Resources in our environment are more available to those that expect to see them, this has to do with something called our reticular activating system.
RAS example is when you buy a VW Beatle and suddenly notice far more of them, they have always been there, but our mind filters them out.
You RAS is tuned to expect to find solutions to problems, and so your unconscious doesn’t screen them out as they flip past your senses.
—-
Edit
Including to the above
Since most of what we want comes from other people, your mastery of influence psychology… combined with delayed gratification, a formal sense of social contracts, a singular focus I WANT! can only make ones life seem charmed.
Great post. I sincerely hope it wasn't sparked by any current circumstances in your life. If so, A) all that touchy, feely, supersizing* stuff that you don't care about anyway, and B) thank you for investing in us by taking the time to write this!
* If anyone reading this has yet to memorize 'Idiocracy,' please do so now.
When bad things happen in someone’s life, they take it personally. Like the external/God/whomever is personally hurting them. This is negative energy and like begets like. Let that shit go! I’ve seen so many loved ones do this.
You don’t store energy in the form of feelings or at least don’t store negative ones, so you are not constantly attracting negativity.
On a related note, pain can be taken personally too. I don’t think people realize that physical pain, especially trauma, has feelings attached. Those feelings of fear or whatever make you vulnerable to pain meds and addiction.
Indeed it does. I think the emotional experience of pain is significant regardless of what the cause of that pain is. It is even significant in physical pain.
I rather like this article, but I'd like to point out something to the readers:
If do feel as though you're irrevocably bogged down and held hostage by your own emotions, beating yourself over it will only add insult to injury.
That's akin to beating your head against an invisible wall and keep wondering why you always have headaches and can never go where you need to go.
Think about it:
Sometimes when you find yourself caught up in a deep hole, you may need a ladder go get out, and that doesn't have to be a problem. Right? It just means you need a ladder to get out and carry on.
Case in point - if you're consistently struggling with your emotions/motivation/moods, that likely means you have your neurotransmitters and hormones deregulated beyond your control, and that is neither your fault nor is it something you can control out of sheer willpower. In fact, it could effectively be very the reason why your willpower seems to always fall short of the mark.
That is nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't even need to be a problem. In fact, recognizing this could point you right to a solution.
See...
There are many scenarios in which a person may be unable to control their own emotions and moods and ability to focus and get things done, whether through meditation, cold water immersion or whatever other such tactics that seem to work spectacularly for many people.
In such case, seeking a psychiatrist to get some medicine that will stabilize your mood could be what you need to do first and foremost.
Whether that turns out to be an antidepressant, anxiolytic or anything else that's required to effectively get you out of your head and back into the real world... by all means, consider doing so as a top priority.
After all, you can't run fast - or at all - if your shoelaces are tied. A mere pebble in your shoe may seem inconsequential on the short term, but its effects may be quite debilitating on the long term.
Right now, you could very well be in a place where you're hostage to your own biochemistry, and you may require actual medication to break through unproductive and/or self-defeating cycles.
So I repeat emphatically; there is *absolutely no shame* in that. However, there is a thing called *toxic shame* (look it up, really!) that often affects the people who most need to reach out for help, and keeps them from doing so. If you resonate with that, rest assured:
Seeking help and eventually being prescribed psychopharmaceuticals to help you manage your internal affairs is just a thing to be done, before you can go on to do the other things that need to be done.
It could actually be the missing link you have been looking for, that once restored will allow you to effectively follow this stellar advice from Athena.
So... if you haven't done so yet - why not consider that possibility, already?
This is absolutely true. Too little attention is given to the difference between a mental state where real control and will are possible, and one where that just becomes meaningless. For decades I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me and just thought I was 'weak'. Sometimes even the most awful meds can be an improvement on that state and allow you to get the ball rolling!
from your work: People that know me from the outside think that I have lived a charmed life.
People that know me well wonder how I deal with so many things.
They’re both right, and those things aren’t as far apart as you may think.
