inception

Inspired from Inception, the movie –

Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.

How to inject an idea –

• Make it a perfect, beautiful idea, easier to believe. Make it simple, unexpected, clear, credible, emotional, stories – success formula (courtesy: Book: Made to stick)
• Give the idea more context/detail in which to believe it. Context and repetition is the key.
• Repeat every day – until the idea takes hold, even without you knowing it fully how deeply, even if you don’t understand it fully yet.

From Mal’s point of view. How to self-destruct for an (wrong) idea –

• Keep thinking about it, don’t let it go. Don’t believe when your own mind says it might be irrational, impossible, illogical, impractical – for certain kind of ideas like hope, faith and love, logic doesn’t play much role.
• Keep filling finer detail around the idea from your own imagination, even if it is not real. It happens to dreamers, the romantics.
• Idea, even a wrong one, will get rationalized. Even a murderer justifies himself in the court of his conscience, he has to – otherwise he can’t live with himself.
• Don’t let it go even when you act out of character, even when you risk everything, be obsessive – because you think you are going to achieve the impossible idea, get a reconciliation. You take a leap of faith, what a fatal contradiction.  ​