“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.”

—Karnavaara

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). ↩︎