Yo! This is DISRUPT #6. For those who have subscribed, thank you for the support. I hope you continue to learn and apply what you learn, to your own life.

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In this edition of DISRUPT, you will see some scientific terms describing some proccesses of our brains.

It brings to light how our brain truly works. That this topic isn’t just pseudoscience but neuroscientific.

Learning about them will let you see and become increasingly aware about the importance of organizing your mind.

Just a reminder, no matter what you read, always put your own personal nuance to what you consume

Enjoy ;)

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I want to begin with a couple of quotes. Some quotes that I’ve visited many months ago and that have brought me immense value to my life.

In our busy lives, we’re always prone to experiencing events that don’t favor us.

1. You’re at your peak level of athletic ability but you suddenly experience an ACL injury.
2. You’re an entrepreneur approaching launch day but suddenly a key investor withdraws their funding support due to a financial setback forcing you to delay launch day.
3. You’re at what you would consider the best situation you’ve ever been in life but suddenly a loved one passes away.

There’s one thing in common with all of these events. They’re events that have seemingly unfavorable consequences of significant size. And we don’t have the opportunity to reverse them. What would ideally happen after these events is that one would accept what has happened and then seek an external solution to their problem.

1. If you experience an ACL injury you would go through surgery and then months of rehabilitation
2. If a key investor withdrew their funding for your business forcing you to delay launch day, you would immediately notify those signed up on your waitlist and then begin to put in the grueling work to find new funding
3. If a loved one passes away while you’re at the peak of your life, you must move on and continue to live your life.

But as unfavorable events occur in our lives, our minds are prone to fall into turmoil. One may begin to perceive seemingly unfavorable events purely negative. It becomes more difficult to bounce back and regain your foothold when we think negatively. The lens through which we view the world becomes clouded. Those negative perceptions begin to compound and one may begin to make negative decisions. Falling into a negative spiral.

As humans, we have a natural tendency to focus on the negative. Our ancestors needed to register threats to avoid danger and survive. We’ve inherited that trait. But this trait isn’t as important in our modern world. We aren’t under the constant threat of being ripped to shreds by a saber-toothed tiger anymore.

Our brain tends to trick us. We often perceive situations in ways that don’t represent reality. We often hold steady to beliefs that we think are true but hold no rational realistic basis to be true.

Your brain could be telling you, “I’m not good at writing. I’ll never be good”.​
But how do you know? You never know until you try.

Your brain could be telling you, “I failed despite giving it my all. I’m not good enough to continue”.
But why? Doesn’t improvement come from failure?

And although some perceptions that we have may have a rational and realistic basis, they don’t serve us whatsoever and instead hinder us.

Your brain could be telling you, “I don’t talk very much. I’m pretty much a shy person”.​
You could be a shy person. But why inherently identify as such?
It’s a limiting belief that grounds your identity on an unfavorable trait.

Your brain could be telling you, “I don’t have enough knowledge. I can’t pursue my dream career at all”. You might not have much experience. But why inherently limit yourself?
You can always learn and attain knowledge. Nothing is stopping you. Just yourself.

This phenomena is amplified in moments when we’re in a state of stress. Whether it’s productive stress or unproductive stress.

Take exercise, a form of productive stress, as an example. You’re in the middle of a challenging workout. Your brain is saying, “I can’t do this last set. Heck, I can’t even to this next rep”. But realistically what is stopping you? Can you physically manage to keep going? Or is it your brain that is tricking you?
Even if you believe that you can’t physically keep going, ask yourself, “Then how am I still standing?”

Now take public speaking. You’re giving your first public speech to an audience of greater than 1000 people. Your brain is saying, “I spoke too fast. I’m not good at this, perhaps someone else should’ve came up here”. You start to stutter and fumble on your words. But with your brain feeding you these detrimental beliefs, you fail to rise up and produce a good speech.

It’s the unneeded stress and emotions that begin to produce limiting beliefs that we are very conscious about yet absolutely fooled by.

Therefore, it’s important to see reality for what it is and act in accordance with it.

In the philosophy of stoicism there exists a term called “Logos”.
For those who practice stoicism, it is the belief that everything around us operates based on a web of cause and effect resulting in a rational structure of the universe.

We must live according to the Logos. See reality for what it is, rather than what we think it is. And approach it with a sense of calmness and clarity. With equanimity.
​

Become Aware

​
You aren’t inherently your feelings. Or even your thoughts. Feelings and thoughts are what arise from the natural functions of our brain as we go about living our life. For us they serve as indicators. Indicators that we use to make choices throughout lives.

We are ultimately defined as what we do with our thoughts and emotions. And we can choose to respond to them or not.

You can visualize and begin to see your true self, as the consciousness that decides whether to take action on a specific thought or emotion.

Awareness of this is important so you aren’t dragged by irrational thoughts and whimsical feelings.

Rather you must use your thoughts and feelings wisely, just like a tool.

Emotions are indicators which then lead to thoughts. Once we have a certain thought, we have a corresponding emotion that follows. This process occurs to us 24/7 whether we realize it or not. It’s how our body and our brain constantly works to make decisions. After each thought or emotion, there’s potential for action to arise.

At times, these emotions can be subtle and our thoughts can continuously flow, all unnoticed. This can be referred to as implicit cognition which are the mental processes that occur automatically without our conscious attention.

Now, it’s important you’re also aware of the concept of psychic entropy. It defines the phenomena of the mind tending to gravitate toward disorder if not consciously ordered.

Sometimes our implicit cognition can serve us. Whenever we automatically learn. Whenever we have to make quick decisions. But sometimes this mental process doesn’t. Especially when our mind isn’t ordered and goes through psychic entropy falling into disorder. We might unknowingly pick up biased views or unnecessary beliefs. In fact, we might pick up the negative views of the external world around us. We begin thinking negatively and then feeling negatively as well. All unconsciously, without us being aware of it.

