The world is full of surprises. Cast your mind back to way before the beginning of your lifetime. Dive deep into your knowledge of the history of our world and try to get a picture of what the year 2700 B.C looked like in Ancient Egypt. Why? Because this was the time that the earliest recorded magician was shocking audiences making balls disappear and taking birds heads off and somehow reattaching them as if bringing them back to life. People would have been, no doubt (or we can at least assume), pleasantly surprised by the magic of *‘Dedi’. Then there are the contortionists, yes the bendy people, whose earliest roots are in Mongolia and China although the Roman circus also had acts of extreme flexibility designed to shock and confuse it’s audiences. We have been surprising each other for as long as we know with many things that just don’t seem to be humanly possible (like beatboxing) as well as new scientific discoveries, ground-breaking architecture, incredible artistry and many many more wonders of the world.
There have been numerous scientific studies about the feeling of being surprised and it seems we like it. I’ve certainly seen the pleasant surprised look on hundreds of faces when I’m in the middle of a beatbox routine. **‘Tania Luna’ explains the science behind the processes our brain goes through when we are surprised in 4 steps: ‘Freeze’, ‘Find’, ‘Shift’ and ‘Share’. Freeze, being the 1/25th of a second moment when we actually are stopped dead in our tracks. The next phase is ‘Find’ where our brain naturally tries to figure out what has happened. If the surprise is something that forces us to change our perspective then we are forced to ‘Shift’ our perspective. And finally the more surprised we are, the more we want to ‘Share’ it. I’ve literally seen an audience member go through all 4 of those phases: ‘Freeze’ – literally. ‘Find’ – the perplexed look on their face as they try to figure out how I am making these sounds. ’Shift’ – the smile appears on their face as they are forced to see that it is just me making all those sounds. ‘Share’ – out comes the phone to film it so they can share with their friends or post it online.
Add the fact that when we are surprised, our emotions intensify by up to 400%. So if we are surprised by something positive we will experience feelings of intense happiness. The same goes the other way, being surprised by something negative means our feelings of anger etc will be intensified.
When was the last time you were really surprised? Did you go through these 4 phases? Have you recently seen someone go through them? Please leave your comments below.
* This is no solid evidence that Dedi existed. Information retrieved from Wikipedia
** Tania Luna is co-founder of Surprise Industries along with Leeann Renninger. Phd. Check out their book ‘Surprise’ here
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