This is pretty good description for me: Outsiders believe I am very successful and can do about anything yet my friend often says stuff like this, about things that would trouble him if he was me. I'm very glad to be me and often reflect on the "grace" in my life.
I think there are distinctions here that apply to neurotypicals that you don't make because they don't register with you. There are adversities and disruptions that are enormous practical nuisances and physical privations, and there are those that affect the heart and soul and touch the core. The former is much, much easier to learn to accept and just deal with, the latter not so much. The two kinds of experience don't have that much in common and I think we for now still lack the vocabulary here.
Similarly with change. Some people are bad with any change, yes, but many deal with it well if it is a change up or sideways. Some 'changes' however amount to dreadful losses of opportunity, freedom, fulfilment, meaning, love. 'Change' doesn't work as a euphemism in these cases.
Sometimes people in turmoil find that there is little that they can 'do'. Attempting to push on can just exhaust a mind and body that are already struggling and underperforming, and doing may have to wait a while. Learning how much can or should be done and in what mental state comes with experience and honest refection. I draw an analogy with hiking: sometimes you know you actually do have another hill/x miles in you if you push, and it will ultimately make you stronger, even though it's the last thing you want to do right now. But at other times, to continue wearily along the ridge is just a dangerous error of judgement.
Changes do bring about many losses, but many gains as well. I suppose the differences between psychopaths and our response to pain, as opposed to neurotypicals' response to change is likely personified by what registers most strongly with us.
For psychopaths it will always be those positive changes. So much so, that we can easily overlook the pain those same changes mean to someone neurotypical, where the loss is amplified to them. We don't feel that loss, so our focus is always on the silver lining.
There aren't always gains though, some situations really don't have a silver lining. Hence the grim jokes in which one wryly and ironically mentions some trivial advantage to a major loss. It sounds like as a psycopath, those trivial plusses would be all you experience! Amazing.
I'd never have thought of it as Grace...but that makes sense
Resources in our environment are more available to those that expect to see them, this has to do with something called our reticular activating system.
RAS example is when you buy a VW Beatle and suddenly notice far more of them, they have always been there, but our mind filters them out.
You RAS is tuned to expect to find solutions to problems, and so your unconscious doesn’t screen them out as they flip past your senses.
—-
Edit
Including to the above
Since most of what we want comes from other people, your mastery of influence psychology… combined with delayed gratification, a formal sense of social contracts, a singular focus I WANT! can only make ones life seem charmed.
You do indeed seem lucky not to have the emotional baggage so many of us struggle with.
Great post. I sincerely hope it wasn't sparked by any current circumstances in your life. If so, A) all that touchy, feely, supersizing* stuff that you don't care about anyway, and B) thank you for investing in us by taking the time to write this!
* If anyone reading this has yet to memorize 'Idiocracy,' please do so now.
Idiocracy was a great film.
'Cept its now become too true.
Unfortunate, and factual.
When bad things happen in someone’s life, they take it personally. Like the external/God/whomever is personally hurting them. This is negative energy and like begets like. Let that shit go! I’ve seen so many loved ones do this.
You don’t store energy in the form of feelings or at least don’t store negative ones, so you are not constantly attracting negativity.
On a related note, pain can be taken personally too. I don’t think people realize that physical pain, especially trauma, has feelings attached. Those feelings of fear or whatever make you vulnerable to pain meds and addiction.
This had not occurred to me. Bad stuff feels bad enough, but if someone took it personally as well? Not good.
Indeed it does. I think the emotional experience of pain is significant regardless of what the cause of that pain is. It is even significant in physical pain.
I rather like this article, but I'd like to point out something to the readers:
If do feel as though you're irrevocably bogged down and held hostage by your own emotions, beating yourself over it will only add insult to injury.
That's akin to beating your head against an invisible wall and keep wondering why you always have headaches and can never go where you need to go.
Think about it:
Sometimes when you find yourself caught up in a deep hole, you may need a ladder go get out, and that doesn't have to be a problem. Right? It just means you need a ladder to get out and carry on.
