Fasten your seatbelts, the third part is coming of The Road to Happiness series. In the first one, we checked some basic concepts about happiness, in the second we looked at values, and now we deep dive into your being and the main guy causing you to be always on high alert.
We’ll check our base setup. Briefly look at our subconsciousness. Check some self-image-based stories that we create to defend ourselves and tips and tricks on how to jump out of that rabbit hole to live a more fulfilling life. Hopefully, you can take something with you this time as well.
The stones of the cave
Your mind will come up with crackpot theories about how you can find a new life with no pain or unease at all. That’s a lie.
Let’s start from the basics. The guard in the first line is the lizard brain. Its core function is to keep us safe. Sadly, not with extraordinary strength or telepathy, but with thoughts that make us worry. It constantly blabbers about the dangers in the world. He tries to keep us in the cave.
Nowadays there aren’t that many life-threatening dangers, but our brain has the potential to find modern-age tigers, that are exceptionally hard to catch. These tigers hunt for fun, so like cats, they don’t want to kill you just make you miserable and make you hide. The worst thing is that it thinks that it protects us and sometimes we agree with it. Like a Stockholm syndrome.
The only problem is that this cave life is dull and not profiting. To feel something, you have to be there, you have to move out of the cave even if it means that you’ll get hurt. After all, this is your tiger, part of you, so it won’t kill you.
Primals
Obviously, you saw people who were just born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They are optimistic, energetic, always happy, and a blessing to be around. Everything just works out for them without any effort.
I know that we don’t see the effort behind this or that but let’s be real. Some people just have it all. Got the talent, the money, the personality, the luck and it’s totally fine, because you’ve got something else. You just have to learn how to work with your setup.
One thing that can help you with sculpting yourself. According to the research of Seligman primal beliefs build up our personality and shape our subconscious. These beliefs are born with us. According to the research, these hardly change. It’s not correlated with the parents, the surroundings, or how we grow up, but we are born with them or get them as infants.
This is a scale, not a 0 or a 1. You can believe that the world is very safe but really dull. Depending on these factors you will get a result about how you think about the world generally. If you are curious then you can check it here: https://myprimals.com/
| GOOD or BAD | ||
| SAFE vs DANGEROUS | ENTICING vs DULL | ALIVE vs MECHANISTIC |
| PLEASURABLE vs MISERABLE | INTERESTING vs BORING | INTENTIONAL vs UNINTENTIONAL |
| REGENERATIVE vs DEGENERATIVE | BEAUTIFUL vs UGLY | NEEDS ME vs DOESN’T NEED ME |
| PROGRESSING vs DECLINING | ABUNDANT vs BARREN | INTERACTIVE vs INDIFFERENT |
| HARMLESS vs THREATHENING | WORTH EXPLORING vs NOT WORTH EXPLORING | |
| COOPERATIVE vs COMPETITIVE | MEANINGFUL vs MEANINGLESS | |
| STABLE vs FRAGILE | IMPROVABLE vs TOO HARD TO IMPROVE | |
| JUST vs UNJUST | FUNNY vs NOT FUNNY |
Not connected to good or bad
ACCEPTABLE vs UNACCAPTABLE, CHANGING vs STATIC, HIERARCHICAL vs NON-HIERARCHICAL
INTERCONNECTED vs SEPAREBLE, UNDERSTANDABLE vs TOO HARD TO UNDERSTAND
Primals are some info about you, about how you see the world. It can help dig deeper about why you think that about the world. Or you can set a goal to change your world so you won’t see it that way. As I stated before it’s not a 0 or 1, so maybe you will think that the world is dull, but how will you make it more exciting?
When we get into a stress situation, into a warzone, then our primal beliefs take over. We have to fight so we won’t think of the world as an unjust place. So before you throw that grenade think about it.
Obviously, it’s easier said than done. If you pulled out the pin then you have to throw the grenade. So let’s see some techniques that stop you from pulling the trigger.
The warzone
According to ACT, this warzone is built up by our EGO. This little guy who mediates between desires and rules whispers into our ears. Constantly telling us stories about how to keep ourselves safe. About the world being an ugly, miserable place that doesn’t need us, so we can stay at home. Never hurt ourselves.
According to Charles Jones, our EGO reacts to our 50 subconscious needs. When one of our needs isn’t met, then we react with a negative emotion. A similar concept is in ACT as well https://www.theactmatrix.com/blog/yearnings
We have a basic concept about the world, needs that should be met, and some values that we live by. Based on these we react somehow to the input. Most of the time we get an emotional reaction as well and then we put this experience onto the shelf. The shelf sometimes gets crowded, so we throw out the unused toys, but strong emotions stay and the memory connected to it is biased.
Our mind is a time traveler, running back and forth in time. Getting images from the past and trying to construct a future from those distorted memories. And here we get the crackpot theories. Based on our primals we get stories about how we will fail, giving it some spice from previous unmet needs. Leaving behind our values to conform and fit into something that our brain constructs and we go round and round. Doing the same pattern that will never serve us.
Our lizard brain making us believe that the future and the world are bad. But is it? Do you want to believe this or do you want to jump out the hamster wheel?
How to get out of the warzone?
If you want to stay in the wheel then I think you should stop reading. I don’t want to waste your time, but if you’d like to jump out then hopefully you can take something with you.
