Building Blocks of Psychology

Lesson Twenty: Conclusion

Psychology is a huge subject. This subject can be very interesting if you are hooked on to self improvement and if you can see this as the main magic behind every thing we go through. But it can be boring if you don’t have much appreciation for this. I have written this series mainly to create little bit of awareness and appreciation !!. Just a small attempt from my experiences !!.

As I wrote about different building blocks/parts, one thing that consistently came to my mind was how systematically our Psychology was built. Brain/Physiology <-> Experiences <-> Beliefs -> Values -> Actions <-> Emotions/feeling -> Actions/Behaviors and goes back to Brain plasticity, etc.

On one side I think humans can be replaced with machines if they can replicate the above building blocks. It all looks logical including emotions. But the other side, I feel what makes humans so special/unique is the self transformation ability. As long as humans can cross the boundaries and limitations we continue to retain our uniqueness.

To maintain human uniqueness we need to thrive on understanding and improving our own Psychology !!

Lesson Nineteen: Physiology

We all heard about the strong “Mind-Body” connection and how each impacts other. To feel happy and be successful, etc we need fundamentally strong Psychology. You can think of Psychology as software. But you need strong and supportive hardware also. You hardware is your body/ Physiology.

Your Physiology directly effects your Psychology. It directly impacts how you think, how you feel and how you behave. Let’s try this. You drop your shoulders, make your face serious and walk without any power. What kind of thoughts you get – very creative and up beat kind? No !!. Mostly negative and dull thoughts. Do the opposite. Walk with power and add authentic smile and raise your chest like a body builder (just for experiment). How do you feel now? Very very different right? – Positive thoughts and feel of high confidence. This is the power of Physiology and your body.

The are two ways you can impact your Psychology. One is through mind and another is through body. Via mind is more powerful but it takes lot of effort and practically not easy. Things like meditation, mindfulness, visualization, affirmations, etc. Most easy and practical approach of influencing your psychology is through body. This can be through – following a fitness regime (of your choice) and consciously maintaining right posture and breathing patterns. This is the precise reason many many people now days following different varieties of fitness activities.

Right Physiology is quickest way to feel good and alter your Psychology. Venture into this path and it is very addictive (good way) !! . You will start seeing your God in this path.

Lesson Eighteen: The Miracle Emotion

If you trace the entire chain of psychology and find out the root of all evils you will stop at Love. Since this emotion has many contexts and connotations we may write it off this as some fluffy stuff. But Love the most powerful emotion and this is the driving force. If you deeply notice most people crave for this emotion in different forms – appreciation, praise, connection, recognition, friendships, relationships, etc. This is basic human nature and need.

Lack of this emotion results into many issues. Read earlier blogs on Self Love and Emotional Dependency

If some one has not received/experienced this emotion during early childhood then this will result into all issues. Actually there are no “bad people”. These “bad people” are simple ones who not fortunate enough experience this deep emotion. All the criminals, sadistic and narcissist people have missed this emotion. Lack of this results into hatred and fear. Out of fear and hatred all evil actions starts.

On the contrary and positive side, all amazing things happens with the emotion of love. We may have different names for this – passion, mission, interest, happiness and life. All major and good transformations resulted out of deep love.

Love is the short cut cure to all issues. Starts with self love. Observe yourself and others around you will get the key.

Lesson Seventeen: Secret of Happiness

If you are not happy here is the magic reason…Personal Rules !!

Between beliefs/values and the emotion you feel there are some rules. These are the rules you have setup consciously or unconsciously. Some examples of rules.