Case in point - if you're consistently struggling with your emotions/motivation/moods, that likely means you have your neurotransmitters and hormones deregulated beyond your control, and that is neither your fault nor is it something you can control out of sheer willpower. In fact, it could effectively be very the reason why your willpower seems to always fall short of the mark.
That is nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't even need to be a problem. In fact, recognizing this could point you right to a solution.
See...
There are many scenarios in which a person may be unable to control their own emotions and moods and ability to focus and get things done, whether through meditation, cold water immersion or whatever other such tactics that seem to work spectacularly for many people.
In such case, seeking a psychiatrist to get some medicine that will stabilize your mood could be what you need to do first and foremost.
Whether that turns out to be an antidepressant, anxiolytic or anything else that's required to effectively get you out of your head and back into the real world... by all means, consider doing so as a top priority.
After all, you can't run fast - or at all - if your shoelaces are tied. A mere pebble in your shoe may seem inconsequential on the short term, but its effects may be quite debilitating on the long term.
Right now, you could very well be in a place where you're hostage to your own biochemistry, and you may require actual medication to break through unproductive and/or self-defeating cycles.
So I repeat emphatically; there is *absolutely no shame* in that. However, there is a thing called *toxic shame* (look it up, really!) that often affects the people who most need to reach out for help, and keeps them from doing so. If you resonate with that, rest assured:
Seeking help and eventually being prescribed psychopharmaceuticals to help you manage your internal affairs is just a thing to be done, before you can go on to do the other things that need to be done.
It could actually be the missing link you have been looking for, that once restored will allow you to effectively follow this stellar advice from Athena.
So... if you haven't done so yet - why not consider that possibility, already?
This is absolutely true. Too little attention is given to the difference between a mental state where real control and will are possible, and one where that just becomes meaningless. For decades I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me and just thought I was 'weak'. Sometimes even the most awful meds can be an improvement on that state and allow you to get the ball rolling!
from your work: People that know me from the outside think that I have lived a charmed life.
People that know me well wonder how I deal with so many things.
They’re both right, and those things aren’t as far apart as you may think.
This is pretty good description for me: Outsiders believe I am very successful and can do about anything yet my friend often says stuff like this, about things that would trouble him if he was me. I'm very glad to be me and often reflect on the "grace" in my life.
I think there are distinctions here that apply to neurotypicals that you don't make because they don't register with you. There are adversities and disruptions that are enormous practical nuisances and physical privations, and there are those that affect the heart and soul and touch the core. The former is much, much easier to learn to accept and just deal with, the latter not so much. The two kinds of experience don't have that much in common and I think we for now still lack the vocabulary here.
Similarly with change. Some people are bad with any change, yes, but many deal with it well if it is a change up or sideways. Some 'changes' however amount to dreadful losses of opportunity, freedom, fulfilment, meaning, love. 'Change' doesn't work as a euphemism in these cases.
Sometimes people in turmoil find that there is little that they can 'do'. Attempting to push on can just exhaust a mind and body that are already struggling and underperforming, and doing may have to wait a while. Learning how much can or should be done and in what mental state comes with experience and honest refection. I draw an analogy with hiking: sometimes you know you actually do have another hill/x miles in you if you push, and it will ultimately make you stronger, even though it's the last thing you want to do right now. But at other times, to continue wearily along the ridge is just a dangerous error of judgement.
Changes do bring about many losses, but many gains as well. I suppose the differences between psychopaths and our response to pain, as opposed to neurotypicals' response to change is likely personified by what registers most strongly with us.
For psychopaths it will always be those positive changes. So much so, that we can easily overlook the pain those same changes mean to someone neurotypical, where the loss is amplified to them. We don't feel that loss, so our focus is always on the silver lining.
There aren't always gains though, some situations really don't have a silver lining. Hence the grim jokes in which one wryly and ironically mentions some trivial advantage to a major loss. It sounds like as a psycopath, those trivial plusses would be all you experience! Amazing.
I have yet to find one that doesn't.