The ups, the downs, the World Cup, and the “hey did I remember that right?”

By Antony Thompson & Ben Williams

www.vanguardsolutions.co

Most of the country is still waking up to the sombre tones of reporters on the radio and tv; passing comments on how upset the nation is to not see our lions continue. Yet much different to previous failed World Cups gone by, we are somehow revelling in the feeling that it was still a success; a tremendous victory in so many ways.

Not only did England get to extra time in the Semi Finals of what is one of the worlds most watched competitions; a competition containing global footballing superstars, some of whom not even reaching the quarter finals. It was also the journey they took to get there and achieve such a level we haven’t reached in 28 years; and what a proud and enjoyable feeling it has brought to the country.

Yet in weeks to come this pride may wear off and opinions will change. Many will forget how proud they were of the team at the time, and how Gareth Southgate was wrong to have picked such young players after all. People may discredit how much ‘effort’ the country went too to show their support, and what a disappointment the semis and the World Cup were in the end.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking is extremely natural and stems from thousands of years’ worth of evolution; it’s how we are hard wired. Our brains are extremely powerful at deceiving us way after an event occurred, especially when events are so heavily linked to emotion.

It is why something such as a 10-year marriage which ends in divorce becomes so difficult for each partner to bare. During the relationship, both poured in great amounts of emotion stretched over the years together. The wedding. The honeymoon. Their first house. The children. Family holidays, and every other event they experienced that bound their love.

However, moments such as these during a marriage are spiked with extreme levels of emotion, interrupting and clouding normal analytical thought patterns, and disrupting the ability to remember exactly what happened and what you experienced with 100% accuracy. When couples argue with such animation and emotion, judgement and mental recordings become distorted with waves of emotion and chemical imbalances. The mind simply struggles to record the data accurately and instead records what is happening with emotions that correspond to what his happening rather than fact. As a result, remembering the facts of an argument in times to come will be much harder to recall in accuracy due to the way they felt at the time of arguing; volatile, stressed, angry and sad. All emotions that impede clear memory. Therefore, it is extremely useful that during relationships it is necessary to work towards a higher consciousness than that of living in the emotional wave, as longer term it could end in disaster.

The only part of your mind that can accurately record such data is your sub-conscious analytical mind. A part of your mind often only accessible via hypnotherapy, meditation or other powerful relaxation and guided processes. Your current consciousness is, or can be, heavily influenced by the emotions you felt at the given time of the event. You believe something was certain because of the way you felt, not necessarily because of what happened.

There is a growing belief amongst many neurologists, psychologists and brain experts that eye-witness accounts used within criminal trials are often not as accurate as what the witness believes to be true. Often, when a person witnesses a crime, their mind and body go into an emotional state, feeding inaccurate data into the conscious mind and impeding the brains ability to record accurate information in important parts of the brain due to the high level of emotional activity, and subsequent energy waves associated with it. It’s one of many reasons why in some cases you will have two separate eye-witness accounts of the same event. It often depends on the degree of emotion each person was feeling at the time. Once you tie emotion into an event, how you felt will only grow and again further interrupt the actual true data that was recorded.

This is easily provable by just sitting at your desk now and thinking of a traumatic experience you’ve been through. Before accurate information starts to come forward again, thoughts from that event spark waves of adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones that cause you to become hot, sweaty, shaking with butterfly’s in your stomach. Your emotions revert to such an event and cause you sadness and sorrow, anger and rage, and almost immediately memories of that event, although obtainable, start to become less accurate. You’re picking up everything you felt at the time of such an event now blurring accurate information that happened.

Ultimately your mind is like a huge archiving system; a database of information you’ve learnt and experienced that you use for everything. At the time of an event, emotion affects directly how the activity was perceived in the first instance but can in many cases re-write memory due to believing more in the emotion, instead of being able to access raw data. The same rules apply when watching or experiencing a huge and hyped up national event.

What are the similarities to the aforementioned? Emotion rears its head again. The semi-finals were an emotional event. An emotional rollercoaster packed into 90 tight minutes, or 120 minutes and penalties for the unlucky. You have the joy of a goal and the anticipation of another. After a period of stalemate, the anguish of the second half begins, and you start to feel a sense of fear. ‘Can we hold out?’ ‘Are we going to get another?’ Or ‘Oh, no what if they score?’ So, within the space of 90 minutes you have experienced extreme highs, and extreme lows. Anxiety followed by depression followed by anxiety. At the time of watching, if you weren’t already aware of these – as the majority are not – this is going to seriously impact your ability to recall the true version of events in a month or year from now. Unfortunately, because of our previous negative coding that is partly based on previous tournament experiences, we forget the definite data and facts of what happened, and begin to believe a slightly different, more emotional version. ‘Oh it’s just England, this always happens.’ Forgetting how we all really felt at the end of the semi-final. Pride for our country and our teams performance.  

In time, we will struggle to recall the journey these fine young men took to reach such a stage. The victories, tactile passing, and unstoppable shots. The bond and teamwork, effort, training, and the discipline expertly executed on the pitch. It will be easy to forget all of the positives you experienced throughout, reverting to our old English footballing ways of believing we are failures. But we must remember the facts.

In life, it is essential that we make it a necessity to understand the brain with the most current knowledge and thinking we have. If we fail in wanting to learn about it, it’s like being put in the driver’s seat of a vehicle that you’ve had no training for. Imagine the scratches, dents, crashes and collisions you’d have along the way. Maybe you should ask yourself, how many of you have had the same in your own life?

To change this and understand the differences between recording with emotions and recording hard facts is simple. To record accurately in the moment, or just after, simply write things down in a journal, in a diary, or just on a piece of paper. Whatever it might be, ensure you get pen to paper, or notes in your phone. Capture it somewhere. If not, you’ll go through life recalling only the losses.

The victory for England is not the individual wins. It is the wins in camaraderie, resilience, teamwork, persistence, hardening through adversity, and overcoming adversity. These times will contribute to a stronger team in the future and a more bonded and experienced group of players who, through their commitment to one another and their country, performed a monumental ask and outperformed what anyone had expected.

Maybe this time as an England fan we remember such pride and take it forward with us, rather than going back to our traditional feelings of loss.

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