How Your Brain Tricks You: The Hidden Power of Assumptions and Visual Perception

Ep 107. How Your Mind’s Eye Shapes Your Reality: The Hidden Science of Perception and Belief

What you see with your eyes—before you ever form a thought—has a powerful impact on how you experience the world. In every moment, your brain builds fast assumptions based on past visual memories and emotional experiences. These snap judgments form your beliefs about the people you meet, the situations you face, and the environments you navigate.

But here’s the catch: these automatic beliefs are not always based on truth. They’re built in fractions of a second and often lack evidence. Sometimes, they help you adapt and succeed. Other times, they lead to stress, anxiety, or even failure—especially when they're driven by past emotional events or everyday stressors that feel bigger than they are.

This episode breaks down the neuroscience behind how visual perception influences your mindset, decision-making, and daily interactions. Learn how stress hijacks your mental filters, how to gain awareness of your automatic beliefs, and how to reset your emotional responses to build resilience and peace.

If you’ve ever overreacted to a situation, felt anxious without knowing why, or made quick assumptions that turned out wrong—this episode is for you.

• Perception and belief formation
• How the brain interprets visuals
• Mental health and emotional response
• Assumptions and cognitive bias
• Stress, anxiety, and emotional triggers
• Mindset and personal growth
• Mind's eye psychology
• Resilience and emotional intelligence

🎧 Tune in for a powerful exploration of how your mind's eye shapes your world—and how to take back control

Take care and Walk Well. 

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 107 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project Podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at a local community college. What we're to be discussing today for today's topic has to do with sight and we're going to use the term sight and vision having to do with one, how we perceive with our eyes.

and also sight as in how we see with our mind and really how we can kind of distort what it is would be our potential to develop a belief, functional belief on the fly based on what things look like and that often is affected by levels of arousal and also determined faith and belief in things having to do with knowledge one, two, believing after the fact and faith and expectation based on prediction which may or may not have

let's say evidence to support. So we're going to go ahead and launch with the idea of what is sight? What do we do when we see something or feel seen? Well, one of the things that we first do is perceive information from our environment coming into our eyes, into the actual phobia in the backward of our eyes, on the inside of our orbits that we will call the retina and that little area called the phobia where it goes into the optic nerve.

as far as the signal, the light, that sort of thing, and gets interpreted, this is where we start getting signal that tells us what we've seen out in the environment. And this is the physical aspect of sight that I wanted to define first, in a mild way without getting too far into the physiology, which is deeply fascinating to me, but has a lot to do with how we develop what we believe things to be based on what they look like. Now,

There are two aspects of the physical, physiological side. One is having to do with the rods that perceive motion. And these are the little areas that are neurons that are the peripheral motion sensitivity aspects of our vision. But it's also our night vision, things that do not look distinct in 3D and depth. But yet there's just a mild difference that we can make out of shape, for instance, and don't know how

armando (02:50.863)
don't have to know what it is, we just need to know where things are and that's really what the rods kind of help us with. So it's our night vision and our motion sensitivity, but our foveal vision has to do with our color 3D depth and that's a slower signal and this goes to a different pathway than what the motion sensitivity does with our rods, but our cones pick up color and we're generally considered, I believe, dichromatic and there are some that are trichromatic.

which are rare, where we have more depth and reception of color signal. And this is also the part that signals what we identify and know is, once again, things that I can recognize and label. And this splits off towards our PFC, our prefrontal cortex, so we can make sense of our world and identify people and things. So now that we've kind of covered the two differences there, when we speak the word sight, that has to do with having seen

through our eyes, but also it has to do with how we represent things as a memory in our mind, how we see things when we visualize. And there are those, and a very small percentage of the population, that are a-phantagic, and these are the folks that cannot, or do not, conscious visualization, even though they may not be able to be aware of what it is that would be a visualization. When they recall things, they say that they do not get the image, but honestly the

the areas that light up that have to do with the visual aspect when one visualizes, so to speak, do light up, but they're just a little more sparse in how much signal, but they still have it. Just not enough to create what we would call a conscious awareness of set visualization, so to speak. But the important thing is if we can hold the picture in our mind, so to speak, our mind's eye, then we are able to visualize. That means at some point we are remembering.

something that I've seen in my environment, then pulling it out of memory and bringing it to bear for whatever use I might have. My favorite exercise in class when I teach students is teaching them the difference between a constructed memory, one that is made up of prior memories and the idetic memories, those things that we develop through our day-to-day experience where we actually see things versus making it up, so to speak.

armando (05:12.594)
And we aren't going to be talking about the imagination in just a moment, but I usually tell them, my students, that if they were to imagine something they've seen in their life, such as maybe a baby or a puppy, or a cute little animal that they like, or a baby, this sort of thing, then I tell them, okay, think about the biggest bushiest beard you've ever seen in your life, big black bushy beard. And those are two distinct things that they may have seen in their experience at some point in their lives.

