You are capable of realising what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong and what you need to change, without anyone telling you this.
So, what else is there, before your problems are tackled and your dreams are successfully realised?
How come we are so drawn to social media, mobile phones, magical proposals; to headlines such as: the secret, learn in your sleep, speed up, now, go further, the miracle?
Nowadays, we carry in our pocket the largest encyclopaedia the World has ever produced. It is updated with millions of pieces of information at every second. There we can find recipes for everything and everyone. Recipes from philosophy, religion and science, the most diverse codes of wisdom, all this at the reach of a tap on the screen.
With all this at our disposal, how come we are not satisfied with the results we are getting?
We discover new goals, make new choices, and yet we are still at the starting point. So, what is the problem?
Why is it so difficult to change?
It is easy to realise that laziness, procrastination, indiscipline or addictions are harmful to life and make problems worse. Everyone knows that. But understanding the reason behind it is of great help.
Why is it that we have the courage to act in certain situations and we lack this same courage in others?
In other words, knowing the reason behind each of these behaviours, their roles in maintaining life, and the consequences of persisting in them in today’s world—in short, knowing why these problems or barriers exist—helps to establish the right parameters for changes to take place.
The root of everything
Regardless of the beliefs by which we live our own lives, be they cultural, theological, philosophical, scientific, or a mixture of all of them, we know that we are the result of successful experiences.
We are the result of the formulas that the homeostatic system has applied for the preservation of life and for evolution, and we must learn from them.
“We are what we are because we were what we were.”
Over the course of four billion years, the living beings that exist today have managed to adapt to the most diverse environments, overcoming all threats such as cataclysms, pandemics and predators, thus ensuring their own survival and evolution. To achieve this, they changed biologically over time.
As every single thing that exists requires energy, the solutions for survival are “experts” in energy balance. Every existing and living thing is the product of an energy management system.
Life is the science of scarcity.
Finding energy is a challenge that can only be achieved by consuming as little as possible to survive and leaving enough to continue evolving. This is the secret. It is not the result of some love for knowledge or any other kind of motivation. It was driven by the need to survive.
What we are today is the result of what we have been throughout this journey of over four billion years. Everything that happens within us, all the results of our actions on the planet, this is all natural. It is neither good nor bad. What is bad now may have been good at some other point in time.
Compared to other living beings, we have a more complex nervous system, with some singularities that provide us with greater capacity to interfere with the environment. According to some experts, this system is the result of the discovery of a way to better use energy.
The last great leap
Approximately 1.9 million years ago, our human ancestors discovered that if they “cooked” food, they would need smaller quantities of it to live. This discovery afforded them the spare time that, until then, was spent hunting or gathering food. This spare time was used to develop other skills: they socialised more, developed speech and, with it, narratives; they developed writing and, as a result, made it possible to record history.
Using these new skills, they became increasingly creative. They discovered that, in order to be more efficient, they needed to improve the ways in which they worked in groups. They also figured that the larger these groups were, the better the results they would obtain. With less effort, too.
Initially, a leader would exert his influence on a band of no more than 50 members. In applying their new skills, they invented ways to harmonise mind and body, to alleviate the fear caused by threats and the unknown. They created increasingly sophisticated symbols, myths and rituals.
Through stories that justified cooperation, i.e., giving up some of their own interests in favour of others, they built alliances around ever broader values, going as far as the concept of “love for the country”.
They expanded nations and created countries with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, from the most diverse tribes, who gather their peoples around common interests, whether territorial or ideological, adopting symbols that they venerate and bring them closer together.
Here we can see that they progressively shifted from selfishness to altruism. As selfish beings—and in order to advance survival interests—it was inevitable to have a family and look after it. In order to have more physical safety, more food, more health, more success, with less effort, it was essential to belong to a tribe, to contribute to strengthening it, to be significant and so on, until we reached the level of groups of nations, such as the UN.
They also intentionally began to reproduce ways of testing things that worked, and so they created scientific methods. They developed science and spread it with such effectiveness that it was possible to create sophisticated societies, in such a short time span, that they made it impossible for biology and thought models to adapt to this kind of evolution.
