http://msrelief.com/2012/02/23/life-is-like-a-game-of-tetris/
According to Shawn Achor, the Tetris Effect is the KEY to why our brains are so powerful when linked with repetitive activities.
After finishing the game of Tetris there is a cognitive afterimage http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/f/afterimages.htm where the brain automatically searches for things to organize. Brain gets stuck in the after image where the brain is searching for patterns.
The Tetris affect can be seen on brain scans even after only a few minutes of play.
We train our brains to look for patterns
Positive Interventions are ways to train our brains:
Gratitude Journal: write down two things that you are grateful every morning.
Random acts of kindness: Do a simple act such as write an email to compliment a co-worker for a job well done.
When we do these things, our brains starts scanning for patterns. Because we have more images than we can possibly deal with, we can’t pick up all the information that we take in.
Our brain has to filter and decide what it is going to think about, remember our brain is just a single processor.
When we do a gratitude journal our brain is trained to look for positive things in our life, our brain scans for goodness.
When we train our brains and we become good at seeing the positive, at the same time we become bad at seeing the negative.
The Tetris effect is activating our brain to have a positive reaction.
This makes complete sense to me. I have this dreaded condition of MS and yet I am completely happy! From the minute I wake up until I fall asleep at night, I feel grateful for all the good in my life.
I hope that you do too!