Default Thoughts vs. Reflective Thoughts

There are two types of thoughts. Default Thoughts are those you arrive at as a natural consequence of your prior thinking and your prior actions. For example, as a Hispanic American, if I arrive at a store and a clerk looks at me with disgust and walks away from me rather than greeting me, my immediate thoughts may be that the clerk is a disgusting, racist person. (While this has happened to me, it is infrequent, thankfully.)

Every day we have the option of whether we will stick with our default thoughts and assume them to be true or whether we will engage in more reflective thinking.

Reflective Thoughts are when we choose to more deeply process our default thoughts. Some of my reflections in this particular situation may be as such:

Okay – this clerk appears to not like me and is perhaps a prejudiced person, but what do I gain if I purposely look for confrontation with him? If I do that, then if I am correct about thinking he is a racist, I am just reinforcing his beliefs, “proving” to him that people like me have attitudes, are unlikeable, and cause trouble.

So if I act according to my default thoughts, causing me to get an attitude with this person, then I am making the world a worse place, losing this opportunity to positively impact the people and environment around me.

Please bear with me through this mental exercise. I just want you to understand that it is quite easy to form default thoughts, assume they are the truth, and allow them to affect our whole day. Meanwhile, our default thoughts often represent great falseness in our lives. This case example may not be one you relate to – that is fine, just imagine any scenario where someone appeared to have a distaste for you, without a good reason.

My trick in many life situations (I’m sure I did not invent this) is to pretend that I am not aware of certain things I am actually aware of. I believe this technique is used much more by women than men, but it can be quite useful. If I perceive that someone is in a horrible mood or seems to be prejudiced against me, I will simply behave as I always do, pretending that I did not notice their mood or attitude. Of course, I may quickly look for a way to give them their space.

My default mode of behavior is to be polite with everyone, to treat everyone as if they have some internal importance that I may not be aware of. Every person you see every day is more important than you think. This person may have saved someone’s life, may be managing a multi-million-dollar company, may have raised a family of doctors and teachers, or may have had the potential to do all the above things if he had ever simply been given the opportunity.

When people assume that you are a certain way, and then you show them that you are not like they had assumed, hopefully, this helps to change their perceptions. Hopefully, they can begin to see that they do not need to assume everyone of a certain race, religion, or political party is bad.

Most people are good, or they aspire to be good most of the time. Sometimes, of course, we think we are doing good, but the effects are actually bad. Ultimately, it is our default thoughts that poison us all against each other. And to be frank, often this is driven by news media, social media, and all the people who are stuck in “us vs. them” thinking to an extreme level, who forever blame someone else for all the ills of the world. Many of these people and media have the loudest voices, reminding us over and over that our group hates that group. Or their group hates our group. Or this group started this, and the other group needed to get revenge.

This creates and spurs endless psychological and even physical warfare. Because these are the loudest voices, many of us assume that we live in a scary world, but it can’t possibly be as bad as it is portrayed to be. For instance, the news is built to report mostly negative news – positive stories are rarely reported.

The major caveat here is that the more we think the world is a scary place, the more closed off we all become, afraid to get involved with anything we see, afraid to help, afraid to ask for help, and as you may guess, these thought processes will probably make the world a scarier place to live in.

By thinking we live in a scary world, we make it so.

Something I wish all of us to learn is that our thoughts are potent. We don’t understand the power of a simple thought in this age. And the collective thoughts of masses of humans are incalculably powerful – they are responsible for inventions, religions, philosophies. Still, they are also responsible for needless vitriol and toxicity, misinformation, and warfare.

We must take our thoughts seriously.

How can you help make the world a better place? Do this.

Start thinking about your thinking. Take note of the types of thoughts you often have. Here are some common thoughts people tend to have:

• I am not as good as my peers

• I can never seem to attract any good, successful people into my life

• Everything I do seems to fail.

• Many people don’t like my personality.

• If I had more money, things would work out.

• I’m not smart enough.

I did specifically choose mostly negative thoughts, as these are the ones that tend to cause the most harm in our lives.

Let’s take the thought, “Everything I do seems to fail.”

We have to examine this more carefully.

Everything you do cannot possibly be failing. You are breathing, and your heart is beating, so your body’s systems seem to work just fine. Perhaps you mean that much of what you do at work isn’t going well. Then we can examine certain projects you worked on and see that perhaps there is a pattern of failure. Then we should examine the parts of the projects more carefully. Perhaps 90% of the tasks in your projects went quite well, but that 10% that did not were critical enough to cause big failures. Fine – you can use this information to improve and stop being so hard on yourself. Achieving 90% is an A in school, but sometimes it is a failure in a real-life project.

Be very cautious with general, all-encompassing words, such as Everything / Nothing, Everyone / No one, Always / Never. If you use such words in your thoughts, this should be a big signal that your default thinking is flawed.

As a general rule, we can assume that our default thinking is indeed flawed. This means that if you do not engage in reflective thinking, that most of your thinking is probably flawed. And if most of your thinking is flawed, your whole life may be headed on a path that is not best for you.

You do not need to think reflectively about every single thought you have, but at least try it out for your most common thoughts. If you are not aware of your thoughts, try this exercise. Set the alarm for every hour of the day (at 8:00, then 9:00, and so on). Every time the alarm goes off, write down what you were thinking at that moment. Later on, look for patterns in your thoughts. Then, think reflectively about your thoughts. Scrutinize them carefully. You will find mistakes, fallacies, incorrect assumptions, and you will see that you can improve your thinking.

If you find it difficult to properly examine your thoughts, it may help to read about cognitive biases, logical fallacies, or other books in the psychology / self-development domains.

When you improve your thinking, you will improve your behaviors, which will help create more positive and fruitful thoughts, and you will create a virtuous positive cycle of thoughts and actions in your life and possibly others’ lives.

“I am Better Than You”

The thought that “I am Better than You” may be one of the most harmful thoughts ever produced in all of society, yet it is often seen as quite benign or even as a good and healthy thought to have. For many people, they may view it as their right to think this thought every day.

I will admit that I have been guilty of thinking this thought at times. I am well educated, and I think education is highly important. So it is tempting if I meet someone who did not go to college to think that I am better.

Yet, in reality, I just happened to be born into a family where a college education was highly valued. Since I was 8 years old, I knew that I would go to college – it was never a question. Another 8-year-old in my neighborhood perhaps had never even heard the word “college,” as his parents may not have found higher education to be especially important. Another 8-year-old in a less fortunate country was perhaps working full time to help his family survive, and the idea of college would be completely foreign to him.

There is not a good reason to convince ourselves that we are better than others. Often, we just had different circumstances and different opportunities.

A humbling thought I sometimes have is that if I had been born exactly in someone else’s position, meaning to another mother and father, in the same context as someone else, then I would be that other person. We like to focus on our self-control and our ability to do what we want, but if you were born in an environment without proper nutrition, education, healthy mindsets, good role models, and so on, then why would you be the 1 in a million statistic that performs well in life?

Contrariwise, if everything in your life were moving you toward love, wisdom, and success, with good parents and good school systems, and positive nurturing family and friends, what type of person could fail to live a fruitful life in this case? If everything were aligning you toward being a good and successful person, then to fail horribly in life would perhaps make you quite the unusual statistic.

With this type of thinking, I see myself in every individual I cross paths with. I see that if things had been different, I would be them, or they would be me. In a sense, we’re all the same individual because if I had been born and raised in precisely your circumstances, I would be you, and if you had been born and raised precisely in my circumstances, you would be me. This is a powerful idea that has impacted my life.

There is nothing to feel too proud about. I should not feel that I am better than you. Or if you are in better circumstances than me, you should not feel that you are better than me, either.

