Power comes in all shapes and sizes. Here some examples: on the bicycle this morning I saw a crocus with fragile flowers breaking through the dirt, this afternoon the Dutch speed-skaters (10 km) got gold-silver-bronze again at the Olympics , Lemmy and his music at Motorhead. Last night I watched this documentary about Lemmy. It felt like I was on speed during the entire 2 hours! And this morning I still had “Ace of Spades” in my head.
Yesterday I also saw a documentary about placebo. I was overwhelmed by the power of placebo! It’s a psychological phenomenon with measurable effects on the body. People who broke their back and got treated with a surgery or a fake-surgery did both respond equally well, while no treatment was an agony. A placebo pill works best, if it has the color that fits with the effect (blue for calm, red for action), if it’s a capsule instead of a pill and if it’s expensive. Strangely enough it even works, if you got told that it’s a placebo and if you are very skeptical regarding the outcome!
Placebo cures us, by stimulating the brain to produce the cure itself with the production of hormones, dopamine or all the other stuff that it uses to regulates our body functions. If the brain can cure disease like that, what else can it do? And what function do rituals have?
I see a parallel between placebo and rituals – it enhances our performance even if we don’t believe in it. The show business is full of rituals and superstition. “Break a leg” is an example, believing that it brings bad luck to wish something positive, and that you can scare away bad luck by asking for it. I don’t believe in superstition or bad luck. So it’s time to develop our own rituals to enhance your performance or show. It can be a prayer, lightening a candle, using some scent, dress in a certain way, rub your smartphone, jump, what ever. If we do it for a better performance, it will work like a placebo, even if we know it’s fake 🙂