This One Is A Penis Story
In 2010 in Nodakhalil, India there was a 26 year old guy who worked as a rickshaw puller in a jute mill.
Jute is basically rope, or strong twine.
And a jute mill is where they manufacture the rope.
This young man was working as a rickshaw puller temporarily.
He was a pretty hard working young man, he didn’t mess with drugs and he didn’t have any psychological disorders. He was just a normal guy trying to make a living for himself.
This dude developed this deep fear that his penis was retracting into his body, making him progressively weaker.
Retracting as in pulling back into his body permanently, not a George Costanza situation.
This fear was making him so anxious that he couldn’t sleep at night, so to combat his anxiety he decided to spend his entire night in a nearby pond.
After a few fellow workers noticed his weird behavior they sent him to the hospital, which referred him to a local psychiatric facility.
They confirmed that nothing was happening to his family jewels, and there was nothing wrong with his brain.
He wasn’t getting weaker AND he had no signs of a psychological disorder.
Weird, enough, right?
Well here’s where it gets more interesting.
Two days after he was sent to the inpatient unit six other workers at the same jute mill began experiencing this same fear.
They all thought their little guys were turtling back into their body.
Even though there was no evidence, they convinced themselves that it was happening and worked themselves into a panicked state.
This anxiety and fear spread throughout the mill.
They all thought they had a deathly condition that was making them weaker and stealing their manhood.
After evaluation none of them were diagnosed with anything. It was purely psychological, but not something major like schizophrenia or even anything diagnosable like bipolar disorder.
It was all in their heads. And it seemed to be contagious.
Sounds odd enough, but this probably only happened once, right?
Nope.
In 1967 this same epidemic hit the entire city of Singapore.
Over 500 people rushed to the hospital to be treated after rumors about retracting dingdongs circulated.
They all hobbled like a penguin as they clutched in between their legs for fear it would retract into them like an uncontrolled measuring tape.
These are two of the many recorded outbreaks of a psychological phenomenon called Koro.
Koro is a syndrome that causes you to believe that your penis is shrinking into your body and making you weaker, or killing you.
And it’s entirely in your head. It doesn’t happen. Your penis stays exactly the same, you just buy into the hysteria around you.
After the outbreak in Singapore both local and international investigators concluded that the epidemic was caused by rumor, hysteria and a panicked condition.
This outbreak was only possible because the environment was right for it to happen.
Now this all sounds fucking insane. But it’s just a part of who we are as humans.
How does one person’s fucked up thought spread throughout an entire workplace?
Or an entire city?
Humans are tribal creatures.
That means that we’ve evolved to mimic those around us.
Even worse- we’re not even conscious of our mimicry. It’s something ingrained in us.
Have you ever been around someone who seems to suck the air out of the room?
They bring an Eeyore like rain cloud with them wherever they go?
Do you notice how their thoughts, feelings and mentality seem to infect everyone in every room they’re in?
You might have been in a fine mood when they entered your day but after a few minutes of being around this anthropomorphic rain cloud you start to feel like shit.
You start to feel their pessimism bedding into you like you’re a negativity sponge.
It’s because you’re subconsciously catching their shitty attitude.
“As research has shown, we generally have little awareness of emotional contagion and its influence on our behavior. It starts when we automatically mimic other people’s facial expressions, body language, tone of voice — which we’re hardwired to do from infancy. What happens next is also “infectious”: Through a variety of physiological and neurological processes, we actually feel the emotions we mimicked — and then act on them.”
There’s a quote from Jim Rohn:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
The people you spend your time with will shape your mentality, whether you're aware of it or not. They’ll shape the conversations that get your attention. It’s their attitudes and behaviors that you’re most exposed to.
It’s their beliefs, thoughts and actions that you will subconsciously mimic.
“According to research by social psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, the people you habitually associate with determine as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.”
The people you surround yourself with will determine who you end up becoming, how you feel about yourself and whether you fail or reach your goals.
When your intention is to change there are two important factors that will determine your outcome.
Your willpower and your environment.
Your willpower is a finite resource.
It’s been clinically proven that willpower is a mental resource that can be tapped out. It has nothing to do with toughness or discipline, it’s a neurologically wired ability that can run out. You only have so much willpower to use.
Your environment is everything outside you. It’s a setting that you can shape to be in line with your goal.
You can either ignore your environment and allow it to be opposite of your goal. If you do that you’ll be constantly swimming upstream towards your goal, struggling every day and applying effort but getting nowhere.
Or you can set your environment up to compliment your goal. You can set your environment to be frictionless and in tune with who you want to be and where you want to go.
If you set your environment up to compliment your goal you won’t need willpower. Your environment will allow you to stay on task, and striding towards change. It will be a current pushing you towards who you want to be.
Let me tell you a story that I don’t tell very often.
My first trip to rehab was a complete failure. It was a very gritty center in Phoenix, and 75% of the inhabitants were recent releases from federal prison. My roommate was a skinhead biker named Ed.
I lived there for nearly a month, and remained clean for the majority of the time.
When I came home I thought I could white knuckle my way to sobriety, so I went right back into the same circle I left. I went back to the same friends, doing the same thing in the same places.
It led to the same outcome.
I got high the third day I was home. I thought I could willpower my way to sobriety, and have the convenience of the same friends and the same environment I left.
This isn’t to blame the environment- your every choice is yours only. It’s a question of placing yourself in the optimal area to succeed.
Hanging out with potheads and druggies when you’re trying to get sober won’t work. You’ll end up falling back into the same destructive habits because you’re purposely surrounding yourself with them.
It’s like complaining about drowning in the ocean when you don’t know how to swim. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you purposely jumped in?
If you hang out with people who complain, you’ll end up complaining.
If you hang out with people who eat a lot of shitty food, you’ll end up eating a lot of shitty food.
If you hang out with people who think their dicks are shrinking, you’ll think your dick is shrinking.
Something like Koro seems fantastical and unreal. It’s no different than any other infective mindset. If you were surrounded by people who thought their body was changing, you would eventually think yours was changing too.
You’re affected both consciously and subconsciously by those you surround yourself with. You need to make a conscious decision to surround yourself with an environment that will put you in the best position to succeed.