This thinking helps me sympathize more and relate to people who are not in as fortunate circumstances. I think many of us fear interacting with someone who has less than us because I think deep down, we all know that we could just as easily have been in their shoes. But rather than empathize, we often choose to distance ourselves more and more from them. It’s easier to pretend they do not exist or to blame them for their shortcomings.

From a group or nation level, “I am better than you” is probably a persistent thought from people in many nations throughout the world. Nations tend to want their people to feel proud of their country – e.g., patriotism. Yet, there is a point where feeling that we are better than others can result in prejudices, racism, harassment, violence, etc.

When we think we are better, the mind easily shifts into a dark place, where we start to think it is okay to take control over someone else’s life, to use them for our purposes, to objectify or dehumanize them, or in the worst of cases, as a justification to exterminate people.

We should aim to support our thoughts with evidence. We shouldn’t have a thought and feel it is true just because it makes us feel good. And, we should aspire not to feel good just because a thought strokes our ego. We should aspire to get our self-esteem from good thoughts and good actions, not from belittling and looking down on others.

All I ask is that we take more caution with this widespread thought that we probably all have had at some point or another: “I am better than you.”

Think of Death to Live More Consciously

For someone who is 35 years old, I think of my own death quite often. I am very healthy, so poor health is not the reason for this. I am also not depressed, so please do not be concerned in that way either.

I also consider that for anyone important in my life, they may perish at any time. I don’t let this make me fearful, but I realize that this is the truth. Since much of my way of life is to pursue the truth, I think we need to acknowledge that life can be taken from us at any moment. We are not in control of when or how it will happen. We can eat well, exercise, and maintain our health to the best of our abilities, but this does not free us from the possibility of sudden illness, an accident, or senseless violence.

I am a highly optimistic person, and so the last thing I want to do is make someone fear that death is coming for them and their loved ones any time soon. I want us to accept that it can happen and use this for our personal betterment, rather than as something to become anxious or depressed about. There is no reason to expect death to come soon for many of us. Yet, because there is no reason to expect this to happen, our lives are often out of balance. We may even live as if we will never die, which of course, is false.

Many people prioritize work, or money, or even things above their loved ones. Still, if we considered even for a moment that a loved one may not be there tomorrow, then surely we would be awakened to the true value of our relationships with family and close friends.

Sometimes I think today could be my last day alive. If this were the case, what would I do? As strange as it is, I often find myself figuring out that I would live my life as an ordinary person, fulfilling my ordinary obligations. I would pursue a good meal, spend time with my wife, write my Thought post (as I’m doing now), and reflect on my life and the nature of society and its problems, as I do regularly. I would also try to help whoever I could.

Surely, if I knew I was going to die today, I would probably feel the need to reflect on whether my life had been worth it – whether I accomplished what I wanted to. But what is the point in waiting for death to think of this? Think of it right now. Are you accomplishing what you had hoped? Are you on the path you had hoped? Are you living up to your own standards? Forget the standards of everyone else for a moment.

If we wait until death to think and reflect on our lives, we are perhaps waiting until death to think. Is this the reality we want for ourselves? If nothing else, we should reflect on what we find to be truly important during our lives. If it is love, we should be loving, rather than just wanting others to love us. If it is happiness, we should be spreading it rather than just wishing to feel it. If it is wisdom, we should be the student for many years and then spread our wisdom to life’s students. What value do we hold so strongly that we should be giving it to others happily, rather than just wishing to accumulate it for ourselves?

We must seriously consider our own death to live truly. Understand that your life is limited, the lives of your parents are limited, even the lives of your children are limited. All lives are limited. There is only so much time to do what we wanted, find love, express our love, accomplish something, make our small impact in this world in our own way, and stand up for whatever it is that we believe in. But if we never thought about what we believed or what we wanted, how would we truly pursue it? And how would we accomplish it?

We have to respect that death is ultimately coming for us all. When we have a conversation with anyone, we should sometimes think – this may be the last time I have the chance to speak with this person. Before we get another chance, that person may die, or I may die.

Such thoughts are not meant to traumatize us or make us fearful or agoraphobic. The point is to realize that many of us are living life trivially. We are not present. We see our loved ones as just background noise, as mouths to feed, as wanting to discuss their own boring lives with us, etc. We form barriers between us with our phones, televisions, and other screens. In time, we become strangers in the same house, or eventually, maybe strangers who live in different houses who realize they never really knew each other.

It seems that many of us are afraid to live. It’s easier to follow the lives and dramas in the news media and television shows than to discover and pursue our own truthful life path. We become obsessive about following fake lives on television screens, celebrities, and our friends’ lives rather than forming our own life worth living.

We live in an age when it is more possible to create the life you want to live than at any point in history, but this does not necessarily make it easy. Just as we have opened up so many fruitful paths, we have also opened up many harmful and counterproductive options. The path toward truth and meaning in our lives is one we must commit to, or there will be plenty of distractions along the way to take us off course.

So this is why I find it valuable, and I’m eternally grateful for the simple reminder that I’m going to die. Everyone I know is going to die. These are statements I view positively, as they always help me stay on the right track in my life.

This simple reminder forces me to value people first, always. This is the world I want to live in, where we put people first. Ultimately, every action you perform every day should represent the world you want to live in. I always keep in mind that whoever I am interacting with is a real person first, and second, they are whatever they appear to be.

For example, for any stranger you may see on the streets, think: This is a person first, that happens to be a successful businessperson. This is a person first that happens to be skating in the middle of the street. Or this is a person first, who happens to be homeless and asking for food. Our value comes from being a person first, not from our secondary characteristics. And this is the way it is with all life, actually. Life has value in itself, not because of what temporary qualities it appears to have (e.g., beauty, success, power).

Whenever someone calls me or emails me and needs to talk, I do my best to be there. If it’s family, I drop what I’m doing and do my best to help, or listen, or provide whatever it is they may need. If it’s one of my readers with a problem, I often do my best to help them see better pathways in their life. I never aim to tell someone what to do with their life. I hope to get them to see better pathways that they could explore.

At one point, I was so fixated on my business and my work that I put that first for many years. Now, I don’t. Now, I see that my work is meant to be just an extension of my whole life. My whole life’s work is about helping people. So doing that is important, and I aim to listen to people deeply and help them however I can. If it means setting aside my work for a few minutes, or in some cases longer, so be it.

What point is there in me trying to spread my thoughts if I am not living by them? This is another realization you may come to when keeping death in mind. Are you truly living by what you find to be most important? Are you telling your kid to tell the truth, then you lie to everyone all day at your work and to your spouse? Are you telling your friends to follow their passion but choosing money first in your life every time?

The biggest lie most of us face every day is that we don’t acknowledge the simple fact of our own mortality and the mortality of every person we will cross paths with today. Keep this in mind. If you see 100 people or more today, there is a fair chance at least one of those people you crossed paths with will not be alive in 365 days.

To pursue truth in our lives, we must acknowledge our mortality, and this will help us always to make sure we are on the path to valuing what is truly most valuable in our lives and being congruent with ourselves (being, thinking, saying, and doing in a way that is in alignment). This will also help us to be more present. If you keep in mind the temporariness of life, you will be motivated to get the most from every moment and not take any of it for granted.

The Cosmic Interrelatedness of Everything

I have come to have this feeling of cosmic interrelatedness with everything. This is the realization that none of us are who we think we are. Many of us think of ourselves as individuals, as having our own will, as having our own personality, and of course, this is a valid perception.

But just as it is valid, it is equally invalid.

