Have you ever heard of “superman”, “superpower”, “law of attraction”?
How does one build things up?
Things are built up on actions of elementary simplicity, within everyone's reach, actions which they train to be able to face and resist.
If you are not afraid of getting to know reality and acting within its imperatives, then I shall tell you the anatomy of a miracle.
Training methods based on the use of our biological “kit” have been applied for many millennia, with surprising results, as we can see in the training of conscripts for war or top athletes. Not only is applying them to your life a possibility, but it is also the most effective way of realising your dreams.
You do not have to believe me, nor the studies that justify why these methods work, as mentioned in the chapter “The epiphany”.
You can start now.
- Step one. Read this book, time and again, and do it patiently
- Step two. Try to find in your own life examples of what is said here, “feel what was real”.
- Step three. Experiment without backing down, with wisdom.
The life you desire is, in short, your purpose. And the only way to fulfil it is to “do” what must be “done” to get there.
As every existing thing needs energy, the solutions for survival are cases of “expertise” in energy balance. Every living thing and every single thing in life is the product of an energy management system.
In order to respond to environmental threats and balance energy in all living beings, the homeostatic system comes into play.
In humans, the sophistication of the nervous system has led to the development of many skills, such as speech, writing, and creativity. Applying these skills in everyday life has allowed us to progress in a technological sense. Technology is undoubtedly the most effective way of saving energy and time.
How much time would we have to spend carrying around the things we use daily if there were no cars?
How long would it take us to cook without cookers?
What if there was no fire?
If we go back in time, we will reach a way of life with no technology, identical to that of any animal. We would spend our days looking for food to survive.
The problem now is that we have too much time on our hands and we do not know how to use it.
The threats have changed. We do not need to spend eight hours looking for food. We sit down in a restaurant and, in 15 minutes, we have filled our tank with enough energy for the day. The threat is now obesity, diabetes, and depression.
There are two types of threats to life: those created by nature and those created by progress, by humans.
The former type requires solutions that the homeostatic and adaptive systems develop with little energy expenditure.
The latter type requires us to be aware of its existence, shift our focus towards it, and then have the courage to apply solutions that effectively fight threats of this kind.
The problem is that our brains are set up to fight the first type.
For example, it used to be crucial to feel immediate pleasure when encountering sugar and fat, valuable and necessary energy for survival. Today, if consumed in inadequate quantities, such energy becomes “poison”.
In the past, curiosity was essential for finding new food and predators, and this gave us a lot of pleasure. Today, we switch on our mobile phones and are drawn to countless distractions that can ruin our lives.
With the former threats, our survival system takes care of motivation.
With the latter threats, our rational system needs to take care of motivation.
Doing this means learning to manage impulses. It means exchanging immediate rewards for medium- and long-term ones.
For example:
- Trading the pleasure of consuming sugar and fat in inadequate quantities for the energy of a healthy being.
- Trading the pleasure of social networking for the pleasure of taking charge of life.
The thing that sets a genius apart from you is the way of “facing the unnatural and resisting the inconvenient”.
The science of “feeling”
Feeling is a language used from the very beginning of life by every living being. There would be no life without it. Feeling was the way we found to perceive threats (where lies the mistake) and fight them (face them while seeking adaptive solutions).
“Feeling” is intended for surviving, learning, and finding meaning.
“Feeling” for surviving:
If you lack water, you feel thirsty. If it is cold or hot, or something else affects your health, you feel it. That is why we have sensors in our body that tell us what is out of balance. We feel when our five senses tell us what is going on outside, and we feel when we think or imagine. Knowing how to feel is the best way to assess and overcome threats, to improve our choices and to learn.
Learning to feel is infinitely more important for life than learning to think or possessing knowledge.
We, humans, as animals with a conscience, are able to balance—to a greater or lesser extent—what we feel through “imagination”, shifting the focus to what suits us.
“Feeling” for learning:
To know what needs to be done and how urgent it is, we rely on a thermometer whose scale goes from a lot of pain to a lot of pleasure. The degree of urgency varies with the intensity of the pain or pleasure. Our brains are set up to be able to escape pain and obtain pleasure as quickly as possible.
