“If you train your mind and pay attention to it, it has the potential to be a sovereign playground for you that’s isolated, safe, private, and maybe all-powerful. You’re the only one who can set foot there and enjoy the freedom it gives you.”

Preface

The human mind has the potential to be a very powerful force but, unfortunately, I think that most of us don’t realize this. The ancient stoics realized this. For example, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca all spoke about the power of the human mind:

• “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” – Epictetus
• “A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.” – Seneca
• “External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?” – Marcus Aurelius

This tree isn’t going to delve deep into the human mind because that’s something profoundly complex and a lifelong subject matter at that. Also, it’s not even fully understood. However, I’m going to briefly talk about a mental model I came up with during my summer vacation this year that has actually helped me push through physical and mental training.

Impetus

In all honesty, this year has been a rough one for me mentally because I lost my 24-year-old brother to drugs. Writing is something that alleviates my stress, so I wrote about it, and so the tree of CONVICTION was born. It’s often said that time heals, but I think it would be more accurate to say that time changes the pain. If the pain never truly goes away, neither do the symptoms.

What has been the current symptom for me? Every single day I do something (e.g., an activity), I either visualize and see my brother alongside me and/or I think about all the lost opportunities. I go to the gym and I see my brother training beside me. I go grocery shopping and I see my brother with me. The list of things I could’ve done with my brother goes on and on… This “habit” hasn’t been inherently a pleasant one, and so I’ve started to smile and laugh because, had I not, I would’ve shed tears.¹

So, one evening, when reading about hypnosis and trance, I thought more about this (mental) symptom and did some introspection because I wanted to ensure that this “symptom” is at least a benign one. In programming, there’s a technique known as abstraction. That term is something that every newcomer will hear sooner or later. If you think about it, our mind is filled with abstractions. I decided to pay more attention to my abstracted thoughts, and basically, in my mind, I created a dichotomy of positive and negative feelings.

Introspection helps because when you examine and observe your own mind, you’ll start to notice various inner elements. When you feel negative (e.g., anxious, fearful, sad, helpless, inadequate, etc.), focus inward and really feel that negativeness as an abstraction in your mind. Don’t escape the feeling but embrace it and sense it. Do the same for positive emotions. If you train your mind and pay attention to it, it has the potential to be a sovereign playground for you that’s isolated, safe, private, and maybe all-powerful.² You’re the only one who can set foot there and enjoy the freedom it gives you.

Mental Model

While I was in the gym training, I had an eureka moment. Due to their nature, abstractions aren’t effective for cultivating understanding. For maximum understanding, abstractions should be turned into concrete representations. So, in my mind, I decided to create concrete representations of those abstracted positive and negative feelings, and I came up with the model called “Sphere vs. Stellated Dodecahedron”.

So, this might sound peculiar, but what I try to do is reduce the amount of abstracted feelings in my mind via imagination by imagining I’m using clay and molding them into concrete visualized representations:

1. Each positive feeling represents a sphere as they’re simpler, safer, and more productive. There’s a reason balls are used in many sports.
2. Each negative feeling represents a stellated dodecahedron as they’re complex, dangerous, and unproductive. Imagine, if instead of a ball-shaped rock, Zeus gave Sisyphus a stellated dodecahedron to push up a hill…

If these propositions are true, then I need to make sure that there are more spheres than stellated dodecahedra in the temple of my mind.³ For me, the procedure behind this mental model has been as follows:

1. I do introspection by focusing inward and assessing my mental status. By the way, just for fun, I think of this as a sort of mental dashboard
2. If I notice I’m feeling negative, I’ll sense this negativity as abstracted feelings.
3. In the temple of my mind, by utilizing clay, I try to mold them into stellated dodecahedra.
4. Afterwards, I blunt and weaken the sharp spikes until all that’s left is a beautiful sphere. I imagine I’m squishing the ball, controlling it, and playing with it.
5. I feel as though I’m in control, as the negative feelings have no authority over me. I mold them as I please.