We have such an elitist view of humans in this world, thinking that we are all that matters, and all other creatures, trees, and plants are just background scenery. We are the stars of the show, and ultimately all that matters – at least, this is how we conduct ourselves. Once long ago, we were the stars, literally the stars. We are made up of the same matter as stardust, and then once long ago, all we were was fungi, and then once long ago, all we were was aquatic animals, and then hominids, and then here we are. When we discriminate and cause harm to other species and treat them as irrelevant, we treat the very process of that which became us as irrelevant. We undermine our own evolutionary history and its importance when we undermine these living beings. Thus, we must engage the minds of ourselves and our young ones in activities that allow them to see the common thread that weaves all life together. We need to find ways to profit together collectively rather than profit off one another, ending up stuck in bringing a net increase for one and a net decrease for the other.

We are not an island to ourselves – we are interrelated with everyone who has ever touched our lives. Without every person in your life and the environment and the planet, along with the sun and universe that keeps our planet in its place, you could not be who you are now. So we are just one tiny piece of a larger puzzle piece, of a larger puzzle piece, of a larger puzzle piece. And without you, you certainly cannot exist. Yet without every other piece of the universe falling as it did, you could not exist either.

Keep this in mind. Your personality is not yours, but a fusion or collection of all the personalities around you, especially those you spend more time around. Your desires are not all your own but rather a fusion of all those desires you see around you. Your individuality is not all your own, but again, a fusion of all the individualities around you. Even if you are the rebellious type and rebelled against everything you ever saw, everything the people around you did and believed, then your being is still a reaction or a sort of output to the input that was the rest of the world acting on you.

Don Miguel Ruiz (author of The Four Agreements, one of my favorite books) says that we are domesticated through our upbringing. We learn that it is good to behave in this way and not in that way. Most of those teachings have some reasoning behind them, but some may be arbitrary, contradictory, or even poorly reasoned or based on faulty information. The teachings of domestication guide our lives and our neighbors' lives, so it is difficult to escape.

You probably eat with a fork and knife, chopsticks, or some instrument in your culture. Well, some cultures eat primarily with their hands. To you, it may seem strange and off-putting to eat with your hands, yet to them, it may seem just as strange and off-putting to eat with an instrument. Your surroundings, context, and environment helped make you who you are. We all know this, but we tend to give too much credit to who we are as unique individual beings. Just keep in mind that who you are as a unique, individual being cannot be examined as something separate from the society that has helped create who you are.

Sometimes I feel that I am directly connected to some great individuals throughout history, many who are well known and respected by most people. Perhaps this is not as crazy as it seems. Such great individuals and many others have shaped this world so much that their ideas have personally impacted what we see and the people we interact with. And so it makes sense in a way that I can see these individuals in others, in the life around me, and even in myself. I respect and revere such individuals highly, and I learn about them and live by the best of their words and actions, and so in some ways, I am them. I aspire to be them, I dream of them, and in a way, I am these great individuals and more. As a simple example, I often draw on their words and quotes, and I consider what they would have done when I have to make a decision. Then, I aim to do just that.

If one day anyone ever looks to me and asks what I would have done and tries to emulate that in their lives, I would say that they have succeeded in drawing on my life energy and that I have become a part of them.

Think of this. There is a limited amount of water on the planet. There is a limited amount of oxygen. Yet, these compounds, or at least the atoms that make them up, will circulate on this planet over and over and over. Thus, on the atomic level, any of us at any given point have the same matter in us that anyone in history may have had – from powerful or famous individuals to plants, to animals already extinct (e.g., the dinosaurs), and so on.

At the material level, all of consciousness is relying on the same elements – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc. At the material level, we are all literally interrelated. We forget this because at any point in time, I am me, and you are you. But at another point in time, the matter that was in you may have cycled on to other lifeforms, and the matter of other lifeforms may have cycled on to become you. If you need a bit more elaboration, remember that we eat and go to the restroom every day – the matter that makes us up is not static.

Here is a quick story. The other day, I was arriving home after a walk, and I saw a small rock on the sidewalk. I just walked past it and went on home. Then I began to reflect on what I had done. I was operating on the assumption that this rock didn’t have much importance to me during my day. That was true, as this rock was never going to cause me any problems. I am still on the young side and healthy, and even if I tripped on it, I would probably be fine. Then I began to think of the interrelatedness of everything, and I realized that this small rock on the sidewalk could cause an older person to trip, fall, and fracture their hip. I realized that this small rock was connected to everything. Just as I’m connected to everything, so was the rock. Nothing escapes the nature of interrelatedness.

If someone yells at me without reason, calls me names, and tells me I’m good for nothing, this might affect my whole day. I might be put in a bad mood, which might ripple into spreading more bad moods to the people around me. That, in effect, may ripple out further and further in ways that are difficult to calculate.

Let’s go back to the rock. If I trip on that rock and fall and break my wrist, that may have all kinds of unwanted aftereffects. I may choose to drive even with a broken wrist, and then I may get into an accident and injure someone else. You see, one small rock can cause big, big problems.

Incidentally, on the universal scale, Earth is just a small rock.

The point is, we should remember that the little things matter, too. There is no such thing as a small rock. The rock is small in size but has the power to change lives, for better or worse.

If the rock stays out of the sidewalk, it is perfect. It is ornamental, it looks beautiful among all the other little rocks, it helps to delineate where the sidewalk ends and begins, and everyone is happy.

Don’t worry. The next time I left the house, I saw the same little rock at the same spot I had left it, and I put it out of the way.

We are all interrelated, affecting each other’s lives. Everything that impacts me ripples out and affects everyone near me, and then near them, and then near them. Everything that impacts even a small rock ripples out and affects everything near it, and then near it, and then near it.

Because we live in the internet and social media age, where information can impact people across the globe in seconds, there is great power in even the smallest of actions to ripple out and affect us all.

Sending a positive thought or comment to one person or doing something good can ripple out quite far. You may not see all those aftereffects of your thoughts or actions. But you have to imagine that they are happening because they are.

Live more consciously through all your actions and see that they affect all that is around you.

Expanding Empathy

It’s important in these times more than ever that we expand our empathy. This means that we should aim to understand what other people are going through, not just on an intellectual level but on the level of emotion and feeling.

Let’s consider what empathy is. It is feeling and knowing what someone else is going through on a deep, emotional, personal level.

At its base level, to empathize, you must ask yourself, have I ever gone through a similar experience as such a person? (e.g., next time you witness suffering, ask yourself this question). Or, to go a bit deeper, you may ask if you can understand what this person is feeling and going through.

If you have had a similar experience, you may possess a natural empathy for this person, as you can easily understand what they are going through. When we consider family and close friends, we can empathize somewhat more easily, as we have many shared experiences. We are also much more likely to have either gone through similar pains as them or to have a close connection to their pains just through our close connection with them.

The above forms of empathy are not to be taken for granted, despite that for some people, these sorts of empathy come more naturally. I believe that people should focus first on empathizing with those closest to them to build up their empathy skills. We can always aim to improve our empathic abilities, perhaps by aiming to listen more deeply, to observe body language more closely, or to feel what someone is feeling more deeply.

However, in these times more than ever, we must expand our empathy beyond just our close family and friends to neighbors, strangers, and people who are outside of our affiliations (outside of our religion, race, socioeconomic status, etc.). This is a challenge, but one that will pay great dividends for society.

Particularly, I would like to emphasize that those in power should empathize more with those who have less power. Those of a dominant or predominant class should empathize more with those not in a dominant class. Men should empathize more with women, and people with access to great wealth and resources should empathize more with those who do not have these things. A key reason for this suggestion is to restore balance in society. Those who are powerless are forced to understand powerful people as they run the world. Those who are minorities are forced to understand the predominant groups as they run the world. Women are forced to understand men, as historically, the world has been run by them. We should come to understand the inherent privilege and perhaps injustice in this, and those in the predominant or dominant classes should take a moment from their days regularly to consider life from another angle.

