Member-only story
The Little-Known Self-Care Trick That Freezes You for 1/25 of a Second
Nope, it has nothing to do with Wim Hof. ❄️
Confession: I just watched a prank video, and it cracked me up so hard that I ended up wiping my tears.
I don’t mean to laugh at unsuspecting strangers, but a dog dressed as a gigantic spider — eight, hairy legs flapping — and chasing people? It was too much for me not to laugh.
Maybe that’s an extreme example, but did you know that…
When humans are surprised, it causes us to physically freeze for 1/25th of a second?
I read that in the book, Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected by Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger, Ph.D.
Turns out, the microsecond freeze triggers a “find” in the brain — a moment that causes extreme curiosity to figure out what’s happening.
Instead of being purely reactive, a surprise helps us pause and ask what, why, or how. Exercise the brain often, and we learn to see circumstances (and life) in different ways.
So what does that mean?
Aside from having a dopamine rush, we can “hack” said brain function and craft more surprises into our lives.