Given that after each thought or emotion, there’s a potential for action, if we aren’t able to clear out the negative viewpoints we have in our heads, we’ll begin to take negative action. These negative actions can be singular at first. But they can begin to compound and compound eventually leading to negative habits which then will lead to a mediocore life that we will become very conscious of.

This can occur due to neural priming, a non conscious process that describes the process in which exposure to a stimulus alters the response of another stimulus.

Thoughts beget thoughts.

Awareness begets awareness.

So if we don’t manage to keep our minds ordered and a higher sense of clarity, our mind can shift into disorder and so can our lives too.

This occurs when one lives an unexamined life.

Ideally what happens is that we act on rational thinking, not irrational emotions. We take positive action which then will compound into a life that we become proud of. But this can’t happen if we live under a cloud of detrimental bias, detrimental beliefs, detrimental thoughts, and detrimental emotions.

Some emotions can feel stronger than others, especially if they’re feelings of anger or excitement. Yet no matter how strong some emotions can be, before we take action we always have time to think. We always inherently have time to feel those emotions and see what’s beneath them.

Only after, we should make conducive decisions.

Let’s dissect some quotes.

Without living a life that is examined and putting in conscious thought and effort to examine ourselves, we’ll be living below our capacity to reason. Instead we’ll be living a life being dragged by our unreliable emotions and thoughts that follow those unreliable emotions.

We must not allow ourselves to be dragged around by irrational thoughts or emotions, no matter how strong they are, if we want to live a meaningful life full of fulfillment and accomplishment. We must order those irrational thoughts and emotions into something rational. Or if they’re purely irrational then discard them.

Marcus Aurelius would realize that his feeling of anxiety was purely irrational. An emotion existing purely within his head not reflective of reality itself. And he realized he had the power to just let go of it.

Our perceptions = Our reality.

Our world is defined by how we view it. Not by the external things that occur around us. On their own, events are just events. How you see an event determines your reality.

It’s worth having a clear head. It’s worth embodying a high degree cognitive autonomy over our own minds. In the end, it’s the only thing that we will always own. Our house can get taken away from us, our car can get towed, we can lose our jobs, we can lose anything in this world, but our consciousness is what’ll never disappear from our control. Our thoughts, our consciousness are the most valuable thing we can ever own and the only thing we truly control. If it is the only thing we can control, then I believe it is worth controlling.

Align your perceptions in a way that makes your reality conducive for your own growth.
​

Change your Perceptions

​
Constantly ask yourself, “Which thought or emotion isn’t reflecting who I want to be? Which thought or emotion isn’t reflecting the present moment?”.

If you’ve developed a solidified vision for your future life or have a set of values that you strongly align with, you’ll have a direction to go in. It’ll become painfully obvious what doesn’t serve you and then you remove what doesn’t serve you from your mind.

Remove the perception. You make the right decisions and take righteous action according to your vision and personal values. And those perceptions will begin to fade away as they become useless.

Leveraging neuroplasticity - the ability of our brains to change its activity in response to external or internal stimuli.

Yet at times, this be a difficult process. Whenever we intend to reflect on ourselves, on our actions, it can become difficult. We’re attempting to look at our actions without much bias. Yet we’re always ourselves, prone to bias and irrational thinking. We always have subjective thoughts and emotions to a degree that can potentially generate unproductive bias.

In fact as conscious individual human beings, we’re always subjective. We can never be truly objective. It doesn’t exist. Any objectiveness that we have is branched under our individual subjectiveness. Branched under our

• Personal Experiences
• Way of Thinking
• Subtle Emotions

Even when we strive for objectivity, the way and direction in which we strive for objectivity is branched under our individual subjectivity. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s how we form our personal goals and direction in life.

You can’t bite your own tooth. You’d have to first, remove your tooth and then bite it.

In a similar sense, we can do a similar thing when reflecting on our lives. To reflect on ourselves we must look at ourselves from a 3rd person standpoint. A great way to do so is by using a journal. The act of writing things down and seeing it written down can give us a clearer understanding of the situation we’re in. And we can articulate our thoughts better.

Write down what you’re going to reflect on. Whether it’s a purely internal feeling or an external situation, write it all down. In doing so, we can easily look at ourselves from above. God’s eye view. We’ll be able to analyze our unproductive cognitive bias’ and unfavorable beliefs.

Question them intentionally.

Another way to reflect is to seek a trusted friend or mentor. Ideally someone that knows you very well and can be considered to be wise. They’ll be able to provide you feedback on your decisions without any bias that you might be experiencing. But ultimately, the reflection must come from you. Despite anyone giving you feedback, you should choose how you should use that feedback. Filter out the feedback and make sure it serves you well.

You then begin to change the detrimental viewpoints and beliefs that you’ve previously held into something better.

“I don’t talk very much. I’m pretty much a shy person”
​turns into
“I don’t talk very much yet. I know I have the ability to change this. Nothing is stopping me besides myself. So I will change.”

“I can’t do this last set. Heck, I can’t even to this next rep.”
turns into
​“I’m tired as heck. And I wanna keep going. This means I’ll improve. Stress + Rest = Growth.”

“I failed despite giving it my all. I’m not good enough to continue”
​turns into
​“I’ve productively failed. There’s always something to learn from failure.”
And then you learn from that failure.

Then with the right mindset, we begin to take right action.

The right perceptions will lead to useful thoughts and emotions which then will lead to action conducive to our growth.

Perceptions = Reality.

Elite Perception = Elite Reality

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