Much of the pain and suffering in this world may arise just from those in minority or less privileged groups feeling that they are not heard, taken seriously, or seriously considered – that they are just invisible and irrelevant, which is one of the worst feelings a person could have. In reality, all sides should empathize with each other more, but it will help restore balance when the highly privileged work to empathize with the less privileged.

We should learn that empathy is a key step for us to take actions that help one another. Those who fail to empathize will see no reason to take such actions, of course. When we do learn to empathize more deeply, we will be prepared to build better societies for ourselves and our families.

On your journey to expanding your empathy, first aim to empathize with yourself (treat yourself with love and kindness, and not just judgment), then your nuclear family, extended family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers like you, strangers unlike you (e.g., with different backgrounds and worldviews), then to animals you are familiar with, then to animals you are unfamiliar with, then to all life, then to all nonlife, then to all.

At the final stages of expanding your empathy, you will see yourself in everyone. You come to understand that there are only so many emotions or combinations of them, and we are all capable of having them. When you see yourself in everyone, you will do your best to help everyone who walks into your life, as if it were your brother or sister or even yourself.

To the practical person who thinks these are nice thoughts, but we cannot help and save everyone, I would say that my focus is on getting us to progress in stages. Progress doesn’t happen overnight but in gradual stages. It is up to us to choose that journey of improvement for ourselves.

Here are some techniques we can use to begin to expand our empathy as communities:

• When you see suffering, take a moment to consider what this person is going through deeply. Imagine what their day may have been like. Then from there, imagine what their whole life may have been like.

• Read or listen to first-hand stories written from the minority or oppressed perspective. This means that the author should be a minority or oppressed, or the author should at least have interviewed such people.

• Read historical accounts that honestly try to understand the perspective of minority and oppressed peoples – this may include looking into Native American history, African American history, Hispanic American history, the history and struggles of women, etc.

• Try to make a meaningful human connection with someone outside your socioeconomic status, with different world views, a different religion, etc. Do not feel the need to convince them or to be convinced of anything. Just open your mind and learn why and how this person is the way he is.

• Watch international movies or movies directed by people from different backgrounds and cultures. This may involve watching movies with subtitles.

• Learn another language – if you try to learn and study a language seriously, you will learn directly what it is like to be the outsider, the one who feels foolish, does not understand, and is sometimes mistreated. Imagine visiting another country and only speaking their language in a broken/basic way. This is a humbling experience.

• Listen to music from other cultures and regions, perhaps some that is in another language. If it is in another language, look up what the lyrics mean.

When you successfully expand your empathy, you will become interested in engaging in more community acts of kindness.

Build Up Your Mental Fortress

We all have a mental fortress that we are in charge of and operates to help us in times of difficulties and duress. I am not speaking of the mind itself, but rather the mechanisms which protect the mind from harm and falseness.

Just as a computer has a firewall to protect it from viruses and invaders, you have a mental firewall, or what I will call the mental fortress. Many of us have not given any thought to this, and so the mechanism runs on autopilot. We resort to old habits that have seemed to work for us in the past. Sometimes those old habits work in a way, but they may not always work well, or sometimes they cause us extra problems rather than truly helping us.

Your mental fortress kicks in any time someone offends you, you feel embarrassed, someone lies to you, you lie to yourself, you are going through a traumatic period, and if you are afraid, anxious, or sad or hurt emotionally in some way.

The mental fortress may tell you to get away from people who cause you emotional suffering. Or it may tell you to respond angrily or possibly even with physical force or to argue with whoever is hurting you. It may tell you that your goal is to harm them more deeply, whoever it was that tried to hurt you.

You may begin to see that there are productive and counterproductive parts of this mental fortress. Many of us go all our lives without thinking of any of this. Something happens, and we react. But it is important to proact – to have a set of actions or steps that you can take in advance, to avoid inviting problems and suffering into your life.

A computer anti-virus system may find vulnerable ports that are liable to be hacked and used maliciously and protect them or seal them so that they cannot be so easily infiltrated. Just the same, you should consider your greatest vulnerabilities and look for ways to mentally protect yourself from being hacked or controlled or falling into emotional turmoil every time one of these vulnerabilities is accessed. What we mean when we say people are “pushing our buttons” is just this – we mean that they have discovered our weak points and purposely probed them to get us to malfunction, to get us to react childishly and yell and scream, or to get us to feel scared and become easily manipulated.

Just as your immune system has many working parts to help protect you against infection, your mental fortress has many working parts to protect your mind against becoming contaminated.

Some of these components may involve our self-talk (how we talk to ourselves in our own minds). It may be our support network – feeling that we have people who can help us in times of need can make us mentally stronger. Other features may be our mental toolkit for approaching or solving problems – feeling that you can handle difficult problems can make you feel more mentally at ease. One type of problem-solving that is especially useful will be knowing how to think creatively, to generate possible solutions for difficult scenarios that we find ourselves in. For many people, a component of the mental fortress may be physical exercise to help get your mind clear and in balance. For others, it may involve religious beliefs or spiritual practices to help you feel that you are connected to something greater and that you are not so vulnerable and weak. Just the feeling that we are protected can help to shield us from harm and keep our mental fortress strong.

One of the greatest tools of the mental fortress will be our self-talk, as we can have some control over this. A young child needs a parent or some outside stimulus to help manage his feelings if he is scared or worried. However, as adults, we begin to learn to manage our own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Nonetheless, adults still struggle greatly with preventing their emotions from running out of control.

Many individuals now suffer from depressive thinking, which can involve depressing loops of negative self-talk. Similarly, many individuals suffer from anxiety, which can involve anxious loops of self-talk.

One basic mental tool to combat this will be to have positive, calm, reasonable self-talk scripts that we have planned for difficult situations. Such positive or neutral scripts can help cancel out the mental loops that keep us stuck in anxious or depressive or other harmful thought loops.

It is important to keep these written, as, during a stressful period, such positive scripts may be difficult to recall.

Here are examples of some of the scripts we may create and have ready to use when needed:

• I am happy with everything and everyone I have in my life at this moment. I should not dwell on what is wrong but instead, think of what is going right.

• I am in pain, but I have the power to think of something else to make myself feel better (e.g., my cat, my spouse’s smile, or a favorite memory).

• I do not need to listen to my own mind – sometimes, it lies to me, and I can choose to observe the beauty in nature, talk to supportive family and friends, or engage in physical exercise to help calm my stressed mind.

• I am at peace at this moment – nothing can hurt me or take my peace from me.

• Love is all around me. I feel the love of everyone who has ever loved me, and I love them back.

• I should stop assuming things will go badly and instead assume they will go well. This will help me to find ways to improve my life.

• I am in control of what I think. I can take my mind to a better place.

• Whatever this experience is that I’m going through, it is only temporary.

• I love my mind and body in full. Even if sometimes my mind or body works against me, I love that every moment I am alive is a true miracle.

• God is watching over me. Even in moments when I feel lost, troubled, and hopeless, God is always there for me.

These are just some examples. We all need to take some time to find positive scripts that we can use in times of great worry, anxiety, depression, or whenever it is that we feel we are losing control of our own minds.

Of course, feel free to use the ones I have proposed for yourself or adapt them in any way you find useful.

The idea is not to brainwash ourselves with false positivity. I aim to be truthful in everything I do, as I do not think lying to ourselves or others is beneficial. The idea, rather, is to counteract the negative forces of the mind with something positive so that for a moment, we can see that our negative train of thought is often incorrect. Often, there is something positive we can focus on to make ourselves feel better and more in control.

Keep in mind that I am not a mental health professional. My background is in psychology, with an emphasis in industrial-organizational and cognitive domains, but not specifically in the clinical or therapeutic domains. To any individuals with mental health concerns, I recommend seeking professional help.