IF I get promoted to XYZ then IF I am given ABC = Feel Happy

WHEN I lose weight and build lean muscle and run a marathon = Feel Happy

WHEN people respect me = Feel Happy

IF I make 10 times more money = Feel Happy

Like computer language you have an inbuilt logic/rules with in yourself to FEEL HAPPY. What is the problem with these rules?. The problem is we would have set too many complex rules to feel happy. We would have set these rules in such a way it becomes very difficult to feel happy. Why is this so? Most probably because of parenting and social hypnosis. Just because our parents had these rules we would have copied their code/logic or every around you builds such a complex rules. In fact, you may be passing your legacy logic to your kids and making it very difficult for them to feel happy.

There are few lucky souls who have very simple rules ( like “I am happy whatever I have “) and others beat themselves to the death with complex rules.

Because of conditioning we may feel bit uncomfortable to feel happy without much reasons/logic!!. This is the power of conditioning !!. Simple way to unconditioning is to review your current rules in all areas – how people should be and behave with you, how much money you need make, career progress, social aspects, etc. Then see if you can rewrite your old complex rules to make it very simple.

Aspire to build this ultimate logic: IF ALIVE = HAPPY

Lesson Sixteen: Scarcity

I had an interesting observation recently . There are two people we are offering similar services. One person charges for the service and the other offers for free. With some variation both offer good service. Very interestingly people are so keen going with person who charges fee. While the reasons can be any thing, subconsciously we under value anything that is “Free”.

We humans place much higher value on the things that are scarce and lower value on the abundant things. Basically any thing that is become available to us easily and abundantly we don’t value much and take it for granted. When suddenly same thing become scarce then we start valuing.

This scarcity psychology concept is fully leveraged in business – in marketing, advertising, sales and negotiations. Examples of this are – “Out of stock”, “Only 1 item left” and “50% off until this mid night only”

Scarcity psychology acts in all areas of our life. When we are healthy we don’t pay attention to health. One emergency visit to hospital makes health as # 1 priority of life. Then once health stabilizes we push it to back burner. Same thing goes with relationships, career and money. This also the reason why we have less gratitude towards what we already have. We crave for what we do not have – scarcity.

Watch out the areas which you are not currently giving importance…they may become very important soon. Catch them early.

Lesson Fifteen: Pain and Pleasure

We all know many things in terms of what is good, what needs to be done, etc. But why we don’t do? Here is the secret…

There is a powerful concept i believe in called ” Pain-Pleasure“. Basic principle is your mind/brain try to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Human beings try to avoid pain even though they know they can get more pleasure after going through the pain. This is the reason why we avoid risks and challenging things in life. We avoid criticism, failure, hard work, experimenting, pain, rejection and any kind of psychological, emotional and physical pain.

But pain is great gift if we know how to use it. Maximum number of transformations and changes happened in the history are through the pain. All major humiliations and discrimination lead to fighting for freedom and human rights . People who were thrown out of a company or job would have started much better companies. Refer to history or look around and you will find plenty of examples on this.

Change can happen through extreme pleasure also. Examples of this can be – deep love on some person or passion for some thing also can bring major change. Ideally if change comes from through pleasure then it would be joyful ride. But we may not get this way of change all the time.

Embrace pain and go through it. You will become tough and grow stronger.

Lesson Fourteen: Self Respect

Self Respect is different from Self Esteem. Self Esteem is about evaluating and feeling positive about Self. Self Respect is about the actions you take in line with your values. Self Esteem is more on evaluation and Self Respect comes from what you do. Self Esteem is very basic requirement. But Self Respect is much more important.

Main anchor for a person’s life is values. Values are nothing but your core beliefs. Let’s say you have one of the value as Freedom. If you continue to compromise on your freedom then you will start losing the inner power and ultimately lose self respect.

Any one who lives in line with values will have greater inner power. All great leaders have enormous inner power. Which leader comes to your mind? Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela?. Self Respect is what drove them to stand up and nothing could stop them. That is the power of Self Respect. This is what I call as “Inner Currency”.

We may not and need not become Mahatma Gandhi. But we can definitely need to become ourselves. In the pursuit of chasing different things ( Career, Relationships, Money, etc) we would have compromised our values. You may get temporary benefit out of this. Soon you will realize that it is not worth all. Retrospect and correct it !!.

