We get to a point in life where we just do not know what to do, why we have this unpleasant feeling that we can’t define but can be associated with loneliness, sadness, unfulfillment, and unhappiness.
We were born, and now we are here. What happened in between?
If we start with the basic definition of what a human is, we are social animals meaning that we constantly need to engage and interact with our fellow humans to feel alive. Based on the environment in which we evolve, we accommodate ourselves to have a sense of belonging “the fit-in mindset”. We are also creatures of habit, meaning that we do something so much and so many times that we do not need to think before doing it. It is automatic. To do that we have very complex internal systems that help us think, breathe, eat, digest, you get the picture. For the purpose of this document, we will be focussing on the cognitive system located within our brain. Based on the book Nudge, Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein have developed the table below that explains it.
If we look at the two systems and stop for a minute. We as humans love easy stuff, we don’t wish to do effortful activities. We are indolent by nature. We like our comfort zone and we hate change. We generally react to conversations with our fellow humans with our autopilot programme “The automatic system”. We don’t think much so do speak about what we say, we just say it. The problem with that is our automatic brain is conditioned and programme based on what we spend our time on.
It is in our nature to lean favourably to do the easy things and procrastinate on other difficult activities. We prefer to scroll, interact, and engage with screens rather than learn a new skill, read a book, or wash the dishes (You know what I mean). We prefer to watch the holiday of our friend Jon Doe or look at the pictures published by Jane Doe, jumping from one social network to another. And then at the end of the day, we wrap up with one of those monthly subscriptions application to watch our favourite show. By the way, I am talking to myself.
If I look at the summary below, I have spent most of my time programming my automatic system with anything and anything that I see fit for myself. Apart from work obviously where I hate to be, so I just get the job done and walk out as fast as possible to connect with feeds pages.
“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” – Charles Bukowski
Well, it is very hard to say but the experience we have encountered throughout our lives have changed the way we think and interact with others. But more than anything, marketers and tech giants making it very difficult for us to get off the screens.
“Thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body” – Dr Joe Dispenza
Before we deep dive into the topic, let’s lay out some definitions based on what we believe can be useful to have a general idea.
An emotion: in a scientifical point of view, it is the end product of past experience. It can be positive or negative. It is very hard I identify what we feel. In most cases, we fail if we rely on our automatic system to describe it. Mainly because there are always other factors that triggered the feeling we generally face.
A trauma is an emotion associated with a high emotional quotient. In simple words, trauma is an emotion so strong and painful that it has scared us for life. We will have a special article to talk about it.
A mood is the refractory emotional reaction you have allowed yourself to go on for hours and days. You will say to your friend Jon Doe, “Hey what’s up, why are you like that?” The general answer we get is “I don’t know; I am just not in a good mood”. Which is the direct response we have in our lazy brain toolkit (automatic system). However, if we have identified the cause of it, the response will be “I have this thing that happened yesterday, and it changed my mood”.
A temperament: is the refractory emotional reaction that you have allowed yourself to go on for weeks and months. We have not been able to shake it off and it’s been going on a lot longer. It is the multiplication of continuous mood. From there, we start to become bitter.
Personality trait is the refractory emotional reaction that we have allowed ourselves to go on for years and years which now becomes part of our personality.
In summary, the below image explains the steps explained above and how they evolve in time within us. Please note that there are other factors that interfere, but we will deep dive in those in the upcoming chapters such as different biases categories and halo effects.
In the next part, we will be going in-depth into the power of thoughts and how they can help us better understand ourselves.
Thank you for your time and apologies if anything you have seen or read looks familiar to you, we are doing this because we care.
Reference:
“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” – Charles Bukowski
“Thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body” – Dr Joe Dispenza
“Nudge”, Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” Daniel Kahneman
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