The Pilot & The Blueprint

The Pilot and The Blueprint

Introduction

            One of the most common misconceptions that people have is that we think we already know everything there is to know about ourselves. Yet humans are much more complicated. Without external involvement we already have plenty of “conditions” that interfere with our decision making and perception. For instance, our patience and aggravation can be easily side-tracked by hunger and heat or we act out of impulse when we are too happy or too angry.

In order to make life easier we tend to act in a general framework. Since our ability to make decisions and our ability to perceive facts are limited, how are we supposed to go through life?

            The key is that we actually have a pilot within us: our inner child. Our inner child has a blueprint of our values, and from our values it creates our motivation. Our values set the target of where we want to go, and our emotions are the signals from our inner child that track that progress.

Game of Hot/Cold

Let me provide an example:
             You are hungry because you are motivated by survival. You have therefore decided to eat a sandwich.

            As you walk towards to the kitchen, you slowly experience more joy, as you think you are getting closer and closer to the sandwich.

            You are about to reach the kitchen, but you realise that your dog has pooped on the ground. Now, how do you react?

            Well, it depends. You may be annoyed as you were planning on having a good day, but the fact that you now have to deal with dog poop when all you wanted to do was enjoy a meal creates annoyance.

            So, how annoyed should you be?

            Again, it depends. It depends on how great of a conflict of value you are having. For example, if you live alone and you don’t have an affinity for order, you tend to decide to first eat the sandwich then clean up the dog poop. In that case the annoyance is probably minimal, because your dog’s poop is not a direct obstacle with your desire to get food.

            However, let’s complicate the situation a bit more. What if you have a high affinity for order, and that you are expecting a guest at any second? In this case, you may be more annoyed as you need to first clean up the mess before you are able to go to the kitchen. The inconvenience is in direct conflict with the effectiveness of you satisfying your value.

            Let’s complicate the situation even more. What if you have children? The situation now is in direct conflict with several of your values: your want to have a hygienic environment for your kid (as he/she might play with the dog poop), your want to eat, and your affinity for order. Therefore, your annoyance is directly proportional to the degree and the number of values it interferes with.

            In all the above situations, the dog poop was an annoyance. However, whenever there is discomfort information can be gathered. What do my emotions mean? What value offended them, why do I feel such a high degree of annoyance? How important is the value that was offended? From here we will know what we need to protect or what we need to work towards.

            The desire of attraction to that value also greatly changes our perspective towards certain situations. For example, if we have been hungry for days, the value that we want to have a clean room, be presentable or have good hygiene for our kid probably goes out the window, as we are too hungry to care. Our desire to survive takes over.

            The perspective of the dog poop can also change depending on the situation. For example, if your dog has not pooped for a whole week because of constipation, the fact that your dog has now pooped probably brings you joy instead of annoyance, as the health of your dog is important to you.

            This is how our emotions describe our values. Our motivation projects our desire to move towards our meaning, and our emotions track the progress. Therefore, by noticing and understanding what our emotions are trying to tell us, we are able to get closer to our value.

            Yes, this is a game of “Hot/Cold”.

The story of the dog poop and the sandwich

            The dog poop can also become the metaphor of life that sometimes bad things just happen, and it is not our fault. We did not trigger the issue, the dog just pooped, nature called. Our unhappiness is just an indication of our value, not the cause itself.

            However, we can choose how we deal with situations. We can either be happy and appreciate the values that we have, or be angry and resentful of our state of being.

            Let’s further continue the example. I went to the kitchen (finally), but my expected sandwich was not there. Now, how would I choose to deal with the situation?

            I can either curse the bad luck of the situation I am in, which will not help. Or I can choose the following:

            I can make another sandwich, which gives me freedom to make the same sandwich again or to make an even better sandwich.

            What if I don’t have the ingredients to hand? Again, I have the option to curse my situation further, which, again, does not help and throws me further towards resentment. Or I can go to the market to buy the ingredients, and make a new sandwich.

            How do I prevent myself from feeling upset again? Maybe I should pay more attention to the amount of ingredients I have at home. Maybe I should make a schedule to regularly replenish my sandwich ingredients. Either way, I am making future plans to prevent myself from feeling upset over not having a sandwich.

            From my need to plan or pay attention there are two emotions I can choose. I can either be annoyed that I have to make changes to my habits or I can recognise that I have taken the decision to improve my skills so that I do what I enjoy more regularly.

            We get to choose how we deal with situations. When we have two choices to choose from, we choose the more practical one, as building resentment and rage does not help anyone.

            Now we may ask, how do I prevent a level of annoyance and sadness?

            For sadness, we need to identify the source of the sadness, or the lack of “sandwich”, and treasure and make sure there are “sandwiches” in our future. Our “sandwich” may be human connection. Our “sandwich” may be a sense of justice. Our “sandwich” may be empathy. Ask yourself what your “sandwiches” are.

            Now how do we deal with anger/annoyance? Which “sandwich” is more important to us? We need to figure it out so we can make decisions more easily, we will become more effective, and because we are honouring ourselves we feel happy that we chose a “sandwich” that we like most. At the end of the day, our stomach is limited, we cannot consume all “sandwiches”, and the “sandwich” we are not having will be the “sandwich” we sacrifice.

            From this, we have created a hierarchy of values and a framework. We can orient our life better if we are being truthful to our framework.