My general point here is that even if you are usually mentally healthy and free from mental disorders, you should take some time to build up your mental fortress.

A large problem of modern society is that we wait for severe illness to take hold of us before becoming interested in our mental stability. Our mental health and general health experts usually know how to deal with specific illnesses, but we should take care of ourselves and build up our mental fortresses to help avoid falling into mental illness or severe mental turmoil.

The core function of your mental fortress will be to stop negative and harmful forces from coming into and affecting your life, yet being open and adaptable to receiving positive and beneficial influences into your life. A mental fortress that allows everything into your life, all the good and bad, is not functioning well. Likewise, a mental fortress that allows nothing into your life, neither the good nor the bad, is not functioning well either.

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If you have a deeper interest in building up your mental strength and resilience for dealing with life and hardships, I recommend a couple of books:

365 Quotes to Live Your Life By

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By

The Path to a True and Fruitful Life

An Introduction

Today I will present my basic philosophy, which is my way of life, and this is the path I think more of us should consider. I believe these are the key parts to living one’s best life:

Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference.

Truth

One of the greatest human problems is that we conflict with ourselves. Our personal desires may guide us one way. Yet, society may guide us in another, religion in another, science in another, our teachers in another, our parents in another, our siblings in another, our friends in another. Some of these directions that we are guided in may overlap, but many of them will conflict.

Many disorders of the mind may arise from an incongruence within ourselves. We become split in our persona, psyche, direction, and even our truth when we focus on all the truths of people important in our lives, many of which conflict with each other.

As a basic example, one’s teachers may say to obey authority, trust what you are taught by your teachers, and don’t ask too many questions. One’s religion may say that the only authority to trust is the Bible itself. At the same time, one’s parents may reveal that our teachers and authorities are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and the teachings of religion are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. These same parents may guide you toward finding a stable, high-paying career, even if this conflicts with your own personal truth.

In my life, my personal truth has been to follow my curiosity. I have been extremely curious about the mind, consciousness, thought, optimal performance (e.g., genius, creativity, flow, self-actualization), and improving societies. This has led me to study psychology, philosophy, sociology, and history to varying degrees.

I was fortunate never to have anyone in my life tell me that I was on the wrong path. No one ever took me aside and said that there is no stable career on this path, or that I am no one special to consider such things. I was always free to pursue my truth, and this is because I have been given a privileged path, which is not available to all. But by having been allowed this path of truth in my life, I see that there is no other way. Any other path than truth would logically have to be falseness. We all walk the path of falseness to varying degrees, and so our goal must be to reduce and eliminate it as much as we can and always be truthful with ourselves. Being truthful and congruent with ourselves is the ultimate truth that we can strive for.

Pursuing one’s truth is one’s source of life, energy, a connection to a greater good, the truest expression of ourselves, and the ability to be harmonious and coherent with our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions, where we align into one unified being with ourselves.

Of course, finding our personal truths means exploring all the truths in our surroundings from our parents, siblings, friends, society, religion, science, etc. We can use all of these as options to select from. And our truth can be an organic, growing, evolving concept, changing along with our changing mind or changing environment. But some part of that truth should be stable and steady, highlighting universal concepts of goodness and rightness and oneness with ourselves.

Balance

A focus on balance is to see that when we focus on just one aspect of our lives, all others tend to become neglected or ignored. For example, someone born to be a fighter may train all his life and become one of the strongest, quickest, and best fighters by 20 years of age. However, in this time, if he knows nothing else, he will never know what to fight for. He may not have taken the time to develop his emotions, curiosity, intuition, reasoning, creative, and passive nature. He may have always focused on fighting and training to fight, thus becoming the best at this, but perhaps the worst at everything else.

We do not all need to be perfectly in balance, and to put equal weight on work/family, or strength/wisdom, or learning in every discipline to equal degrees, or productivity/recreation, or activity/reflection, or healthy and safe activities/fun and risky activities, money making / money-saving. There is no perfect level of balance that works for all.

Balance can be thought about at the individual and societal levels to make matters a bit more complex. An individual who is not very well balanced may help to balance out the rest of society. For example, consider an immensely creative individual who always talks about new ideas and inventions and makes up stories. He is always going into new directions and so rarely completes anything. However, his imbalances may help to balance out the rest of society. Perhaps most people are too conventional, stuck in old ways of thinking. When they meet this hyper-creative individual, this helps them discover new solutions in their daily lives or work goals. An occasional unbalanced individual can actually help to balance out society.

Another way to make a case for some people being unbalanced, is that for some people, they may find balance in the imbalance. To clarify, a workaholic may use the immense hours at work to feel a sense of inner balance. Spending so much time at work may have a calming effect on the individual and help him feel that he is achieving a higher purpose of helping others (providing balance to society somehow). There is even a chance that working extensively can help someone work through psychological traumas or avoid having to dwell on negative thoughts. The point here is that we all have ways of finding inner balance, even if sometimes it is done through imbalance itself.

We must use our personal truth to help figure out what level of balance we need in our lives. Just as there are many conflicting truths, we may decide that work is important and family life is important. Or we may decide that pursuing a well-paying career is important, but also pursuing something we find personally fulfilling is important. In your efforts to find balance, you have many different options available to you. You may decide to pursue a single path that helps to balance everything, such as starting a family business that has the potential to provide a great deal of income while working modest levels and helping to deepen connections with your relatives. Alternatively, you may decide to focus exclusively on work from Monday to Friday and exclusively on the family on the weekends. There is no one right path, but we will be happier and more fulfilled when we consider balance in our lives.

Love

Love is an energy that unites. Hate is energy that repels. In that sense, love is gravitational – it will pull others into your orbit.

When we hate others, we do not hate them. Rather, we hate the aspects of ourselves that are like them. If you hate insincerity in others, it’s because you hate it in yourself. The same for greed, superficiality, bragging, being overly self-conscious, an inability to make decisions, etc.

We see ourselves in everything around us and everyone around us. Our selves are tied to the entire universe because we only process the universe through our own minds and mental patterns (or, to put it another way, through ourselves). Think of this – all the universe fits inside your mind, and so all of your universe is affected by the way you think and your expectations. You cannot fully see anyone else because you are always using parts of yourself to interpret them. When I see my Mom, I am not necessarily seeing her for what she is now. Rather, I see what I expect my Mom to be, given all my prior experiences with her. A large part of my Mom in my mind is actually me perceiving aspects of myself and our prior interactions in a way that represents her. My mother is a representation of my mother in my mind – My mother, to me, is not my actual mother, but just a representation. This is the nature of perception.

Any emotion I have toward my Mom, is actually an emotion I am experiencing toward myself – my mother is represented by myself. I cannot separate myself from the representation of her. And this is the case with every individual I come in contact with.

So in a way, all love and all hate, and all emotions we feel for others, we are feeling for aspects of ourselves.

We must learn to love ourselves. This is true love that transcends whether we did the right thing or not, whether we succeeded or not, whether we helped or not, whether we failed or not, whether we tried hard enough or not, whether we loved properly or not, whether people liked us or not, and so forth. We need to transcend all of this and learn to love ourselves along with all the goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, perfection and imperfections that go along with it.

Our emotions, in many ways, operate as reflections. If I carry anxiety, depression, and hatred with me everywhere I go, in my body, my mind, and my facial expressions, then the people around me will operate as a sort of reflective mirror, and they will tend to feel those types of thoughts back toward me. They may or may not consciously understand what they are experiencing, but either way, the effects will be there.

Thus, a person who could extinguish all extraneous emotions and feel pure love would have a tremendous impact on their surroundings. Every person they came in contact with would likely be forever changed. A genuine experience with true love would be life-transforming. Just the same, we don’t properly consider it, but carrying around hate, anxiety, depression, etc., may have similar transformative effects on those around us, for the worst.

