always correct. I was then unaware of the very important fact that Malcolm brought up in his book. Sometimes, we find things good at thin slicing and we like it. Sometimes, we don’t. This could be because of two prime reasons – one is that particular thing is actually bad, and another is that particular thing is different. For instance, the ice cream flavour is either good (we like it), or bad (we dislike it) or it’s different from the usual tastes that our taste buds are used to (and we dislike it).

But, just because something is different, doesn’t necessarily means it is bad. Our senses at times take time to actually understand something which is new and they are not used to.

The problem is that buried among the things that we hate is a class of products that are in that category only because they are weird. They make us nervous. They are sufficiently different that it takes us some time to understand that we actually like them.

– Blink

So now I know, why I didn’t like Steven Wilson or John Mayer’s Gravity for the first time but I love them now.

My few friends, like many other people, are slowly giving up believing on friends. But, just because few friends betrayed or created wrong impression, that doesn’t means everyone is like that. There are people who feel happy in others happiness. I would request everyone not to completely rely on first impressions and miss out on beautiful things that could have happened in life only if you have tried for the second or third time. “First Impression is the last impression… I won’t agree anymore!“

But, it doesn’t means that you keep repeating despite of multiple bad impressions. All that extra information isn’t actually an advantage at all; In fact, you need to know a very little of that to find the underlying signature of a complex phenomenon.

Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking. Deliberate thinking is a wonderful tool when we have the luxury of time, the help of computer or some notes, and a clearly defined task, and the fruit of that type of analysis can set stage for rapid cognition.

– Navneet