“Self-respect knows no considerations” – Mahatma Gandhi

Lesson Thirteen: Envy and Jealousy

Out of different negative emotions, the emotion of Envy/Jealousy is most dangerous one. Just this one emotion can make you never happy. It can negate every positive thing in your life.

Let me start with a simple distinction between Envy and Jealousy. Envy is a reaction to lacking some thing that others are having it. Envy is comparison between two people. Where as Jealously is fear of losing some thing (esp in relationships). So this is between three people. But both are basically in the business of comparison.

Why this comparison in the first place?. I think this is mainly because of internal inadequacy – low self esteem. People with low self esteem tend to compare a lot. And the second reason is the mindset of scarcity. In the animal world food used to be limited so if one gets and most probably other animal will not get it. So our brains still think in the old mode. Actually we live in a world of abundance not in scarcity. If your neighbor got a luxury car you can also get if you work toward it. Actually this is very simple logic to understand but our brain fools with the old emotion.

I have noticed couple of very interesting things about comparisons

In the first place you should never compare. It is a losing game. There will be always better than you in some parameter. Even if you compare, do the overall comparison of life. Don’t just compare your wealth with other person’s wealth. Compare overall life then you will realize you are better off in other areas (may be in relationship, family life, etc)

Second thing is very interesting. In reality (most cases), the person whom you envy may not be actually enjoying what he got. Either he may be chasing some thing else or he may be comparing with some thing else ;). Below quote summarizes it very well.

“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy” – Heraclitus

You can instantly become happy if you know how to handle just this one emotion!!

Lesson Twelve: Understanding Emotions

There are hundreds of theories on “Purpose of Life”. In my view, all boils down to a very simple thing – We want to FEEL GOOD. How do we feel good? We experience through positive emotions. But what blocks your positive emotions are your negative emotions.

Some of the negative emotions are – Anger, Regret, Fear, Guilt, Sadness,Jealously, etc. Like any thing else in life, negative emotions also have a role and purpose. All the negative emotions mostly indicate you that either some thing is unfulfilled or danger of loosing some thing. But most often we carry with the negative emotions instead of understanding why we are experiencing these emotions in the first place.

For example, if you are experiencing the emotion of guilt then that means you have done some wrong thing that deviated from your value/belief system. It is kind of compass to your value system. Similarly, you get angry when some one deviates from your values. Do you really understand why you got angry? Mostly no. We carry with anger emotion. Try to analyze your anger situation couple of time and most probably you will get good handle on your anger. Try it out !.

Many times we try to suppress the negative emotions. Any suppression is not good. They will eventually come out. Too much of suppression will result into different kinds of disorders. Both suppression and carrying with emotions are not good.

You need to understand your emotions (esp negative emotions) and get to the root and get meaning. This is the way to create to path to positive emotions and feel good.

Lesson Eleven: Learned Optimism

I have written bit more detailed about building optimism in “Romance with Fear” series. Read more on this here => How to Build Optimism .

In yesterday blog, I have written about Neuroplasticity . The basic step to make changes in your brain is to start with positive thinking. With positive thinking, you generate positive emotions which results in positive and productive actions. And this will in turn erase your dis-empowering beliefs you would have formed at early stage into empowering beliefs.

This is very much technical and process driven. But most often we tend to attribute our current situation to destiny, astrology, blaming others, etc. Why?. Because this is easy. We can always simply pass the responsibility to others – parents, environment, genetics, etc. In turn, we can expect some secondary gains like sympathy from others. And you might get addicted to this kick unconsciously. That’s why some times even though we know we can change, we (our mind) conveniently push the ball to “others”.

Bottom line – When people say “my life got changed”, what actual changes is not life but just the interpretation. Try to interpret events, situations, people and out comes in positive way and you will start experiencing different life.