It is about making a training school out of the things you dislike.
“Feeling” for finding meaning:
Think of a time when you felt great pleasure.
Now think of a time when you felt pain.
In doing so, you used your imagination, and you were able to relive that feeling.
- Have you ever been in love with someone?
- Have you ever had a toothache or any other major pain?
- How soon would you like to get rid of the pain or feel the pleasure?
Think of a time when you felt a threat and felt fear, anger, or another emotion.
Have you ever imagined a threat and felt fear and, once you got close to what you thought was a threat, that emotion changed?
What we imagine may not be real. Feeling is what makes it real.
Every life experience is an abstraction; when you think about it, you make sense of it.
To find meaning (a reason) in what we do, and we do not like, is key to learning how to cope and achieve success.
Recall moments when you experienced negative thoughts, and felt sadness, anguish, fear. Also, remember moments filled with positive thoughts that brought you joy and pleasure.
The thoughts we choose to think are the colours with which we paint our lives.
What you can “feel” does not need to be explained. Communicating in this way avoids conflicting interpretations.
Finding meaning is being able to meditate while living.
The science of “motivation”
Motivation, as the name suggests, is what drives action, it is the fuel that feeds action, it is the spring that fires the shot, that makes you face challenges.
Why is it that sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail?
To do or not to do, demands motivation.
Suppose that, in order to form the habit of exercising, you have to cycle 25 miles every day. You know that your health depends on it. You do not like it, so you start and then you go back after one mile.
The motivation, i.e., the benefit that got you cycling, was not as great as the pain of having to cycle.
Now, imagine that you will be given a house as a prize once you manage to make a habit of cycling 25 miles a day for a year.
This time, you are anticipating the pleasure you will feel when you get your prize house. Now that you are more motivated, you set off, you gradually increase the daily distance travelled and, once you succeed, you feel confident. When you reach the 25-mile mark for the first time, your self-confidence makes you commit to not giving up. After a few days, you feel that you require less effort and, eventually, you begin to enjoy the journey. Once the habit is formed, everything becomes automatic and easy.
The difference between this habit and learning to walk is that the walking was motivated by curiosity, by the desire to imitate others; cycling was motivated by the desire to win the prize house.
Have you ever felt that way? Would you, do it?
I bet that, if you did, even after the challenge was over, you would keep pedalling as a tribute to the courage you displayed in overcoming the challenge. A few years down the line, you would remember the pleasure of having succeeded more vividly than the pleasure you get from the prize house.
Knowing how to motivate yourself to carry out unnatural routines, such as reading, writing, bathing, and many others, requires the courage to do what needs to be done at the right time, the courage to overcome pain. Knowing how to do this, ensures any life, no matter how difficult the journey might be.
Ensuring life is the first of the existential conflicts.
Imagine when you fell ill with a fever.
How did it feel?
Could you think clearly?
Did you want to go to a party?
The motivation in these moments is to escape the pain. Any pleasure would be unlikely to overcome such desire to escape.
What if this happened many times in your life?
Would you have a good life?
And why do we not take better care of our health?
The pleasure of eating sweets and fat is felt immediately. The pain of the illnesses only comes over the mid or long term. And so, the brain argues: – “that will not happen to me”, “fat people are happier”, and so on.
Being healthy is obviously the first commitment.
The way to achieve it in humans requires:
- Updating threats for a constantly and rapidly changing world as a way of focusing on the right enemy.
- Using imagination to find reasons to take action.
- Having the courage to get things done, that is, the courage to overcome the greatest saboteur of action — our brain.
Imagine a moment in your life when you did something difficult and succeeded. Feel yourself in that moment, feel the pleasure you had when you won.
The science of impulses
Nature has already provided us with everything we need to preserve life. These are tools that are in our biology and in our minds, that can be used automatically or intentionally.
