How To Change

Emotions draw on past experiences

In our last chapters, we’ve gone through the three required mindset traits in order to become the most impactful person we can be. As we now proceed with our exploration, the question it becomes fundamental to answer is: How do we incorporate them in our life? How do we turn the person we are today into someone that is perfectly fine with being himself or herself, trusts their capacity to think critically and independently and is very responsible and focused on always doing what is right? In other words, how do we start behaving in line with what we are, tap into our true potential and have a lot of impact in the world?

Admittedly these are not easy questions. Human behavior is very complex and understanding how one can ultimately change has proven to be, in our experience, one of the most intricate problems to solve. However, like always, answers exist and throughout this chapter, we hope to give you a detailed and accurate description of what has been, to this date, the most effective approach to grow into a more impactful human being as well as a clear and simple roadmap to put it in practice.

Now in order to understand how something can change, we need to first identify why something is there. In other words, why are we the person we are today? Why do we behave the way we do? What are we genetically wired to seek? How have our experiences in life shaped our emotional makeup, and our particular temperament and personality? These are all questions that when answered will allow us to pinpoint the foundation of our behavior and give us important clues about the ways in which we can change.

An obvious place to start is with our emotions. As humans, we are emotional beings. This is reflected on the structure of our brain where at the bottom sits the most primitive parts and on the outer the most advanced ones. We are physically wired to feel first, and only subsequent to our emotional response, do we respond consciously or unconsciously, with awareness or without.

That humans are driven by emotions is, of course, not a new discovery but what is certainly new (and very relevant to our explanation) is how emotions are generated. A breakthrough in this area of study is now revealing that, contrary to the ‘classic view’ of emotion (which has been the scientific belief for a long time and purports that emotions are ‘built-in’ reflexes that simply fire off), our emotions don’t come prewired in our brain. Instead, emotions are constantly being constructed as our brain filters all the available raw data (our bodily sensations, our thoughts, the particular situation) through both past experiences and learned emotional concepts, and comes up with a feeling or sensation that best characterizes the situation.

This is a very valuable piece of information. If what we experience moment to moment is not a separated instance in time but is rather the result of an incredibly complex process that takes into consideration a lot of different factors, most importantly our experiences in life, it means that the range of emotions that is nowadays dictating our mood and behavior is intimately connected to the range of emotions that we have experienced previously in the past. In other words, who we are today is merely an extension of how we have been emotionally conditioned throughout our lives which is why on our next topic we will go back in time to understand how our life experiences might have shaped our emotional makeup and ultimately the person that we are.

That our emotional makeup of the past is nowadays influencing the ways in which we intuitively react to the world also makes, of course, a lot of sense on a neurological level. We’ve seen before that our brain is plastic and neural connections that are frequently stimulated predominate within it. So it is only natural that the more we have experienced certain emotions in our life, the more their corresponding neural pathways became minted in our brain configuration and are therefore today more representative of who we are.

Inherited traits that are specific to the individual (like for example, a propensity to be depressed or to be fearless) also play a big role in the definition of our particular behavior and character but since these mostly come down to chance, we have chosen not to address them here.

We 'are' what worked to feel safe

As we have explored before, given that the emotions we experience today are an extension of the emotions we have experienced in the past, in order to understand our current character and behavior, we need to go back in time to identify what has shaped us on an emotional level.

To do so, it is imperative that we begin by understanding what we are genetically wired to seek and to avoid. Our biological drives set the foundation of how we interact and react to the stimuli from the environment so pinpointing what those drives are will give us a better understanding of where our emotions are originating from.

Now at the most basic level, what we seek in life and where our actions stem from is simply wanting to feel safe. Evolution has hardwired in us a strong emotion for fear and a longing for safety because those drives proved to be fundamental in helping our ancestors survive and reproduce. And as we’ve explained in Chapter IV, when young, at a time of our lives when we are not yet autonomous in our actions, our safety will be fundamentally tied to the love and acceptance of our caregivers.

When that love and acceptance is present and we feel like simply being ourselves is enough to be accepted, we feel safe. We develop good self-esteem and accept who we are. We usually become more independent and confident, especially when encouraged to think for ourselves and experiment with the things we are passionate about. Overall, we become an individual with a stable emotional foundation.

However, if that love and acceptance are missing and we feel like being ourselves is not enough to be accepted, we don’t feel safe. We usually create the idea that something is wrong with us, develop a lot of insecurities and are rarely able to accept who we are. In most situations, we live in constant fear of what others might think or do to us and grow up to become an individual with an insecure and unstable emotional foundation. Under these circumstances, wherein being ourselves doesn’t work to feel safe, we often start pretending to be someone we are not. From adopting an overly confident or aggressive attitude to coming across as superior, funnier or smarter, the fear that others might not accept us drives us to gradually create and behave in line with a fake self-image that allows us to mask our insecurities and, at the same time, gathers more respect and recognition from those around us.

But whether we felt like we had to change our behavior or not, we always acted in line with what worked to feel safe. In a positive and loving setting, we were simply ourselves. In a more precarious one, we did what we could to best camouflaged our insecurities. Ultimately, this is what has shaped the emotional makeup that is today underlying our behavior and what explains, in general lines, the person we’ve become.

