Manipulating myself

Our consciousness lives somewhere beyond our minds and hearts, what I mean by this is that your brain, emotions, and consciousness are three separate entities which are independent of each other but do collaborate together. You see this precisely with the decisions you make.

1. Emotional decisions which go against logic or even your own desires:

• Example: Accepting a job offer in a city far from your family and friends because you feel an emotional connection to the new location, despite knowing it might not be the best career move or align with your long-term goals.

2. Logical decisions which leave you emotionally stressed and still don’t go along with your desires:

• Example: Selling a beloved family jewelry to pay off debt, even though it makes financial sense, you feel emotionally attached to the jewelry and stressed about parting with it.

3. Decisions based on your desires, which go against logic and your emotional wellbeing:

• Example: Splurging on an expensive vacation that you can’t afford because you desire a break from stress, despite knowing it will strain your finances and create anxiety about money later.

These examples illustrate how decisions can be influenced by emotions, logic, desires, and their potential conflicts. It also shows you how there are 3 different entities in your mind which don’t always get along with each other. I am no expert on the topic, I just made the observation from my life and those around me.

Why is this important

This is pertinent because when you understand what is going on, you can leverage this to get what you want out of your own self. You can literally manipulate your own self in to becoming what you want, for me that’s being much more productive, for others that might mean being more emotionally satisfied etc. You have to choose which side of you is best to feed into, much more. Needless to say that women have an inclination for the emotional side, while men lean more towards the logical side of things, and this translates into our actions on a daily basis.

Controlling yourself

It's simple, logic pushes you to do things which are much more “common sense” there isn’t necessarily an objective to this until you give it one. For example, when you give yourself a purpose, then you can leverage this logical side of you to push you to do the things which help you get to your goal faster. If you decide that you are much more concerned with being happy in life, then you feed into the emotional side of things.

Similarly, if you are more of an authoritative person who always wants to have his way and his desires realized, then you can feed into the conscious side of things which will see you prioritize your desires.

Using myself as an example and how I leverage this knowledge to boost my productivity, what I do is associate all 3 together. I understand what my emotional side wants, and I use that as a reward for everything I am able to accomplish on the logical and conscious side of things.

My consciousness defines the objectives I want to attain, my logic defines the strategy to attain them and my emotional side rewards me when they are done effectively.

When this is done intentionally it can really be powerful, but contrarily, each side will just be working for its own good. My emotions will want to party, my logic will want to avoid spending and my desires will keep drafting objectives which are never done, but when I get them to work together my productivity is boosted.

Ignorance is bliss

Most people don’t realize that these 3 entities are just collaborating in them and are essentially having 3 different interests, that's why our thoughts are often dissociated from our actions and the resulting consequences. That's why sometimes you don’t recognize yourself in your own actions, simply because it's one side of you who did it without the consent of the other sides, for example regretting spending on something you wanted.

Conclusion

This study can really get deep, and this isn’t something I have a good mastery of. Just ask yourself the following questions for you to clearly see these 3 sides of you in action; what should you be logically doing right now, what do you feel like you should do right now and what do you want to do right now.

My answer: I should be working right now(logic), I feel like I should be watching a movie right now(desires), I want to be sleeping right now(emotions)

Thanks for reading ☺️