In the past, survival demanded the courage to search for food without making excuses and to confront the natural threats with limited resources. This required a brain that would not waste energy, providing rewards immediately for each success while also being cautious. So, nature provided us with the impulses to escape pain and seek pleasure immediately, to insist we were right to defend the solutions that worked, to overcome challenges to find food, perpetuate the species, etc. These are the standard solutions. But if on the one hand they fulfil the mission of preserving life, on the other hand they can make it miserable, forcing us to stick to undesirable behaviours, such as procrastinating to get away from what we need to do, or using various types of drugs to seek pleasure.
The thing that separates evil from good and right from wrong is the dose of energy put into the solution. Achieving balance is what matters. Achieving balance requires knowing what to face and how to resist pain and pleasure.
We must then know how to control our impulses according to what suits us best, in order to find a way through a meaningful life.
“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.”
(Paul of Tarsus)
The science of “habits”
We are animals of habits. Without them, life would be unfeasible. This is the best way to save energy.
How long would it take you to wake up and go outside if you had no habits?
It takes one year just to learn to walk. To learn to talk, it takes one more year. To be able to shower with no assistance, it takes about four years. That is a total of six years. This would surely be the end of your work, your livelihood, your family, and your life.
And what was it like when you learnt to walk?
You began by imitating those who were already walking. You fell, you got back up, you persisted, again and again, you overcame the pain of the falls and the invested effort. And now you are capable of walking without thinking it over, hardly ever falling.
That which is difficult but necessary must be converted into a habit so that it may be done faster, with greater ease, with less effort, and much less energy. In the nervous system, this works to automate behaviour so that it may be repeated without requiring focused thoughts, unconsciously, as it happens when you ride a bike or drive your car.
Forming habits
Why is it so difficult to form habits?
“Doing the unnatural” uses more energy than “doing the natural”, and that is the reason it causes discomfort and low motivation.
- What habit would you like to change or form?
- Is it important to you?
Suppose you wish to get up at five in the morning, but currently you only wake up at noon.
- Find a strong reason to change (motivation with an emphasis on pleasure). For instance, think about how important it would be to take control of your mind, to have more determination and less anguish, or, if these are not motivating enough, think about the damage your current behaviour does to your health, your profession, and your family.
- Plan for slow change, considering how well you are able to bear the pain. Example: Start by getting up at eleven o’clock, then ten, nine, and so on, until you reach five o’clock.
- Make a commitment to fulfil the plan, without backing down.
- Start with determination. As you make progress, you feel you can do it and your confidence grows. Building self-confidence is about feeling what works.
- Never back down. Be it Sunday, a public holiday, or your holiday leave. Do not let your inner voice argue, “let me get away with it today, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.” This will undermine your ability to resist the urge to procrastinate.
When you were learning to walk, did you pause on Sundays?
If you ever think you cannot achieve your goal, do not downsize your dream. Instead, take slower steps forward; never take steps backward.
It does not matter how fast you go, as long as you do not give up.
This is the best way to form and preserve the habits you need for your life.
Summary: you do it, you feel it works, you repeat it, you increase your confidence, you persist until you form the habit, your self-confidence grows strong, and then you make sure to keep saboteurs at bay.
The first of these saboteurs, really—is your brain, which has been trained not to do things and will come up with all sorts of excuses until it proves its point.
Remember the times when you said things such as the following. “Not today, perhaps tomorrow. — I wasn't born for this. I need to prepare myself. I can't do it.” Or was it another excuse that you thought up to justify not getting it done?
Then there are all those who feed their limiting thoughts with unbeatable arguments. “I wouldn't risk it if I were you. — You’ll live longer if you play it safe. — This isn't for you. — Seek your real talent. — I'd be afraid.”
There are also those who promise miracles. “Find what you seek in seven steps. — Be happy forever. — Learn a new language in your sleep.”
Changing habits
On the other hand, we should know how to change habits that do not suit us, addictions, usually created by repeating behaviours that give us pleasure. The process can be the same as creating habits; it requires deconstructing the neuronal network that has already been created.
The first step would be to find a strong reason to change, with the emphasis on pain.
The arguments used by saboteurs favour sticking to current behaviour.
“Bad habits are like comfortable beds: easy to get into, but hard to get out of.”