I will start this one with two sentences.

1.   If you make it to the end of this post without falling asleep, you deserve a family size bag of peanut m&m’s.

2.   All truth can be circumscribed into one great whole.

A bit ago, Tyson posted on how competition spurred us forward as kids. it triggered us to be better and to improve to be able to beat each other up.  He also noted, that if and when we were on the same team, our skills were exponentially better when focused against the same common enemy. There is a perfectly good explanation for that. We need look no further than those voluminous tomes of human physiology as they explain the properties and principles of blood clots.

I will have to say, this post may really belong on the “Super-boring blog of insignificant physiological minutia”, but its worth a shot.

The free lesson today is about something called a positive feedback loop. Its a rare thing in the physiologic sense, but Ill try to explain why it coincides so well with being on the same team.

A simple explanation of a positive feedback loop is in the way blood clots. After we cut ourselves or an injury occurs, certain chemicals in our bloodstream are released. When they come in contact with tissues outside the blood vessels, they go nuts. and yell “fire” in the movie theatre so to speak. Im going to call this an “event”.  After this “event”, these chemicals start stimulating others around them to change, the presence of these chemicals only trigger more of the clotting chemicals to be activated, and you have something like the effect of a giant domino design that starts as a few single dominos, but soon spreads exponentially until a whole football field of dominoes are falling simultaneously. Now you have a blood clot. The presence of one “trigger”, or “event” grows until the desired effect is reached, and the phenomenon stops. The principle of one trigger exciting another, and then those exciting more and more and making a bigger response and continuously growing is the positive feedback loop.

This same principle applies within a uterus during childbirth, the stretch from a baby’s head in the uterus will trigger uterine contractions, the uterine contractions then continue to expel the baby into the birth canal. the baby’s head then stretches the uterus more, and back and forth we go, till you have a happy screaming mom, and baby.

If you made it to here, and your name isn’t Casey, Congratulations!, you’re halfway to Tyson’s m&m’s.

This principle applies in our families like this. We each try and be as good as we can be. When we see the good “event” that our spouse, brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter, or cousin does, we want to be better. We are “triggered”, or “excited” and we improve or do good ourselves. The more we are around that person the easier we are triggered. When we also improve, or do good, it “positively feeds back”, and the original person doing good wants to improve even more. Its like a teeter-totter that doesn’t have a down. When one side goes up, it stays up, and the other follows upward rather than falling back down. Pretty soon you’re a lot higher than you thought you ever could be on your own. You want to be with each other constantly because it makes you want to improve and you feel stronger when you are. This is why teams (In sports, or marriage) that are successful are so. They are on the same page, have the same goals, and work in synergy to achieve what they want. All truth is circumscribed into one great whole. Blood clots, child birth, and teeter-totters all in the same post. Beat that.  Enjoy the M&M’s.