The challenge of love will be to learn to love ourselves. This will be an immense quest on its own for most of us. We have learned to talk offensively, bitterly, and ruthlessly to ourselves, but we must unlearn those patterns and focus on more constructive, loving ways of seeing ourselves. From there, we must relearn how to love the people we are closest to in our lives. We must come from a place of true acceptance, understanding, unconditional love, warmth, gratitude, and such to learn to love those closest to us in our lives truly.

Then, we must learn to love our friends, colleagues, acquaintances, city, state, country, world, and then not just humans but also animals, plants, and even insects. We must even learn to love what we consider nonlife, for that nonlife supports all life. Nonlife is the Sun – it may not be sentient, but it helps provide the source energy for all life on the planet. Nonlife is water – again, something that helps to nourish virtually all life on the planet, and life originated in the seas, in water. Nonlife is wood – used for building homes and furniture, but it comes from trees. The point is that even nonlife supports all life, and thus nonlife deserves our respect and love.

I will remind you that I do recognize it as a great feat if you can love yourself. To truly love yourself fully regardless of what or who you are will help carry your love to the next level and onto the universe itself.

Knowledge (Along with Understanding & Wisdom)

Knowledge is quite a powerful force to behold. Many of us think that only the experts need to know their particular fields, but I have made it a habit to question the experts, and I think most people would be surprised at how little our experts sometimes know or understand. Often, with just a few questions, I can find limitations in the knowledge of an expert. We credit the experts for all they know, but we forget how little we all seem to know. Of course, we all need experts, but perhaps some parts of life are so important that we need to become experts in multiple areas too.

You may be surprised to find that in a short time, you can rival the knowledge of some experts.

We need to stop giving power to everyone else and take some of it for ourselves. Your average person should not be on an endless quest for power, but we should at least be looking to empower ourselves in our daily lives. If you lack awareness of why anything in this life is operating the way it does, then how can you possibly have any power or ability to influence even your own life?

To change your life for the better, or the life of those around you for the better, or to constructively solve problems, or to creatively look for new solutions, you must empower yourself through knowledge – which may then lead to understanding and wisdom.

We have no excuse. Knowledge is freely available in many cases. There are free online courses offered even from leading colleges and institutions. There are free YouTube tutorials to learn practically anything. There are libraries of free books and now libraries of digital books available to us all. There are websites or podcasts to access even more information from leading experts around the world.

The knowledge in schools and educational programs is worthy. Still, it is limited because it was prepackaged for the masses, predigested, and pre-thought out by the teacher, and this is good because it helps to make sure that it takes you toward an end goal of having a balanced, certified education. Yet, it is bad because it provides everyone with the same thinking processes, same conclusions, and same journey, rather than allowing you to pursue your own unique path of learning.

In my personal journey, I got my B.A. in psychology and then my M.S. in industrial-organizational psychology. I was on the path toward a Ph.D., but I decided to abandon that path since I wanted more control over my learning. I wanted to learn in a more broad and interdisciplinary fashion, rather than be locked into a particular school of thought or be locked into needing to study a particular field in a certain way and examine particular problems others found important to examine. I needed my own path, to find my own truth, in my own way.

In this day in age, you can choose your own knowledge path. It may involve books and podcasts, school or university, or it may involve personal tutors, or certification programs, or self-learning (with free online resources), or finding a variety of mentors to guide you along your way, or a combination of these, or none of these.

The important thing is to seek out knowledge. Many in this world are motivated to get you to see things their way. People will try to convince you that this religion is better, or this product, or this philosophy, or this service, and so on. They will try to convince you, and the less you know, the more easily fooled you will be. If you do not pursue your own knowledge and way of learning, being, seeing, and doing, then you may forever be led by the currents of our times rather than the currents of your soul and your personal truth.

As a part of seeking out knowledge, I recommend incorporating experimentation into your life. Test what works for you, what does not work for you, and what needs improving. Also, measure how you are performing on the metrics most important to you. If you want more love in your life, are you performing loving actions every day? If not, you may want to measure this to make sure you are on track.

Transference

The idea of transference is to see that the above pursuits and qualities may be good. Still, they are somewhat useless if an individual pursues them in conflict with society or at the expense of society. Rather, we must find a way to unify ourselves with society at large.

Through transference, we will aim to act as a conduit and transfer the four forces of truth, balance, love, and knowledge onto others. We will act as a stream of higher consciousness, passing these forces along to everyone around us to magnify them and help humanity reach a higher plane of being.

For example, I have sometimes met people who had higher levels of knowledge than me, especially when I was younger. And I sometimes noticed that they did not really want to share what they knew with me. They might make a statement about how fixing a particular problem was actually quite easy. Still, when asked about how to do it, they would be vague, suggesting theories or that a person might learn them from trial and error. I realized that some people enjoy having knowledge that they can hold over others. They can boast about knowing things or having resolved problems, and when someone else has difficulties, they can sit back and enjoy watching them struggle when they already know the solution. As you might imagine, this is the opposite approach I suggest we all take. I understand that some people have limited time and do not wish to spend their time explaining something. Still, even then, I think they should suggest reading a particular book or taking a particular class, or something rather than just a vague remark that leads nowhere.

Let’s go deeper into what I mean by transference.

Transference in regard to truth will mean seeking your own truth while avoiding counteracting someone else’s truth. It will also mean helping others on their path toward truth. Sometimes, this help can be indirect or counterintuitive. If a wise person notes that his friend spends money on things he doesn’t need, and then often runs out of money before his next paycheck, the wise person may refuse to help this person with any money issues, so that he is forced to learn his lessons on his own.

Transference in regard to balance will mean seeking your own balance while avoiding counteracting someone else’s balance or avoiding causing imbalances in other people’s or living being’s lives. If it helps balance yourself to listen to loud music, this may disturb your spouse or roommate, causing them imbalances in their life. So we should learn healthier forms of balance that balance ourselves and those around us.

Transference in regard to love is fulfilled on its own. When you love fully, that energy is transferred or passes to the person you love, making it much more likely for them to pass it on to others.

Transference in regard to knowledge means seeking your own knowledge path while helping others build their knowledge. The ideal knowledge seeker will mentor at least one person and have a mentor of his own, helping and being helped. You are always learning and teaching. Not just learning. Not just teaching.

The general idea of transference is that whatever your philosophy maybe, if your reasons are strong enough for your convictions, you should aim to transfer this way of thought and being onto others, but this transference need not be through preaching. It can be through real actions that you commit to on a daily basis. Just as a child learns from the parents' actions, the world will learn from your actions more than it will from your words.

Final Thoughts

Something important to note is that all of these principles or forces will operate in different people’s lives in different ways. For one person, truth may involve delving fully into a scientific way of thinking and being. For another person, their truth may be to delve fully into a religious way of thinking and being. For another person, they may incorporate a mixture of scientific and religious truths into their lives. Truth is not a single path, but it allows countless possible paths to open up before us. Our lives will become much simpler when we pursue truth rather than open up the paths of falseness.

Truth expands into all the other principles. When you pursue your truth, you can figure out the best way to love for yourself, the best way to balance your life, and the best way to pursue knowledge. It is even possible that for some people, their truth will point them away from balance and instead point them fully toward love or fully toward knowledge.

Everyone’s journey or path will be unique, and this philosophy is meant to help bring out the best in all individuals and society at large.

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If you are interested in learning about specific Thoughts to help you walk the path toward a True and Fruitful Life, I recommend reading:

Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life

Beyond What We Thought We Were

After we reach a certain point in our development, one of our greatest tasks is to question how we can become something beyond or greater than our current selves. By this, I don’t mean the incremental next step, but I mean the next breakthrough of our lives. We shouldn’t wait for that breakthrough to come to us, but rather, we must make it happen.

