Your life is just a projection of your mind.
You are in this current situation because your mind is in its current state.
You cannot change anything about your life if you do not start from changing your mind. It’s like trying to kill a tree by cutting its leaves.
Stop.
Attack its roots.
Beliefs
Beliefs are thoughts in your head, but not just thoughts in your head- they have the power to control your actions.
- Your personality. Comes from your self-perception, i.e. what type of person you see yourself as. Then your actions follows. Then you look at your own behaviours and other people’s perception to you, and confirm yourself that “I am this type of person”.
- Your achievements. Comes from what you believe you could achieve. When you believe you are an important person and can do big things, your follows. Supposing that you did the right things, your achivements align with your think.
- Your interpersonal relationships. Comes from your perception of how relationship works. What do you expect? Do you think “it is hard to find people who respect, love, and care about me”, so you allow people who don’t respect, love, and care about you to stay in your life?
- Your financial status. Comes from your beliefs on money. What do you think money as? A valuable tool? A limited source that everyone competes for? An evil? Your financial status can be easily inferred by your answer to these questions.
And needless to say your actions are the direct determinant of your outcomes.
However, your beliefs don’t usually stand alone. They are supported by your understandings of the world, or, your perception.
perception
You create your understanding of the world by learning from your personal experiences and what other people tell you, which you use to establish your beliefs.
But that perception is far from the reality.
Why?
Two reasons.
First, your personal experience is a poorly conducted experiment:
- The sample size is too small. It’s just one (you).
- There are too many variables. There are unknown factors that you’re unaware of; and it is impossible to identify which known factors have come into play.
So the results (the experience) really don’t mean anything.
Second, if we humans did not receive any special training, we are unable to make any good interpretations.
Our human brains are inherently biased.1 We are extremely bad at making judgements.
Cognitive experts even coined the term “unaware and unskilled”2– meaning that we do not just make erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but our lack of metacognitive ability makes us unable to realise our incompetence.
So, if you use a poor interpreter (an untrained version of you) against a poor source of information (your limited personal experience), your perception of the reality will be nothing close to the actuality.
The only way to calibrate the mind: learn the principles
The reality is governed by principles.
Principles are rules that the world operates around. They are unchangeable by any means.
It is like science, but more than science.
For simplicity, think about gravity.
You can’t remove the effect of gravity by not knowing that it exists. Nor by not believing that it exists. If you jump off a building with no gear, your unawareness or disbelief is not gonna keep you alive.
The same goes for other principles.
Work along with them to see results.
Go against them to fail.
Start the calibration
The first step is beware of the existence of principles, which now you do.
From now on, I want you to ask yourself “what are the principles that govern this thing” whatever you’re trying to do.
When you are
- feeling emotions. (the principles of how the mind works.)
- learning. (the principles of successful learning.)
- connecting with people. (the principles of how interpersonal relationships work.)
Always remember, you win if and only if you follow the principles.
And the next step is to calibrate your beliefs and perception by learning the principles.
learning the principles
This blog consists of the principles synthesised either from carefully conducted scientific researches, or the first-hand experiences from some of the most successful people that are tested and proven right by successful replication by other people.
As mentioned earlier, principles are wider than science, so scientific researches won’t always play a role.
The point is, we want facts.
We want what actually works, not what we think will work. You can’t think something doesn’t work into work.
We strive for actual results.
We strive for making our investment, time, energy, and money, worthy.
If you resonate with any of the points above, this blog is for you.
Everything you need, at the tip of your finger:
References:
- Van Eyghen H. Cognitive Bias: Phylogenesis or Ontogenesis? Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 27;13:892829. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.892829. PMID: 35967732; PMCID: PMC9364952. ↩︎
- Kruger J, Dunning D. Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999 Dec;77(6):1121-34. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1121. PMID: 10626367.
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living 2.0 