And then I ask them, now place that beard on that baby, that puppy, that cute little animal. And often very quickly there is a sudden jolt in many of the people that do this exercise. And some get this confused, like that doesn't make sense look. And then there's some that just break out laughing because it's such an intensely ridiculous image that they have succeeded at making in their mind based on two things, two memories that may have been actual things and making something that does not exist.

the constructed memory that is ridiculous and funny and kind of cute at the same time. So that being the case, what we're looking at when we're thinking about looking at things and notice I use the term look, that means I'm very visually oriented and I am and much of my language reflects that. We tend to speak in ways that support what our primary learning capacities are and mine is visual. So therefore I said look and what we see. But generally speaking,

whenever we're thinking about visualization and remembering, it is once again things that we've seen in the past, but also these things can kind of shape what it is that we call a developed working belief. Just like we have a working memory, we have a working belief based on what information we have, even if it's limited, even if it's inaccurate, even if it's incorrect for the most part, but it looks that way. It could be throwing us a curve, so to speak. If something is put in on the camouflage and looking as if

not unlike what we would call the, I think it's the basilisk lizard that they call the Jesus lizard that runs on water, but it's also the one that kind of opens up the little skin around its neck and makes itself look large from the front side. If it has a predator looking at its nose, so to speak, it looks much larger and therefore is able to make other creatures not want to eat because it tends to be larger. And that works really good for simple visual structures.

armando (07:37.006)
And whenever we're under duress or in a pressured or hurried situation, let's say we go into an environment and we see things, we tend to see the larger shapes of things and it's not that we don't take in more information, but we tend to pay attention to those things that seem to be most pertinent to our immediate safety, survival, that sort of thing. And these will impact what it is that we may or may not believe as a result of said information going on the fly, so to speak.

So there are a lot of things that we do very quickly that we formulate that may or may not be really good for planning for the future because it was more of an immediate assumption and it's not always a cognitive, higher cognitive, assumptive process wherever I make assumptions and have opinions and then therefore go gossip about it without evidence, not anything like that. It's a little more primal, a little more basic, but it's not too distantly related to that mindset, mind you. But...

for the practical purpose of discussion today. When we look at those assumptions often we may or may not feel either, let's say threatened, or maybe feel really safe because things may seem to look that way. And therefore we take them as such, as if there is no threat. And we may be making a very quick assumption and a say of the situation and we may be doing it inaccurately. There could be something hiding that is dangerous to me. There could be something that is in...

a state of camouflage that we haven't broken or been able to determine as camouflage and someone's trying to hide from us or something is trying to hide from us, not only like a snake would or like a creature out in the jungle would like a jaguar or tiger and they're made for that sort of thing and for ambush so we tend to assume things based on information that we may have maybe there aren't any tigers in this region or jaguars so therefore I may be safe but there's a snake.

gotta be careful, there snakes tearing in most places of the world and we may respond as a result of that inefficient a say and also maybe a faulty belief thinking that things were safe whenever maybe they weren't and there's no way we can know everything going into a situation but along these lines is kind of what it is that I'm going to be discussing from because the beliefs that we determine to be useful to us moment to moment are generally assumed

armando (09:57.196)
and often are taken on little or no evidence. And sometimes that's all we have to work with. It doesn't make us bad or faulty or inefficient, much less effective, but rather it just means that sometimes we don't have a whole lot to work with and we do the best with what we got at the time. And if that is a limited bit of information, accurate, inaccurate, or otherwise, then we're going to develop some functional beliefs based on what it is we're doing to support what we're trying to do as far as a goal.

Now back to the term sight, mind sight. Can we, and do we, and this is a very rhetorical question mind you, develop a belief based on something without seeing things, evidence in my environment, based on words, maybe based on my own fear, or maybe even some anxiety that may come up as result of knowing I'm going into the unknown, or maybe I'm going into situation that streams in

incredibly novel and interesting but I get excited but maybe I kind of lose my objectivity as a result of the excitement. That's the end of the question. That was a long hairy question mind you but yes these are all some possibilities that may shape or form what it is that we do based on what we may be doing on the fly and if you've ever seen somebody as an example for instance that goes to let's say a dream vacation

and they walk into, let's say, Disneyland or Disney World, or they go somewhere, a vacation spot that they always wanted to go see, and once they arrive and they see the magnificence of what it is that they're there to do, often the emotional overwhelm, it's a good one in most cases, tends to be enough to derail one's objectivity a little bit to where one starts to see through rose-colored glasses. It's just like I imagined it.