 For example:

            I presume that many people have the value of being a decent person. So what constitutes being a good person? It probably means:

1.      You want to be a good individual,

2.      a good parent,

3.      a good friend,

4.      a good person of society.

            Alright let’s list down the frames of our being, what are the good elements of being a parent?

1.      Taking care of our family

2.      Giving good advice

3.      Empowering others

What elements are there when we take care of our family?

1.      Preparing a meal

2.      Fighting outside predators

3.      Clothing the family

So, from here we have a sense of the framework: The ability to prepare a meal comes from taking care of the family, which stems from being a good parent, which comes from being a good person.

            Now there are several elements needed when preparing a meal:

1.      You set the table

2.      You chop the ingredients

3.      You cook them in order

4.      You cook them for a certain time

5.      You season everything correctly

Now let’s say that we messed up a meal. We have used sugar instead of salt. The important part is to pay attention to the minimal framework we can work with. In this case, recognising the problem falls within the “seasoning” framework. Then we can correct the course by taking notes so that next time we remember to use salt.

The framework will need to be adjusted with time, as our motivation to cook may move from being an adequate cook to a chef. In that case, we may find new information within a new recipe. Therefore, our constructed belief of our old recipe as “a good recipe” will need to be abandoned because the reflection of reality has proven otherwise.

Problems lead to evolution when we identify the framework. However, problems multiply when people enlarge the perception of the problem upwards. Instead of looking in the “seasoning” framework we infect the problems upwards. “I messed up the meal -> I cannot take care of my family -> I am not a good parent -> I am not a good person.

And from that, because too much of the framework has been destroyed, we can no longer deal with things in simpler terms. We now no longer just question the elements of “how to cook a meal”, instead, we now question elements of family support, being a parent, and being a human being. From that we create an information overload.

If we destroy too much of the structure, we have no framework to work with. We have nowhere to stand on, we have no direction, and we are suddenly completely in the unknown.

What happens when we are in the unknown? Just like when we are in the dark, all our senses are amplified, all information from the world comes to us and this is where depression and anxiety start. When we have no sense of reference, all information is relevant, and information is like pressure: when we build too much pressure within the balloon, it will break at the weakest point.

Focus on the detail

There is this movie, called “Anthropoid”. It is about a group of WW2 paratroopers that wants to assassinate a German SS officer. During the movie, there are several moments when one of the soldier’s is in disarray, constantly in panic due to the raining bullets and bombs falling everywhere. During that time, the soldier experiences anxiety and panic attacks, his friend then goes to him, takes out all the bullets from the magazine, and asks the soldier to put the bullets back in the chamber one by one. “Focus on the detail,” he said.

Personally, I think this is a beautiful and brilliant analogy. During our state of chaos, in order to orientate ourselves, we need to focus on just one thing. That is something that we can do and by focusing on that, we make all other elements in the situation irrelevant.

So, in a state a chaos what should we do? We shouldn’t focus on how bad things are, we need to focus on one thing and one thing only, and ask ourselves “What can I do to stop things getting worse and make it a tiny bit better?”

When we reach a point in life where too much of our belief system is destroyed, we will be in a mess. However, just like cleaning a chaotic house, it doesn’t matter where we start, or how small of an area we clean, sooner or later the house will be clean.

In each situation we make things less bad in the world, we are adding a positive force in our environment. Like adding yellow into a pool of red, sooner or later it will have a pivoting point when it turns orange, then it will become yellow. The more we choose positive or constructive thoughts and/or actions, the more likely we are able to create the positive future we desire.

Yes, every once in a while, someone might drop a colour of red into our pool (dog pooping); then we need to add in more yellow into our mixture, that is the only way if our vision of the future we want is to be orange or yellow.

            As the world changes, our constructed beliefs will need to be updated and changed too. As we are bound by time, we need to repair or update our constructed beliefs to keep reaching for the target of our motivation.

As humans, every seven to 10 years our whole body’s cells get replaced, the cells we have right now are not the same cells we had eight years ago. We build new cells through taking in nutrients within in our environment. The belief system is the same, we let go of old belief systems as time goes by to build new ones by taking in “information” around our environment.

            The key is to remember that our beliefs can generally change, as that is the direction of our motivation. However, our value is what it is orienting towards. The belief that we “need to be able to cook a meal” to provide support to our family can easily be replaced by “treating them to a dinner in a restaurant”. The value of the family remains the same, it is the constructed belief that was changed or updated.

            Staying true to our values, updating our beliefs. From this, our belief system will be stronger, and will create self-support and self-pride. When we are strong enough, we may decide that our motivation deserves a higher calling. During that moment we will realise that in order to chase our highest value, an important belief system of ours will need to be the item of sacrifice. This may be the cost of our evolutionary path.

            If the sacrifice to our evolutionary path happens to be an important belief system, it means that the responsibility that we have decided to take leads us to a greater path. As this belief system has served us well to support and guide us this far, it indicates that we now no longer need it on our path of evolution. We are stronger now.

            We can be the best person we can imagine. We can work towards the element of people that we admire. We can train and correct our mistakes to lead us closer to the person we wish to be. Don’t lie. Don’t find excuses. As false information creates confusion and it blocks our path to evolution.

It is important that you are in alignment with your truth, as society deserves to have the best version of you. Your positive ripple effect in the world matters. The world needs YOU. You are the hero of your own story.