Becoming truly self aware and in control of impulses, emotions and our thoughts is not quick or easy but is the one big upgrade well worth investing time and energy into.
Getting this control can enable huge amounts of creative power, productivity, significantly lift and level out general mood and produce long lasting calm and overall life satisfaction, dare I say giving a feeling of a fulfilled life full of meaning – even if it sounds a little grand.
I went on a journey which started about 4 years ago, just after my daughter was born.
I began as a mostly externally looking person with little control of emotions, impulses and scared to look inside or change anything, to being fine with being flawed and increasingly keen to change more and more about myself.
I now have much better emotional control, waste much less time doing what makes me unhappy later (like watching TV) and do a lot more of what makes me happy – spending time with family, rock climbing and creating all sorts of things, from drones and UAV’s, to vacuum flask Kick Starter projects to stimulating software solutions.
Changing oneself, introspective and mindfulness are all pretty big and complex topics and there are many books 100’s of times better than this short article – if you fires your interest I highly recommend the following 2 books:
Mans Search for Mean ing – Viktor E Frankl – a great book to help with life “strategy”
Maximum Climbing – Eric Hörst – amazing advice and technique for life “tactics”, applicable to general life and work, not just climbing!
Looking back, I think there are 3 distinct steps to the transformation.
1) Face yourself and look inside.
I was constantly avoiding looking inside myself, the real issues – never trying to understand what made me happy, what made me unhappy, why it did, what problems I had, addictions, bad habits and ingrained behaviours which were negative and contributing to my unhappiness.
Instead I focussed on the outside world, events, people and things which upset or made me happy.
Many wise men over the course of human history have said that there are no good or bad events around us, the only thing that makes them good or bed is our perception of them.
So we have to focus on the internal thoughts and reactions, not on the world outside.
Learn to catch the emotions and impulses that rise up in response to external events and understand why these reactions occur, what is the root cause of the reaction.
Try and understand the true and ultimate impact of an upsetting event – often it will turn out to be minor and insignificant, sometimes even positive. Break down the situation into components, who and how it really affects, what the outcomes will mean, step by step. This break down will take the emotion and ego out of it and you will see the situation for what it is.
The same with negative or destructive behaviours – you will often find the addiction is caused by a primal need and can be overridden with practice, even for when the needs initially seem a matter of life or death. At first the event, impulse or emotional response can seem unbelievably genuine but after analysis you will realise it was just a primal driver that made seem so.
I remember when in college how convincing it felt that a good looking girl must also be an incredibly nice person and how she must be “the one”. Later it was obvious that it’s just the biological programming talking.
2) Accept and realise that some things need changing.
You have to be honest and accept that some things are not good and some things can be better.
Once you start looking inside and become self aware, aware of your emotions – be critical and objective and ask yourself if some things that you find are maybe not that good.
Maybe some attitudes are indulgent, egotistical, immoral.
The first step is to recognise them as such and to accept that you’re not perhaps as ideal and perfect as you wanted to think.
We’re all flawed, we have a tendency to drift towards (often not so good) temptation – this is OK. Key is to be aware of it, to see yourself for who you really are and to not brush problems under the carpet.
“I am who I am and that’s what make me – me” is utter c&%p. You are what you do. We are defined by our actions. Which we have full control of.
3) Make the change.
The final step is to start changing what you don’t like.
Allow parts of you to be added and other parts to be thrown away – “you” are who you are now and “you” will not disappear in the future or stop being “you” if you change yourself.
I mention this because when I first realised some things that were deep-seeded about me, needed to be changed, I was genuinely scared that I will not be me any more and put off the change, initially completely dismissing the possibility to do so.
I now realise that the more we change various aspects about ourselves, the more we feel unique and our own person. Embrace this change, don’t fear it.
The result is feeling better and better about yourself, the more you change yourself.
Changes to ourselves and to our behaviour should never be put off.
If you identify something you need to change – start doing it right there and then. “There is no time like the now.” We don’t need a period to prepare for the change – that’s just procrastination.
Start looking at what needs to change, how to change it, what to change it to.
It is also never to late to start the change. You can begin when you’re 16 or when you’re 96, hours before you’re about to die.
There is no point in our life after which it is too late to change.
4) Keep changing, always, forever
I lied. There are actually 4 steps. Well, the 4th is not a step but more of a rule.
Never ever stop changing yourself.
Change is a constant process and just as the world around us keeps changing as well as our lives and careers evolving, we need to keep changing ourself.
There was recently a fantastic Ted Talk about how much we change through life and how much we resist change. A great angle on the “change yourself” topic with the stats and science behind it and well worth watching.
We are so complex, even if we made it our day job to keep making ourselves better and changing ourself, we would never get all the needed changes done by the time we die.
Many monks devote their entire internal perfection and even they are never done.
So the changes we try and make in between work, family life and hobbies are tiny in comparison.
Mind Iterations 