To get a sense of the speed at which these transformations have taken place, you just need to convert the timeline:
The first living being appeared on earth 4.5 billion years ago. The capacities we discussed above finished their development 100,000 years ago. So, had the first living being appeared a year ago, the cognitive capacity we have today would have been achieved only 11 minutes ago, and the great scientific advances would have occurred in the last three tenths of a second. Within this logic, throughout most of the past year, we had to live hungry and save as much energy as possible in order to survive.
To have the courage to go out in search of food, with no excuses, to face all the threats of nature without great resources—this required a brain that would not waste energy, that would reward us immediately for each success and would operate in pessimism. It is interesting to know that only in the last 11 minutes did we manage to greatly increase our autonomy with the possibility of growing crops, curbing starvation, relying on the co-operation of larger groups, and obtaining access to more sophisticated weapons to face threats.
To understand how our brain did not have time to adapt itself to technological progress, it is important to know that only in the last three tenths of a second that have we been able to eat without the need to venture out of shelter, to live in a safe society and to receive immediate rewards when we watch a film on television, for example.
Conclusion: our brain is outdated in comparison to the world we live in.
The challenge
Today, to live a life adapted to the standards of the world we have created means to learn to dismantle the defences built into our survival mechanisms, which were designed to interpret threats that are no longer the same.
Today, we no longer need to hunt and gather food for eight hours a day, avoiding snakes and lions.
When our ancestors were on the African savannah, they needed to find the most energy-dense food—the sweetest, fattiest and saltiest. They had to focus on the rustling of the leaves, the roars of predators, the changes in weather and a few other signs of threat. This was necessary for the preservation of their lives; and when they succeeded in their endeavours, the reward they felt was immediate and outweighed the burden of the effort required for each of the tasks. Otherwise, they would have given up on these tasks and starved to death.
Today, we still have a brain trained to interpret and focus on threats that no longer exist. And the countless distractions that provide us with immediate rewards are not necessary to preserve life.
Today, the main threats are depression, obesity and lack of productivity. These are much more dangerous because they have delayed consequences, even though their causes have immediate rewards.
For example, without expending any energy, we sit down in a snack bar, and in 15 minutes we will have a full fuel tank for the entire day. We pick up our mobile phone or turn on the TV, and we get the same satisfaction as when we find delicious food.
In the past, our ancestors’ gratification came from success in the hunt and, when this happened frequently, they became the idol of the tribe or even a hero. When they failed, this failure was blamed on the forces of nature and then they asked a deity for protection.
Today, we feel immediate satisfaction when we buy something we do not need, with money we do not have, to impress someone we do not know.
In other words, the only need we pursue is to have unnecessary things. When all this happens, again and again, and we have already used up all of our credit cards, we blame others: the boss, who pays too little; the state, that does not provide us with equal conditions in an unjust society.
The feeling of guilt quickly replaces the pleasure we had.
If in the past our reward system worked for survival, today it works against quality of life. And this is because the many stimuli available to us end up reducing pleasure with each repetition, leading to apathy and increased procrastination.
As humans, we have many things in common: we are identical in terms of our biology, our “genes”; we have systems that keep us alive, which are the product of billions of years of evolution. The way we interpret life and our beliefs make us different. We are frightened by the outcome of a World that changes ever more rapidly, interpreted by a brain that is not adapted to it. In order to address this…
… we must learn to shift the focus from the threats that no longer exist to those that do exist in our day.
Simplifying the brain
The central nervous system is at our service, constituting a part of our biology. Roughly speaking, according to the theory of the triune brain, it is divided into three.
A more ancient brain, which already existed in reptiles more than 500 million years ago—thus called the reptilian system—is what sustains the homeostatic functions that are fundamental to survival: it ensures that we breathe, that the heart beats and that digestion takes place, etc. It is also where instinct resides.
Another one, the limbic system—which has existed in mammals for over 200 million years—is responsible for defending us against perceived threats. It reacts according to the emotions created as a result of good and bad experiences associated with the moments in which we live.
Finally, there is the third one, called the cortex. It is better developed in humans. It is around 100,000 years old, and it is responsible for our rational thinking.