The task then is to look at all of our personal histories: how our parents raised us, the habits we’ve formed, the perceptions we’ve built, the factions that we’ve had thrust upon us such as our race or geographic location, and the factions we’ve purposely chosen, such as our political affiliation or possibly our religion.

We must take all of these things that make us who we are and set them aside.

Yes, we must set aside all of which has made us what we are at the present day. Why? If you continue along the path of all that made you what you are, then there is only one possible path to move forward on, and that path is what you have been conditioned to perceive, think, and act on through all of your upbringing and past. If you pursue that path, then there is no choice to be made. You are like a robot adhering to its preprogrammed nature. You can already hear the voices of your parents, peers, friends, colleagues, naysayers, and so on, and all those voices dictate what you will do next, because these are all the people who have always been in your life, and you can no longer imagine them not being in your life. They are you, and you are them, fused into one organism.

This can be good if you consciously choose to go in that direction. But I want to encourage you to consider all options, not just the convenient next steps that have already been laid out in front of you.

Just because a carpet is rolled out in front of you doesn’t mean you need to walk on it.

So again, to rise above and become something beyond yourself means to set aside everything.

Let everything go.

Entertain this idea for just a moment:

Perhaps everything you were ever instructed upon, led to believe, led to think was important, led to think would make a difference, led to think that was building upon your education and making you better or leading you toward societal views of success, well perhaps this was all just misguided, or wrong, or even a distraction along the path you were truly meant for.

Just entertain that idea for a moment now, and then set it aside. It’s okay. It’s a scary thought. It’s so absurd, in fact, that the thought itself must be wrong, somehow. But don’t shy away from the thought. Perhaps it isn’t wrong. Perhaps there is some rightness in it, and that is what you are afraid of.

Hold this thought in your head that perhaps everything you ever thought, perceived, were taught, and were guided toward, was all wrong.

When you are ready to let go of everything you ever knew and thought and were and are, then you are ready to die, be reborn, become something new, and rise as if the Phoenix from its own ashes, incapable of being decimated.

This is the way to move beyond yourself and work toward becoming something greater.

The point here is not to make you think that everything you know is wrong. The point is to make you realize that there is wrongness and rightness in everything. You should think and reflect on the wrong parts of what you have been taught in your life.

How can you identify those things? How can you accept them? How can you stop making the same kinds of mistakes over and over? You must release yourself from at least some parts of your life, history, and what you were taught to move beyond yourself.

This is not just about you and your personal life. As humans, to move beyond where we are now and reach higher states, we cannot pursue the trajectory that led us here. We cannot pursue the same thing all of humanity has pursued for all time, which has gotten us into these dire straits. We must release ourselves from our prior trajectories to pave new, more fruitful, better paths for all.

Controlling Our Emotions So They Don’t Control Us

I am sometimes surprised at how easy it is to manipulate a person. We all have a range of emotions, personalities, beliefs, desires, knowledge, understanding, and human connections. Yet, despite our complexities, is it really so difficult to manipulate us? If someone hacks or invades our emotional centers, can’t they then hijack our mind and body?

It’s quite easy to make someone angry if you think of it. This involves calling someone a name, badmouthing their mother or other family members, insulting their intelligence or skill, making offensive gestures, or referring to a person’s most deeply held beliefs as nonsense or idiocy. If you make someone angry, they tend to lose control, yelling loudly, becoming offensive in their own word use or gestures, perhaps even be willing to engage in a fight. They tend to get into a revengeful mindset – wanting to hurt the person hurting them.

Understand that to make someone angry is to poison them and those around them and make them do foolish things. So, if you anger someone, you have controlled them into taking actions against their own best interest. Of course, most people assume they are not being manipulated. Most people assume that the antagonist is legitimately being himself, and just by his own faulty character, he happens to be anger-inducing. Somehow, that belief probably makes us even angrier, thinking, how could someone be such an imbecile, so uncaring, so offensive?

Perhaps much of the time, the antagonist is legitimately himself. Still, other times maybe he enjoys gaining control over others, knowing that if he doesn’t like someone, he can make them angry and make them lose control, turning them into his puppets. As long as the antagonist maintains some control over himself, he will appear to be the better person, in the end, perhaps even coming out to be a hero if he helps to calm down the person he has angered or to stop the one he angered from causing too much trouble.

Anger is just one powerful emotion, but any other could be used just as well to shift someone into a different frame of mind where they cannot think clearly. Can you think clearly if you feel overwhelmingly sad, happy, jealous, embarrassed, hopeless, or scared? Don’t those emotions tend to put you on a one-track mind, where all you can think is of one thing? Generally, you will work toward alleviating that strong emotion to get yourself back to normal. Still, in doing so, you may be easily manipulated and controlled into taking a course of action that works against your best interests.

I recently heard of a scam where people are contacted by the FBI, only it is not truly the FBI, but just an imposter who wishes to trick the target into transferring money to them. These villains can trick many people because they scare them. To many people, it is one of the scariest things to be contacted by the FBI, to be told that you are wanted for crimes – even, of course, when you are fully innocent. We will do anything to alleviate the overwhelming emotion of fear, even if that means telling these people all of our private details or transferring money to them.

It isn’t until later that we realize none of it made sense. The caller didn’t know the target’s name but rather had to ask to confirm it. The caller didn’t know the target’s address, or social security number, or which bank he used, or anything at all about the caller, until the caller provided that information.

So why would the FBI call someone if they did not know who they were calling, nor anything about them? Of course, they would not.

We must be wary of someone who insists on putting us into extreme emotional states. Someone who constantly reminds us that we should be scared, worried, or sad should not easily be trusted. When taken to extremes, these emotional states do not help us work our way through problems or see clearly.

One of the greatest skills anyone can learn then is emotional control. We have to practice this. When someone is yelling and behaving in a threatening way, a part of us must recognize that this is a potential threat, but it does not help to cower in fear and panic.

Recently, I stopped at a gas station to fill my tank. While I was pulling into the gas station, I got an uneasy feeling, as four men were partly blocking the entrance. One of them begrudgingly moved out of the way to let me in. There was a huge truck to one side blocking the view to the street – it crossed my mind that this may be on purpose, to obstruct the view so no one could see what these men were doing, but I ignored that idea. Some gas pumps were out of order, and the one closest to the street was in use, so I pulled up to the one next to these four men. They were standing, appearing to do nothing. This struck me as a bit strange since we were at a gas station, but I reminded myself that they were not doing anything, so there was no problem.

As I parked my car at the gas terminal, I noticed that one of the men had his eyes on me. He was the biggest of the group and only about 10 feet away from me. I stepped out of the car and in front of my door, and suddenly the man had one arm fully behind his back in an awkward manner – he was not stretching, nor was he just quickly pulling out some cigarettes. His hand was back there purposefully as if he were holding something. He was smiling at me, inching forward very slowly, as if he didn’t want me to notice he was getting closer. He complimented my nice-looking car, and I said Thanks, man.

He continued to inch closer and closer, with his arm still behind his back. I was outwardly as casual as possible, while at this point, every red flag had been raised in my mind. I realized that my life was possibly in danger. On top of all these red flags, the man was smiling with a sort of grimace that did not seem right at all to me.

Somehow, through years of working on my emotions, not allowing them to go out of control, and always keeping my composure, I had been able to be fully calm at this moment where I realized I was in trouble. I had never been so sure in all my life that something bad was about to happen to me. The man was almost within arm’s reach now. In a flash, I had realized that the big truck blocking the view was not a coincidence. The four men clustered, doing “nothing” was not a coincidence. This man’s arm awkwardly behind his back could not be a coincidence. I believe he wanted to threaten me with a weapon.

