Become aware of these forces
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You are fucking your own life and you are not even aware of it.
We grew up in an environment where we learned to blame others for every stupid thing that happened in our lives. It is in our genetics. It is the nature of our mind.
I remember and sometimes I laugh how I used to blame some mysterious forces for all the suffering in my life. I always find someone to blame for my failures.
The interesting fact is that when I was suffering, there were people who were enjoying their life.
I was poor but at the same time, some people were making money.
My parents, friends, and teachers told me that this is how life works.
Some people suffer and some stay happy.
Some people stay healthy and some get sick.
Some people make money and some stay poor.
Some people recovered from trauma and some remain stuck in the past.
Some people make their fortune and some keep struggling their whole life.
They told me this is how life works.
I was not satisfied with their answer. There should be something that people living an amazing life were doing.
I had a bad habit of asking questions since my childhood. So, I started asking myself who is controlling my life? Who is deciding whether I will stay poor or get rich? Who is the God of my life?
I’ve spent last 5 years studying books, reading biographies of successful people, and my own experience to understand why some people keep fucking themselves while others are living an amazing life.
One thing that I noticed is that there is one ability that is common in all successful people.
“They embrace change. It is easy for them to change themselves.”
Because the nature of the life is that we face new challenges on daily basis.
And these new challenges require different response as per different situations.
When you observe the universe, you will see it is changing.
When you see the history of humans you will notice one thing, CHANGE.
You see when it comes to change, there is resistance.
When humans try to change, they face resistance.
Have you ever been at the stage where you desperately want to change your life but things are not working?
You are trying hard to make money. You desperately want to become successful. You are putting everything to get stability and peace in your life but the things are not working in your favor.
You are stuck in the same situation for years. Some stay stuck for decades.
But there is internal resistance that is not allowing you to change.
But let me tell you there is a way. You can live a better life. You can create the way you want to create your life. You can change yourself. It is easy.
The first step to make a meaningful and lasting change in your life is to know yourself.
As the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Know thyself.”
And the first step in knowing yourself is to accept that I don’t know about myself.
You must have a strong realization about your ignorance that you don’t know who you are.
Let’s imagine in this way like you have the problem in your laptop but you don’t know about your laptop. You don’t know anything about the hardware and software of the laptop how you can fix the problem?
You must know about hardware and software of the laptop to fix the problem.
Same is the case for humans. Humans have the hardware (body) and software (mind).
If you don’t know about your hardware (body) and software (mind) how you can find where the problem is?
Why we want to solve the problem? Because we are not satisfied with our current life situation.
And when we solve our life problem what happens? We change. Problem solving the is the change work. It is the change in your thought process. It is the change in your actions. It is teh change in your beliefs. It is the change in your identity.
You can’t move solve your life problems without change. Change must happen inside of you to change your outside world.
Your external world is just application of your internal world.
And the change we are talking about comes from where?
It comes from you. It comes from your actions. It comes from your decisions.
And who dictates you, your decisions, and your actions? It is your mind.
So, know yourself is the key to induce change in your life.
What does it really mean to know yourself?
Knowing yourself means to know everything about you. It means to know why you do what you do? Why do you feel what you feel? It means to know why you think what you think? It further means to know who you are?
So, the next question is how do you know yourself?
The simple way to know yourself is to watch yourself as you are watching any stranger. Watch yourself as a stranger and write down what you observe about yourself.
Write down how you feel, what you think, how you behave, what emotions you experience, and what triggers you. Write down everything in detail about you.
As famous Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson said, “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.”
So, observe yourself as you want to help yourself.
When you see yourself as the stranger you will know that you have two main things.
1) Mind
2) Body
Everything in your life is the product of your mind and body. Nothing else.
All the suffering, happiness, success, or failure is the product of your mind. Your mind is the software that runs your life. You need to understand this software to un-fuck your life.
When it comes to understanding this software there are two main parts.
1) The watchman at the gate
Your conscious mind is the watchman at the gate. It stands between the outside world and your inner world. Everything you see, hear, read, or consume passes through it to enter your inner world.
It is your thinking mind. Whatever you think you think from your conscious mind. It is your conscious mind reading this article. And the thoughts that are popping up while reading the article is also due to conscious mind.
The information you consume on daily basis develop your thoughts. And the quality of your thoughts decides the quality of your life.
Have you ever wondered that how your mind collects information when you see content?