Or the opposite, we could go somewhere and be totally disappointed and realize, wow, Mickey Mouse is dirty and there's trash on the ground. It's like, wow, that's not what I expected. And it could be very uncomfortable. It can become disappointing, if you will. So therefore we have some beliefs that come as a result of an immediate perceptual impact. And those things might take our objectivity offline and maybe we start to adjudicate. We tend to judge based on

armando (12:22.346)
whatever it is that I'm feeling at that moment, once again, the rose colored glasses and we are no longer looking through our mind's eye, but maybe our nether eye and things don't look so good and kind of dirty and they may stink a little bit. I don't like that. So we may have, once again, that kind of thought process that goes along and these things happen very quickly and they're very, very closely tied to self-regulatory skills and development because often the things that arise out of these sudden situations put us in a situation to where maybe

the overwhelm is very sudden or one where maybe I feel threatened and I'm not sure what to do and being able to manage physiologically what's going on can actually determine how well I'm able to navigate my environment but also whether or not I fall prey to my own mind and whether it be perceptual awareness or maybe my judgment and opinions start to bend a little bit based on how I'm feeling and maybe I'm not giving things or maybe people a chance.

based on what's going on. So some really important things to think about here. So what does the eyesight in the mind, mind sight have to do with belief and faith and maybe getting to the things that I want to do? Well, first off, I'd like to say a whole heck of a lot. And this isn't just my opinion, but many people write about it. There's so many self health books out there that teach you how to manage and how to gauge.

and how to determine how to keep your mind at all times so that way you minimize any impact that could create negative results in your life. And there are those that jump on the wagon of the TikTok toxic positivity movement, which I think is a load of bogus bollocks and we'll leave it at that. But the fact of the matter is if it is truly positive, it's not toxic. And if it is really uplifting, it can't be bad for you.

And if you really are afraid of such things because of the medium, the direction it's going, maybe you need to stop listening to those things. Once again, this is my opinion and I'm slightly smiling at that. But here's the thing. Often how we keep our minds determines how well we do in our lives. And sometimes we have little mottos and things that keep us going. And I know that whenever things have gotten very difficult for me many times,

armando (14:46.681)
If you all have seen the movie Dune, the Bene Gesserit litany of fear is one of the things that helped me whenever I was going through some of the darkest of my time because I had nothing else I could hold on to, seemed. Notice I said nothing else is quite absolute, but it felt that way at the time, so it was a bit hard. But also, whenever I was going through hard things, I would tell myself and I would work out the benefit of what I was doing whenever I was going to do hard things, working out 110 degree weather outdoors.

and hydrating the less but still doing something difficult resistance exercise, I would tell myself some things and these are the things that I would say. is I'm here, I am now, and only once will I this way come. I can't ever have it back. If I leave it behind, I can't go back and get it because time is something that we can't grasp. So those were the incurred ones I would give myself so I could be in the moment and enjoy as much as I could of what I was doing even if it was grueling and difficult.

And I always felt better after and I tell you that was really helpful. Another thing that I noted in this book that I'm reading, it's called The Greatest Secret, The Incredible Power of Thought. And it was a rewrite by this author named Orson Sweatt Margin. He's not the writer, but he's the one that rewrote much of the original book. And there's some really interesting ideas on not only thought process, but belief development, but also practical sense of how we see things in our mind's eye.

And I thought this was rather interesting. On a famous sundial, it is written, I record none but hours of sunshine, and then, end quote, every human life would be beautified by making this a life motto. What a great thing it would be if we could only learn to wipe out of our memories forever everything unpleasant, everything which brings up bitter memories and unfortunate associations and depressing, discouraging suggestions. If we could only keep the mind filled with beautiful thoughts which uplift and encourage

the efficiency of our lives would be multiplied. And I found that to be absolutely riveting when I read it. So if I am like that sundial motto, only recording those things that are the wonderful sun, and those things are our goals as individuals, whenever our personal sundial, so to speak, is recording that is the detail of my life. What is it that is being recorded? What is it that is being measured? Is it the stuff that's important? Is the question.

