How often did you hit a like button in the last month?

The ‘like’ button isn’t just on social media. It’s also in our head.

Ten times? Hundred times? One thousand times? I’m not just talking about the posts you like on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. I’m talking about the unconscious like button you’ve been hitting inside your head for nearly every interaction you’ve had with the world around you.

When you walked across the street, did you hit that like button when a cute dog smiled at you? Did you dislike the smelly garbage on the street? Did you hit that like button when the sunrise created a beautiful red glow over the skyline? And did you disliked the rain? When you arrived at work yesterday, did you hit that like button when someone asked about that concert you went to yesterday? And did you dislike that candid colleague that skipped the small-talk and instantly talked business to you?

Without realizing, most of us do this all the time. We’re categorizing every event and person into a like or dislike event. It’s how we’ve been trained for the last decade. Mostly by social media. Mostly by advertisers. That’s the game that they designed. To look at the world in black and white. To look at it via good and evil (like or dislike). To evaluate everything and everyone all the time.

The other good news is, it’s entirely up to you to change the world around you. You can simply start by looking at the world merely through observation, and ignore your unconscious like button. Ask yourself… What do I feel and think about what they do? Why does it make me feel that way? How might they feel? What’s the noise in their head? What do they need? What do I see them doing (or not doing) that gets in their way?

Perhaps that way we can slowly turn off our addiction to criticize everything we interact with and turn ourselves into the learning machines we ones were.

— Björn

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