There might be scientific literature related to this, but I’m too lazy to do research and provide scientific evidence. What I can say, however, is that this anecdote of mine has helped me process and handle this year’s unfortunate events. I feel as though I’ve finally grasped something pivotal because, against all expectations, I’m currently the strongest I’ve ever been, both physically and mentally (let’s hope it stays that way).

Final Words

If someone wanders here and reads this, I hope that this provides some help either now or in the future. The most important thing to realize is that you have power over your mind. Even though the things in our mind are abstract, you can make them less abstract. The less abstract something is, the more understandable it is. The more understandable something is, the more you can reason about it. The more you can reason about something, the less scary and daunting it becomes. After all, we humans fear the unknown.

Footnotes

1. This is apparently called cognitive reappraisal. By forcing yourself to smile, for example, you’re “generating” a positive reinterpretation of an adverse event. Honestly, this is much better than crying or keeping a poker face. ︎
2. By paying attention I mean, for example, have intrapersonal communication (or inner speech). Many of us consume way too much external information by listening to what other people say and thinking what other people think. I’m not saying that this is inherently a bad thing but it can be because sometimes you should think for yourself. Have inner dialogue with yourself and extrapolate things using your own mind. This is related to critical thinking and, in a much broader sense, to metacognition. ︎
3. When I was playing the video game Tekken 7, I fell in love with the Infinite Azure battle stage and its theme song. The synergy between them is so good. For some reason, this stage with its song started representing my mind perfectly. There’s just something so peaceful imagining myself there, where nobody can bother me, and being truly free. A place akin to Infinite Azure is the temple of my mind (i.e., my mental sanctum). ︎

“Rather than wishing and aiming to be the favorite or front-runner, you should crave to be the underdog or, more specifically, have the mind of one.”

Preface

I think we’ve all had that illogical and negative feeling on some level or another when somebody other than us achieves or trumps something: feelings of insecurity or inferiority, or both. I know I’ve had it.

This somebody can be whoever, and their achievement can be whatever (something we’ve attained or not). In the end, neither of these things matters because, for some reason, our brain can perceive their accomplishment as a sort of personal attack on our equanimity, which could cause us to be bitter, among other things. Though let’s be honest, this “personal attack” is purely our delusion¹. A so-called non-sequitur probably caused because we tend to compare ourselves to others (i.e., the social comparison theory).

When this happens, you should do some mental alchemy and convert that feeling of insecurity, inferiority, or self-consciousness to inspiration. Be inspired by that somebody and strive to be even better!

This is called healthy competition, which, by the way, doesn’t have to be actual competition but something that exists solely in your mind where, instead of being the favorite, you’re the underdog.

Why

One of the reasons why we feel like this might be related to the concept of the ego. For example, when you’re a perfectionist (or preferably a high-achiever) in an environment without “healthy competition” for a long time (e.g., a couple of years), you get accustomed to it, and your ego grows unexpectedly. You might not even realize this until someone as capable (or more) as you shows up. This could damage your inflated ego because you’re not the one and only “that guy” anymore. In other words, your self-concept hasn’t been stress-tested.

The negative effects that this so-called cognitive distortion causes are neither healthy nor productive. It’s irrational. Losing your presence of mind and feeling insecure because someone has overcome weaknesses and gotten more competent signifies a weakness in your character. A man of confidence and self-assurance knows not to fret. Why would he? That other person isn’t him² and, as the stoic quote goes:

“The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.”

—Seneca

One of the most essential things to extrapolate from this quote is that when you see or hear someone struggle to overcome adversity, let it be a catalyst for inspiration and motivation and not for feelings of inferiority, bitterness, or envy.

If you succeed in this, well, you’ve just found yourself an external source that fills up your curiosity, focus, and commitment tanks like no other. And, for me, it’s one hell of a source because it’s actually the number one coefficient in my burnout resistance.