To better understand what each of these structures represents, let us imagine an elephant being ridden by a jockey through the jungle (metaphor by psychologist Jonathan Haidt).
The elephant is the combination of the reptilian and limbic systems, and the jockey is the cortex. The elephant has all the wisdom it has acquired over billions of years. This wisdom is ultimately responsible for us having survived this far. If a threat appears, the jockey will not have to tell the elephant what to do. The elephant has ready-made formulas for everything, which work like thermostats that switch life-saving systems on and off. These include the need to save energy, which is to be used whenever survival is at stake.
The elephant chooses the paths it identifies as safest, based on its ancestral experience, avoiding threats and preserving the species. To do this, it reads its own body and the world, and converts this reading into feelings. The elephant wants one thing only: to survive.
More than 95 per cent of our choices are made by the elephant, who, given the authority conferred on it by billions of years’ worth of experience, forces the jockey to justify them. This is because, besides surviving, the thing that the elephant enjoys the most is being right. Being right means providing defence against everything that threatens life, meaningfulness and impunity. The elephant does not care about being happy, comfortable or meaningful. These are the jockey’s desires. The elephant addresses the short term. It is always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This is its supreme will, founded on the only truths it knows.
The jockey, on the other hand, thinks about the future and chooses the paths that he thinks are best to achieve it. However, in order for the elephant to obey him, the jockey has to persuade the elephant to spend energy. The jockey is aware that it is no longer necessary to spend eight hours looking for food. There is surplus time and energy to invest in evolving and adapting to the world.
Among the many structures that make up the elephant, some of them, once activated, can make the elephant agree to do the jockey’s bidding, giving up its own will. These include the reward system, the adaptation system, the survival system, the reticular system and other structures that can curb or enhance the elephant’s desires.
Some neuroscientists are currently offering new insights or discovering new caveats to the insights that were considered consistent until then. This includes the work of Dr Antonio Damasio and Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett, to name two examples.
However, there are still many points of convergence, from a biological—and even functional—point of view.
True intelligence, after all, lies in the ability to use these structures to act for a happier, more comfortable and more meaningful life.
What really matters here is to understand, albeit rudimentarily, what happens in our mind and how it influences the quality of our lives; this is not really a matter of knowing exactly which structures we use and where they are located. We leave this task to those who might want to do so out of curiosity.
This is about living a life in which the joys are enhanced and the pains are diminished.
In other words, our remaining alternative is to apply intelligence, shifting focus and changing tools, so that, using the least amount of energy, we can meet the demands that life imposes us in today’s world.
Our central nervous system weighs around two per cent of our body, but it consumes more than 20 per cent of our energy.
The switches
There are around 86 billion neurons. To avoid exhausting all the available energy, only two per cent can be used at a time. So, when one area “lights up”, others have to “switch off”.
Managing this, i.e., knowing which “switches” to flick or filters to reconfigure, is one of the jockey’s skills for driving the elephant: the ability to redirect the energy wherever we want it to be.
And this is possible by learning to shift the focus.
First — The reticular system
Every moment, we receive millions of pieces of information from the outside world; we see images with millions of colours; we hear an unending variety of sounds; we feel the most diverse smells, textures and tastes. At the same time, we track our bodies, looking for signs of any malfunctioning systems.
As our brain is unable to process all this information, it needs to reduce this inflow to a level that can be properly processed. To do this, it uses a filter (the reticular system) that can pick the things that interests us (information from our point of view). This is the real home of the law of attraction.
In this way, our beliefs and desires work like glasses in which the lenses change colour according to our interests. If I buy a blue car, I begin noticing many more blue cars. If I believe that a certain profession is no good, I find more flaws in someone who works in that field.
Beliefs are the result of habits of action, habits of thought or emotions. They reside in our subconscious.
Our brain focuses on everything it wants to see. This is why our beliefs are so important in life. Our life depends on how we see the world, and this can be either very good or very bad, depending on what we focus.
The brain cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.