You have five senses such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
Conscious mind uses these five senses to collect the information. When you touch someone, it collects information. When you see something, it collects information. When you hear some dirty voices, it collects information.
You see the magic of mind that whatever you see, hear, touch, smell, taste becomes the part of your memory. So now pause and observe for 2 minutes what you are seeing, hearing, touching from last few months, years?
2) The dance of your childhood
Now the second part is your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind is your life database. It is the hidden storage room of your experiences.
It contains all information about you, your memories, your beliefs, habits, fears, and emotions you experienced at different stages of life.
As I mentioned above that conscious mind uses five senses to collect information. Conscious mind is working 24 hours to collect information. It is working since the day you were born. It collected every single experience since your birth and stored it in your unconscious mind.
The experiences that you even don’t remember because you were 1, 2, 3, or 4 years old. All these experiences are stored in the database of your unconscious mind.
And your unconscious mind uses this database to run your current life. 90% of your life is dictated by your unconscious mind.
On the basis of stored information, it influences your choices. It influences your decision making.
When you make a decision, it often feels like a conscious, logical choice. But in reality, your unconscious mind has already shaped your emotional response on the basis of your past stored data and your conscious mind simply builds a story around it to justify the action.
You think you are making a rational decision. But in reality, it is your unconscious mind that control your behavior and your conscious mind then try to justify it with logical argument.
Conscious mind obeys the unconscious mind and creates a justification to make you feel comfortable with the decision of unconscious mind. Therefore, you see when people make any decision they try to justify their decision. It is their conscious mind trying to create a story to justify the decisions of unconscious mind but people are not aware of it.
Take a pause and reflect your life for few minutes. Try to recall your childhood, the emotions you experienced in your early age. The environment in which you grew up. Every experience is stored in your unconscious mind. And a pattern is developed that is dictating your behavior.
Reflect on your past and try to recall your secret life. The life that only you know. Observe why you were doing all that non-sense? From where it was coming? Why you were doing stupid things? It was none but your unconscious mind playing with you.
It is your unconscious mind that tells you, you are worthless. It is your unconscious mind that says you are ugly when you see yourself in the mirror. It is your unconscious mind that says you are not enough.
It will keep controlling your life until you become aware of it.
As Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said,
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Nature of mind
The prime responsibility of your mind is to make you feel safe. When it comes to feeling safe, it means staying in the same situation. Because when you try to change your life situation mind perceive it as a threat because your internal environment of the mind is not familiar with the new environment.
Therefore, mind does everything to resist change until you make your mind familiar with new experience. Whenever you will try any new thing or try to change anything about you, your mind will resist because your mind considers change as the threat.
Mind wants you to stay same. It is nature of your mind and if you are not aware of it you will keep blaming mysterious forces for all non-sense in your life.
People spend their whole life staying in the same situation because they don’t know why they are procrastinating or why they are feeling internal resistance. They think some supernatural force wants them to stay same but in reality, it is their nature of mind.
And when it comes to the resistance why you are feeling resistance to change. It is coming from your old childhood patterns. It is coming from your old memories.
Your unconscious isn’t just a storehouse of memories it’s a pattern-making machine. It notices what keeps happening in your past life, what emotions follow certain situations, and what actions lead to pain or pleasure. And once it sees a pattern? It turns that into an automatic response such as a habit, a fear, a craving, or a belief. This is how the past secretly controls the present until you become conscious of it.
There is hope
The most beautiful thing about mind is its nature of plasticity.
As famous neuroscientist Andrew Huberman said, “Brain is capable to modify itself in response to experience.”
It means you can change your mind at any stage of your life.
There are ways through which you can change yourself and the first step to change yourself is to become aware of yourself.
The first step is to be aware that how the forces of mind are controlling your life. Because if you are not aware of the problem how you can move to the solution stage?
Just start with this:
Observe yourself.
Watch your thoughts. Your emotions. Your habits.
Study yourself like you’re watching a stranger.
Because the first step to change is awareness.
- Become aware of what you think.
- Become aware of what you feel.
- Become aware of how you act.
- Become aware of the fact that your mind is the driver of your life.
And most important:
Become aware that you are the God of your life.
It requires a complete book for me to explain everything. I hope I provided you some awareness that how life works.
I will discuss more about change and building your dream life in the upcoming letters.
Thank you for reading.
Stay blessed.
— Max