In this healthy competition, rather than wishing and aiming to be the favorite or front-runner, you should crave to be the underdog or, more specifically, have the mind of one.

1. Nobody’s watching out for the underdog.
2. All the odds are against the underdog.
3. Failures cost the underdog less than they do for the favorite.
4. The underdog can experiment more and play risky.
5. The underdog gets burnt out at a slower rate.
6. The underdog can watch and learn from the favorite.
7. The underdog has a measurable, concrete, and practical growth goal: get even with or surpass the favorite.

How

In all honesty, I can’t say for certain because the ego is very complex, even for psychologists. I don’t know of any blueprint with practical steps to balance and cure it. What I can do, however, is postulate that deliberately having the mindset of an underdog leads to a stance that could both resist ego inflation and deflate it and lead to a better performance.

Here’s how you should internally react:

1. Don’t tie your self-worth to being number one because a single better performer can crash it.
   Underdogs are never mentally number one.
2. When someone overcomes adversity and attains something and/or outperforms you, and you start feeling that irrational self-doubt, envy, or insecurity creep up, smile and thank them in your mind³. This minimizes zero-sum thinking, which is a common fallacy.
   Underdogs always have something to gain when someone else succeeds. Any envy is benign.
3. Don’t be the “smartest guy in the room.” You don’t know absolute smartness until you’ve seen/heard it with your own eyes/ears.
   Underdogs always aim to be in rooms where they are, well, the underdogs.
4. Remember that when another person overcomes an obstacle, they have probably suffered on some level. It doesn’t matter if they suffered less, as much, or more than you.
   Underdogs see the beauty in voluntary suffering to overcome adversity, which naturally commands both inspiration and motivation.
5. Listen, watch, and learn. When someone “shocks” you with their work, don’t dismiss it mentally. Be curious and perspicacious. Find out how they came up with their work, what techniques they utilized, and, most importantly of them all, try to understand their work on both a practical and theoretical level⁴.
   Underdogs never let new knowledge be filtered out through their egos. Admirable brilliance fuels their curiosity. They pull out the mechanisms (practicality) from the idea (abstraction).

These are just some of the “tenets” off the top of my mind I’ve learned during my journey. I’ll add more when they manifest themselves to me.

Conclusion

In the end, this might boil down to one of those just-do-it kind of things when someone shocks your self-concept or ego: just be positively inspired instead of negatively affected⁵. But this was too abstract, so I thought of a more concrete model: be the underdog. I believe this is a beneficial concrete/practical response to the irrational and unhealthy “sting” someone unintentionally causes.

So, the next time you feel that sting, smile and be thankful because that sting should remind you that you’re the underdog.

Lastly, let me be clear: being the underdog doesn’t mean you can’t be a competent expert. It doesn’t mean you exhibit learned helplessness. The cold hard fact is that we’re all underdogs in the end. There’s always somebody more skilled than us. Somebody who’s absolutely smarter and wiser than us. If we’re all underdogs in position, why not adopt the healthy identity of an underdog? After all, as Socrates said:

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

Footnotes

1. This is somewhat similar to some people’s “people are watching my every move” delusion. Let’s be honest; it’s highly probable that nobody is paying attention to you in the gym or supermarket. ︎
2. This reminds me of jealousy. Every time someone speaks about being jealous or at the very least seems to be jealous, I blurt out: “Why would you be jealous to someone who isn’t you?” ︎
3. Even better, you could tell them that they did a good job! Although, this one is up to you because I know how annoying and disrespectful it is to say “good job” to someone and not receive even a small “thank you” back… ︎
4. Depending on the size and complexity of their work, this might be a lifelong herculean task. So, for practicality, aim to gain at least an understanding on a practical level because it can inform theory. ︎
5. This is closely related to the stoic principle known as “Power Over Your Mind”, which comes from Marcus Aurelius’ book of Meditations (Book Eight, Section 47): “External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?” ︎