Even if we don’t like it sometimes this part of our brain is mandatory. This part is responsible for keeping you alive. This will tell you that it’s not a good idea to jump off the cliff, again. But in the daily routine with your constantly running mind where you don’t let your brain have a blast. Social media is not recreational for your brain. It’s easy to lose control and just blindly follow around this safety net. We are so busy crafting theories without looking into them or thinking about what we really want from life. We have so high expectations from ourselves and we want an answer right away, we want a solution and don’t ask ourselves the most important questions.
Is this thought serving me? Is it in alignment with my values? Or am I just wasting time?
Stay in the present
The only part of us that can travel time is our thoughts. Sadly, it’s not too efficient in the future part, but pretty good at maintaining alternative timelines. Getting on the tin foil hat, and winning that conversation is awesome but spending too much time in your head can be a distraction from your life.
This Passive Possum part of your brain can be turned off with practice.
How to turn off Passive Possum
To learn how to turn it off, you have to learn how to direct your attention. Most of the time we call this set of tools mindfulness. It’s the art of learning how to direct your attention to the things that matter.
Some of these mindfulness exercises make you jump into the present, teach you how to stay in the present and some help you elongate your focus.
So let’s start by jumping into the present.
Tools for instantly getting back to the present
When you are in the middle of a fight/flight or freeze you don’t have the time to walk around or imagine things. You have to get back instantly, be present, and react. There will be some delay with these as well, but losing 1 minute is better than losing the whole conversation. The base of these practices is to know your body. First, you have to know what happens with your body when this fight/flight/freeze happens so you know when should you use the tool.
Maybe your face gets red, you are drumming with your legs, or your neck starts to hurt. The feeling will be your sign that you should use the tool.
5 senses – Mindfulness
Effect: Jump out of the thought loop
Call out in your mind
- 5 things you can see
- 4 things you can touch
- 3 things you can hear
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste right now.
This anchoring exercise can instantly bring you back into the present through your senses. https://www.zerotothree.org/resource/five-senses-exercise/
Saying no to your passive part – ACT
Effect: Stops the thought loop and distance you
Give a name to the passive part of your mind. When a negative thought comes into your mind, then simply call out.
“Thank you … for warning me, but I decided to do something else.”
This simple sentence can easily bring you back to the present and let you focus on the task ahead.
Call it out – (a kiégés megelőzése)
Effect: Stops the loop and leads you in a positive direction
If you feel that you are in a trap, then call out the thought. Say it out loud in your head.
“This is a limiting thought! I will focus on … (the positive side) “
You don’t have to see the world in pink, but watching it in black surely doesn’t help. If you can keep an open mind, then your brain can take in more information. If you just shut in then you will miss out on the opportunity to have enough information to fight back or fight together.
Objects for anchoring – NLP
Effect: Change the negative feeling to a positive one
This requires some preparation and a lot of practice before you can use it. First, you need an object that you can reach easily or a hand gesture that can be your anchor.
The first step is to connect the positive feeling to your chosen anchor. Choose the gesture or the object, choose the feeling. Think about the time when this feeling was really strong. Relive this moment. Smell, touch, look around, and feel it again while touching the object or doing the gesture. Connect them together.
Test it and practice. You can have as many anchors as you’d like if you remember them.
https://inlpcenter.org/nlp-anchoring/
Improving your focus
Learning how to jump out of the thought needs practice and these exercises can help you to master it.
The parade – ACT
Goal: Practicing keeping your focus
Imagine a parade. Look at it, be part of it like a child who sees this for the first time. How long can you keep your focus there? Did any of your chores, or past discussions pop in? Keep yourself in the parade as long as you can. Keep practicing it daily.
Black things in the room – ACT
Goal: Practicing keeping your focus
Check all the black things in the room. Just look around and name them. When was the first time a thought ran over the black things? Something about changing or moving stuff, or something totally different?
Keep your focus on the black things and keep practicing.
Perseverance
The tips above are for jumping out of the negative thought state, but that state sometimes happens for a reason. You can always put on a band-aid, but in the long run, you have to let that scar heal. For perseverance, you have to work with your demons if those demons are frequent visitors.
You can think of the world as bad but what makes the world bad can be changed. This is your life and your decision. You can decide what is boring and how to make it interesting. You are the only one who can decide how to fulfill your needs and what are your values you can’t live without.
But this is the key. You know and you are the only one who can tell. Travel to the core of your being from time to time to talk to find out if these thoughts want to serve you or make you sit in the cave.
Endnote
Thoughts are thoughts we can choose what to do with them. These exercises aren’t for getting rid of emotions. You have to feel them and work on them. But there are moments when you have to be present. There are thoughts your EGO is just pushing and pushing even though they don’t serve you anymore. These exercises help you to jump out a bit, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work with them.
Don’t be afraid, your core values will keep you on the road. But it’s okay to feel pain, to feel sad.
Commitment is not about never lapsing, it is about taking responsibility even when we do lapse.
Bibliography
Ichiro Kishima, Fumitake Koga, The Courage to Be Disliked, Allen and Unwin, 2019
Hayes, Steven C., The Liberated Mind, Penguin Random House, 2019
Tom Hoobyar, NLP – The Essential Guide, HarperCollins Publisher Inc, 2013
Charlene, Rymsha, A kiégés megelőzése és kezelése, Scolar, 2022
Primal World Beliefs, Psychological Assessment 31(1):82-99, 2018 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328180484_Primal_World_Beliefs