We distinguish between truths and untruths by referring to what we believe in. In other words, we organise the information we receive within a logic of our own, that is filtered according to what we believe to be true. If you believe it, then it is true; and this truth will be defended at all costs. For as long as it takes for you to prove your point. This is the process of reading the World, which sets us apart from other animals, as far as we know today.
When we believe that someone or something is good or bad, we look for attributes to confirm this belief: our brain does not tell what is real from what is a product of imagination—it concerns itself with its own interpretation rather than the fact.
It is pleasing to be right. And the brain enjoys it.
If we are aware of threats, we feel the fear, we see threats in everything; on the other hand, if we are experiencing moments of joy, we are able to laugh at threats. This makes our survival system work more effectively.
When something draws our attention (energy, focus), the information related to it becomes more visible.
For example. Try looking around you and counting everything that is red; after a minute, close your eyes and answer this: how many blue things have you seen? Would you know?
Try changing the ringtone on your phone. You will begin noticing other phones with the same tone. When you buy a car, you begin noticing more cars of the same model. Someone who is expecting a child notices pregnant women more easily. Someone with a broken leg will pay more attention to people walking on crutches…
Resetting this filter involves reshaping beliefs. Having a life plan and working on implementing it implies, firstly, in identifying which beliefs get in the way, and consequently have a limiting effect, and then changing them for ones that have a helping effect.
All this can be done by simply reshaping our thoughts, using imagination, using creativity, doing physical exercise and meditation.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Our thoughts work like a permanent prayer. When it is repeated time and again, it becomes a habit, a belief.
Second — the limbic system
The limbic system is our emotional brain, the source of our affections, our feelings. It drives life, it frightens us and it makes us fall in love. Emotions are not inherently good or bad; they are data that save our lives, motivate our behaviour, are essential to our relationships and come as a response to our basic needs being met or not met.
According to Paul Ekman, in his attempt to explain the function of each emotion, in Emotions Revealed (2003):
- “Enjoyment: it deepens bonds and co-operation, it increases chances of surviving and reproducing.
- Aversion/disgust: it helps to get rid of what may be poisonous or harmful.
- Anger: it leads to fighting, to removing obstacles.
- Contempt: it leads to an assertion of superiority.
- Fear: it leads to flight, to an escape from threats or confrontations.
- Surprise: it helps to focus our attention on something new.
- Sadness: it brings the need for consolation, bonding and care from others, it creates bonds driven by the experience of loss.”
Through the “theory of constructed emotion”, we can understand why emotions vary from person to person and from moment to moment. Emotions are the result of a prediction made by our brain, which uses memories and interprets the moment in which they are triggered.
Third — the cortex
It is the source of logical or argumentative reasoning.
This structure is what allows us, on one hand, to find new forms of persuasion, to make our creativity seek better decisions, to use imagination, language and other symbols to communicate with the outside world, and thus feed our “memes”.
On the other hand, it allows us to create connections between neurons and thoughts, to communicate with the inner world, enabling us to reshape our beliefs.
Proponents of the concept of “memes” consider them to be cultural analogues of “genes”, because they self-replicate, mutate and respond to cultural selective pressures.
In short, biological information is passed on through “genes”, and cultural information is passed through “memes”.
As we have already seen, our brains are fundamentally interested in two things: surviving and being right. Only then there are the other things: being happy, being comfortable, being meaningful.
Being right
It means defending against everything that threatens life, meaningfulness and guilt.
Most wars and other conflicts happen because someone wants to be right, without considering other interests that should prevail over this perceived righteousness, such as security, peace, economy, well-being and happiness, for example. And a war only ends when the reason that led to it changes to another reason that leads to its ending, at which point those who called for war begin calling for peace.
The way we shape and reshape our beliefs means that some of the existing structures in the “elephant” can act as brakes or throttles to processes. There are (among other, already mentioned ones) the executive functions and the associative system. The ability of the “jockey” to intervene in these systems ensures the possibility of leading the elephant down other paths. This happens, for instance, by shifting the focus from a thought that triggers the survival system to another thought that interprets the situation as an opportunity and room for progress.
The potential of this ability is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the models (formulas) of reasoning that can be used to overcome each obstacle. These models, when converted into habits of thought, emerge at the speed of instinct.