Do you practice priming?

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At times life can be challenging and many people tend to build negative images in their heads that impacts their thoughts, feelings and actions. As a result they feel tired and down most of the time. They associate negative events that happened in their life to current events. Consequently they forget the moments of achievements in their life. The exposure of an individual to a stimulus that would influence the response to a second stimulus is called priming.

Priming works by activating an association or representation in memory just before another stimulus or task is introduced. Priming phenomenon occurs at a subconscious level and has a huge impact on our day to day activity.

Priming can be positive or negative and depends on the thoughts that you hold in your mind. For instance you might jump up at creaks and noises that are similar to a horror movie you have watched days or weeks before. You might feel a shark is about to attack you if you swim in deep water with the music played in movie JAW. This is negative priming.

Similarly, if you link you thoughts to a moment you are grateful about in your life you will start having similar feeling at the present. If you see a beach you might link to joyful moments in your childhood bringing similar happiness to present moment.  

Studies have shown that positive priming helps to change the state of mind of an individual by breaking the daily thought patterns. Priming also helps to have a long term effect on our behavior and habits.

The different types of priming are positive and negative priming, semantic priming, associative priming, repetition priming, perceptual priming, conceptual priming and masked priming.

How Do I practice Priming Exercise?

In early morning before I start my daily routines, I do my 4 step priming exercise.

Find a chair in a relatively quiet area and sit actively. Place both feet on the floor, shift your shoulders back, chest up, and hold your neck long and your head high.

          1. Breathe

Close your eyes for better focus. Put your hands on the chest and feel the heartbeat. Inhale from your nose and exhale from your mouth. Do this for about 1 minute.


2. Gratitude

Think of three things you are really grateful for right now. They can be from your past, present or future. Picture each one at a time.


3. Visualize

Pray for healing of any pain you hold inside you. Imagine you are being healed – body, thoughts, emotions, feelings. Envision your problems being washed away. Pray for the best parts of you to be strengthened. This can be health, wealth, spiritual or relationships. Pray for same kind of healing for others around you.

Now think about the three outcomes or goals that you want to achieve the most for the next six months. These are things that will excite you once they are completed. Place yourself in that position of achievement and celebrate that feeling of completion and victory.


4. Grounding

Feel the chair you are sitting on and raising of your chest from your breathing. Stretch your arms and legs.

Whenever you are ready you can open your eyes with the feeling of appreciation, gratitude, love, peace, happiness and fulfillment.

 

Reference

Cherry, K. (2021). Priming and the Psychology of Memory. Available at https://www.verywellmind.com/priming-and-the-psychology-of-memory-4173092#citation-1 [Accessed on 27 April 2022].

Lee JS, Choi J, Yoo JH, et al. (2014).The effect of word imagery on priming effect under a preconscious condition: an fMRI study. Available at https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22512 [Accessed on 27 April 2022].

Tony Robbins. (n.d.). How should I start each day? What is priming?. Available at https://www.tonyrobbins.com/ask-tony/priming/ [Accessed on 27 April 2022].

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