He was almost within arm’s reach.

I quickly yet casually stepped behind my car door (with it between the man and me) and into my car. I imagined that from his perspective, he might have assumed I just forgot my wallet or something in my car. Of course, I was ready to leave. I put my keys in the ignition and got out of there as quickly as I could.

The first lesson here is I should have trusted my intuition earlier. I knew something was not right immediately when I saw these four men doing nothing, and then the big truck blocking the view from the street and the many “out of order” pumps were other signals. The man with the hand behind his back staring at me was another signal. I waited until the last possible moment when he was almost within arm’s reach, and that was a mistake, but luckily nothing happened to me.

Emotional control is critical. If I had gotten too scared, I might have entered into the animalistic “fight or flight” response. As humans, we should remember that the options are actually endless, not binary. But if I had frozen there, obviously, this would have been a mistake. If he had me scared and frozen, that was probably the perfect victim he was looking for. He could have taken all my money, my phone, and the car, in that case. If I had panicked and run on foot, they might have been ready to stop me. Even though I got back in the car, if I was too scared, not thinking clearly, I may have forgotten to lock the car, I may have dropped the keys or struggled to get them into the ignition properly, giving them enough time to open my door and force me out.

It was of utmost importance that I remain calm and composed.

Luckily I did.

Just because the environment is moving us toward an emotion does not mean was must let those emotions run out of control. Something in the environment may press our Anger button, or Fear button, or Embarrassed button, but we can rewire ourselves not always to need to respond with the same thinking patterns, and certainly to not always need to respond with the same behaviors and actions.

You can imagine emotional triggers as passing through you, not happening to you. This means if someone insults you, it goes through you. You do not need to take it in and respond to it. Similarly, if someone near you fears many events: diseases, wars, financial troubles, you do not necessarily need to let this affect you. You can imagine those feelings passing through you, not needing to get entangled with your emotional self. The words and the fears of this person are just going through you. You are not adding energy to it by taking it seriously. You may even empathize with this person over their fears and try to help, but you are not required to take in their negative energy even then.

Sometimes I have thoughts such as this:

This anger (or fear, sadness, etc.) is not helping me see clearly and behave rightly. I must let this feeling go so that I can move on. When I move on, I will be able to see clearly and behave rightly once again.

When you feel the emotions start to run out of control, think the above thought (or read it aloud). Then talk to a loved one. Practice taking deep breaths. Go for a walk or jog. Watch a stand-up comedy or a comedy film. These are the things that help me. Maybe they will help you too. And of course, if you have a problem with an individual, consider talking it through with them after you have calmed down a bit.

The Forces that Pull Us Apart and Make Us Who We Are

In the modern-day, we are pulled apart in many different directions. Religion tells us that a God is looking out for us, with a larger purpose in mind for humanity. Science cannot give us a reason for being here. It can just examine our parts and the nature of matter. Philosophy has shown us many perspectives on thinking and being but has not led us toward a particular direction for the future. History has told us how we got here, but not what we need to change to get where we need or want to be.

The other guiding forces are from our parents, peers, and society. Some people listen more to their parents, and some more to their peers, who could be friends, colleagues, or just the people one happens to be surrounded by for most of the day. Most of us listen somewhat to society, and those who stray too far often end up imprisoned or forgotten.

Often, neither our parents nor our peers quite have things figured out. They are just filling out their roles, as prescribed to them by their parents, peers, or society, informed by their religion, science, philosophies, and histories.

People do not know themselves well. We are told who we are or need to be by our parents, our education system, our society, but we are not led to investigate who we are properly. We are told who we are (or guided into being who others think we should be), and then we become who we were told we were. This may be a false self, created to appease the people around us or society.

As individuals, we are whole universes unto ourselves, as the universe at large does not exist on its own. The universe at large exists as an interplay between the mind and the universe, making the universe what we experience it to be. Another mind of a different sort would fabricate an entirely different universe – for instance, different colors, emotions, intuitions, beliefs, and visual perceptions would completely alter one’s personal universe. I am in my own self-created universe, and you are in your own universe – but of course, they do overlap.

We must ask ourselves how we can move forward as societies when we are pulled apart by different personal universes, beliefs, and messages that do not coalesce on any particular point? Religion pulls us in one direction, science in the other, our peers in another, and our true selves likely in yet another direction. Many of us are being pulled apart from our core. And not only from ourselves but by the people around us too.

It is no wonder that mental illness is so common. Perhaps individuals are not mentally ill, but society, which is pulling us in all directions, has made us this way.

Then we have an ongoing debate in the world about whether we should be led by reason or intuition, our analytical side, or our emotional side. This provides us with another split in the psyche.

Are you man enough or woman enough (or masculine or feminine enough)? People who do not naturally fit their expected roles may be made to feel that something is wrong with them, which of course, harms the psyche.

Then we have ideas of sexuality, in that you are either gay or straight – sure, we acknowledge more types now, but many people still see this as mostly two types of sexuality. So you are one thing or another, which splits the psyche of many people as well. If you are part of both or have different sides, you may not be accepted or understood.

We have race – are you white or not? Are you white enough? Black enough? You are artificially split based on skin tone, or possibly ancestry, even if that skin tone or ancestry may not represent who you are on the inside. Society tells us that to be white, you have to be pure (white from both your parents). Otherwise, you are treated as no longer truly white. A white and black person, for example, is treated as black, as was former President Barack Obama (who has a white mother). Often enough, other races or groups (e.g., Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Native American) are neglected from the general conversation, which could make them feel as if they are not relevant enough.

If you occupy two conflicting groups (as viewed by society) at once, society often decides what you are for you.

We are pressed to be in one of these poles, as the middle ground is often ignored. Are you rational or intuitive? Gay or straight? Black or white? Liberal or conservative? Religious or atheist? These are some examples of the categories of our lives. For every category you are in, there increases the chance that you will hate or be hated by individuals in the other group. We are all in multiple categories, so we all belong in groups that hate or are hated, and we tend to inherit that hate that our groups carry with them. We inherit this hate and are expected to carry it along, or we are treated as if we are not proper members of our group, and our own group will hate us. If that happens, we will be treated as “other” and destined to be forever lost and abandoned.

We grow up with this hatred all around us, and in the hearts of the people closest to us, so it seems normal. In fact, we often end up carrying the hatred (or anger, fear, disgust, etc.) of our ancestors. We inherit this hate and then pass it on to our families, and they pass it on to the next generation. At some point, we must realize that every individual is a member of various groups, and those groups may have longstanding problems with other groups. But there is no reason for us as individuals to absorb so much hatred and then pass it on.

How do we rise above the hatred? We pursue meaningful connections with more people. We pursue open-mindedness, empathy, deep listening, understanding, and we begin to acknowledge the role that our groups or we have played in causing problems. We consider deeply that some of the thoughts or beliefs of people in groups outside our own may be legitimate. At some point, our biases may have led us to believe that they were 100% wrong on everything, even when this is not reflected in reality. Likewise, they may have come to think that we were 100% wrong on everything, even when that was not the case.

One way to rise above all this is to see that we are not our categories. The categories are aspects of us, but they are not us. A book can be hardcover or softcover. It can have a red, blue, or yellow cover. It can have a catchy title or a boring one. There are all kinds of books, but ultimately, what should matter is whether the content inside is true and useful, entertaining, or whatever the objective may be with reading it. Just as with humans, we tend to forget that our personal content, or who we are at our core, is what actually matters, not all the superficial qualities that we happen to exhibit.

We must stop being blinded by the categories that people wear for us to see, often not even by choice. Instead, open your mind and look deeper into their true core of being.