It is important to realize that this is a simplified explanation. The overall dynamics seen in these two groups are real and help explain why people behave the way they do but in order to have a complete and accurate understanding, we would need to analyze case by case.

To make it clear, the formation of a self-image is not exclusive to the second group. To a greater or lesser extent, everyone goes through this process of creating a self that, within his or her environment, worked to feel accepted and safe. The difference is that while those who grew up in a stable and balanced environment developed their self-image on top of supportive emotions, in a natural way and without added pressures, those who grew up in an unstable one built theirs on top of fearful emotions, mostly as a defense mechanism to conceal their vulnerabilities.

Social value

As we’ve explored in our previous topic, whether we felt like simply being ourselves was enough to be accepted or not, as children and also later in our lives, the way we find safety is by seeking the love and appreciation of our parents (and also to some extent of those around us).

This information alone already allows us to arrive at an important understanding. If who we are today (our emotional makeup and the way it translates to our behavior) is merely a reflection of what worked to feel safe at a time when our main concern was to fit in the world around us, it means that both on a neurological and emotional level (and also on an evolutionary one - being part of the group was essential for our survival back in the days), to a bigger or lesser extent and regardless of our upbringing, we will still be today intuitively drawn to make ourselves look better in the eyes of others or, better put, to engage in behaviors that either maintain or increase our social value.

Some examples include doing or saying things that we perceive as validating for our person. Trying to be better than others. Getting others attention. Making others like us. Diminishing others so we feel better about ourselves. Being aggressive to feel more respected. Essentially any behavior that boosts our perceived worth and produces a feeling of reward is correlated with our intrinsic need to maintain or increase our social value.

Now it is important to realize that, for the most part, this is not premeditated behavior. We do it very intuitively. An emotion is triggered that signals reward and we simply act on what we are feeling. Likewise, it is also crucial to understand that what works to increase social value will be very different from person to person. It usually depends on how we have come to perceive ourselves and how we want others to perceive us.

For example, someone with a victim mentality increases their social value by bringing attention to their problems. But someone with a ‘warrior mentality’ would never do that. This person would increase their social value by showing off their tenacity. There are countless examples like this. Someone who wants to be perceived as a nice guy will usually do everything in their power to please others. Someone who wants to be perceived as intelligent will try to say smart things. Someone who is very insecure or has a complex of inferiority will often try to diminish other people’s accomplishments. Someone who wants to be acknowledged as a ‘badass’ might frequently engage in violent behavior. Depending on how each person perceives themselves, the behavior that increases their perceived worth will greatly differ.

Now what is also important to understand is that, when it comes to engaging in this kind of behavior that can be attributed to our evolutionary need to increase our social value, there will still be a big difference between those who have learned to accept themselves and those who haven’t. While the former will mostly do it in very natural and well-adjusted ways (that one would even have a hard time to recognize), the latter will usually go overboard with it. Having not been able to accept themselves and living in constant fear that they might not be accepted by others, these people try to find their way into safety by constantly bringing attention over them and making themselves look more reputable.

Ultimately, this is the reason why we live today in a society where almost everyone lives for the eyes of others. Most people have never been able to truly accept themselves (or at least, to develop good self-esteem and become more confident) and so the way they try to ameliorate their insecurities and bring little spurs of momentary safety into their lives is by constantly seeking some sort of honoring feedback from other people.

An obvious example is the behavior we can observe on social media. Every day millions of people around the world hop into their online accounts and post countless photos, videos and comments all in hopes of receiving some praise and feeling a little bit more loved and appreciated. This is, of course, not the only example. Making a lot of money. Buying expensive clothes, houses, and cars. Traveling to exotic places. Achieving higher rankings in games. Attaining the perfect body. Even, to some extent, enrolling in the university or dating a lot of partners. These are all examples of activities that we engage in merely as a means to camouflage our insecurities and feel more confident about who we are.

In the end, it boils down to safety. We seek it outside of ourselves because we are not able to generate it from within. We look for the love and appreciation of others and try in every way possible to be reassured of our own self-worth because we feel like simply being ourselves is not enough.

But the problem is, this doesn’t work. Feeling more appreciated might provide some momentary relief but it does not increase our self-worth nor does it generate enduring feelings of safety. We see this in how celebrities (who usually get all the attention and validation in the world) often keep seeking for more and in how people who are already financially set for life also keep looking for ways to make even more money. They already have abundance in their lives and yet, they still keep trying to increase their social value and living for the eyes of others.

So then the question becomes: how do we generate safety from within ourselves? How do we accept and like who we are? How do we become a confident and courageous person? Because if we manage to have all these traits and somehow change from within, we would immediately feel a lot safer and have no need to get that safety from the recognition of other people.

This is what we will explain on our two final topics. We will reveal the reason that usually block us from making positive changes in our life and how we can (with that information in mind) start taking the first steps towards becoming someone whose life is not dominated by the need to get safety from the outside world but is rather able to generate it from within ourselves.