armando (17:13.067)
And if it's important, what is it? Does it serve me? Am I serving others? Is it greater than my individual self? Or is it just merely an ego-stroking exercise, where it's just about me, me, me, versus me becoming more and helping others and doing more and helping others become more of themselves? It's a deep thing. So how I see myself may be shaped by how I value myself. And that little quote actually determines

a number of things. One is how valuable a life is and what is it that I'm measuring in my life. And those are the goals that I set for myself. Those are the life goals that I pursue. Those may be the dreams that I have in my mind that I would like to accomplish or at the very least strive for and try to become. Especially if it means becoming more and doing more. And if there is definitely value in helping others, helping others

self-realize. If you've got an elevated level of skill in something and helping someone else get there, that's that peak beyond Maslow's hierarchy of self-realization, where you're at the peak of that pyramid realizing that there's another step and that's helping others self-realize. That is incredible. Not just mere mentorship, but actually helping people evolve. Not by doing the work for them, but rather being with them as they do the work and guiding them, supporting them.

and realizing that by your efforts and having seeded those growing tools, so to speak, within them, that they become more. And that is a great stroke for one's ego, if anything, but in a good way. Not one that one becomes master of the universe, but rather one becomes one of many masterful individuals growing in their individual universes, which is phenomenal as a mindset and the thought process. Now,

There are couple of things I'd like to touch upon having to do with vision and eyesight. Whenever we think about setting goals, we have a sense of direction. When we see much of self-help stuff out there, people tell you you have to write things down so that we make it physical and real in this universe so you can manifest versus it just being a process that is like so much smoke in our mind that goes away like a puff and then we wonder, well, where did it go? So logging things.

armando (19:37.264)
journaling things are incredibly effective. That's one thing that I will verbally say, I don't like journaling, fact of matters, I always carry a little journal thing with me. I just don't call it my journal. It's my little notebook. It's a little six by seven notebook. And I write everything down in there whenever I want to be creative, whenever I want to work on podcasts or work on things having to do with developments for books and things that I'm working on now. having that

helps me write things down, especially whenever my mind is so busy that I don't want to lose an important idea. Write things down, make it physical. But not only that, it actually teaches your body by you getting your kinesthetic involvement and also allows your mind's eye to give you a picture that you describe in words. So you're creating connections not only with the kinesthetic, your body, but also your mind, your higher cognitive and that sense of feeling that you're able to put down on the page.

It may not be a narrative but more so a description maybe just some pointers and and Bullet points to remind you what it is that you wanted to do or that you were thinking that That were so good that you don't want to lose and if you value those things write them down once again Not unlike a dream journal. It is a day waking dream journal so to speak versus one that you dream at night so some ideas there now there's some points that I'd like to

elucidate on. One is different aspects of psychonormative duress have to do with time dilation effect. I've spoken about that in my peak experience in the past. Wherever things seem to have slowed down, that is often brought on by stressors, but sometimes can even happen spontaneously. And these peak experiences often are things that give meaning to us and maybe even give us something to write about. And help us realize that there's more to us than merely what we do in our day to day, wherever we have heartbeats and breathing.

that there's consciousness and awareness involved that is quite mysterious and beautiful to say the least. And those are things that often connect us to a bigger sense of what else is out there versus just me going through my day-to-day activities and grinds, so to speak. Now, whenever things get in a hurry, we have this contracting of time experience, wherever it seems like time goes really fast and it's over before it even started, seems. Whereas with a dilation, it seems like

armando (21:56.69)
things take on a different meaning, like time falls away and it felt like forever, even though it may have been a moment. So how we perceive things will actually shape how we believe, and often what we believe is based not only on experience, but how we see it in our mind's eye, but also how we feel it as we see it in our mind as well. And what is it that goes along with those pictures, the good ones, the ones that have you wanting and reaching and striving and driving towards those things that are important?

That's my question for you that I want you to ask yourself and let me know. So if you have any comments or questions about this podcast in particular, send those to the Gmail at running man, get skills project at Gmail. I'd love to hear from you. And also once again, moving towards interview format, I've been saying this a little bit. I've had quite a few people reaching out to me and I had even more locally asked me when that's going to happen.

Equipment we're getting that rounded up and we're shaping a few other things that are going to tie to the podcast as well and There are things that are evolving things are moving as we speak and I certainly Enjoyed talking about this briefly about vision in the mind side because it's important to self regulatory skill because often much of what we keep in our mind is powerful and can change us and can even heal us but at the same time if it's not guided and regulated it can hurt us or

put us in a position where we could be hurt and we don't want to do that. It's a very powerful tool. Our minds, our imagination, the way we see things, remembrance and imaginal capacity. These are all amazing things and those are things that we should learn how to leverage so we can make things better. And for now, this late Sunday evening, I want to tell you thank you for listening. This is Mother's Day and I want to reach out and say thank you to all the moms

in our lives and say thank you for bringing all you wonderful people here. And without mom, you wouldn't be here. Without mom, I wouldn't be here either. And my late mom, I extend my love out to her and also to all the special moms in my life too. Thank you. Y'all take care. See, will see deeply. Wok Wok.