Max Bottaro

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“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

-Isaac Newton, after losing a considerable sum of money in the stock market.

I am writing this post not with the intent of giving you some great piece of advice or insight; but rather to get you thinking about your own thought process. I have quoted T. Harv Eker before when I said “thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results”. So how do you change your thought process? The first step is to become more self aware of your thought patterns- they effect who you are and your life more than anything else- your background, family, appearance, race- all these influences pale in comparison to your personal thought process.

One thing that I’ve noticed is the linking of thoughts and events is often left on autopilot. For example, let’s say something bad happens to you- an interview goes poorly or you get a bad grade on a test. What’s the first thing that pops into your head? Do you have a negative and unproductive internal monologue (you’re an idiot, you couldn’t handle the job anyway, you’re not worthy of a good job), or do you let your ego protect itself (that recruiter was a bitch, that professor’s an idiot, the test was unfair, I don’t really care anyways, etc.). Next time something happens, consciously aim for unbiased productive internal thoughts (yeah, that sucked. I need to study smart, and find out what went wrong with that interview). Ask yourself “how” questions. How could this have gone better, how can I improve. This kind of thinking breeds creativity. It’s strange, but when you start asking yourself these how questions, your whole thought process switches over to creativity mode, and that’s where solutions start happening. Your mind can come up with some amazing answers if you put it in the right environment.

Much of the time people make poor decisions and blind themselves to what really needs to be done because of their ego. Your ego is just a specific thought process that tries to protect your self esteem and pride- often at the cost of truth. Let’s say you’ve been struggling in school and you really know you need to bring your grades up. It’s Thursday night, you have schoolwork due, but your peers are going out to the bars. The temptation is too great and you end up going out with them. This causes dissonance between your true beliefs (education and discipline are important) and your actions (getting drunk with friends). 1 of 3 things will always happen when there is dissonance between your beliefs and actions:

1) You change you actions to coincide with your beliefs (sorry guys, I need to study tonight)

2) You change your beliefs to match your actions (I don’t care about school anyway, bill gates dropped out of college, employers don’t even care about grades anymore, I’m street smart anyways, etc.)

3) You neither change your actions to match your beliefs, or your beliefs to match your actions, and this causes immense stress. (School is important, and you are going out to drink. You are such a worthless piece of crap, what are you doing with your life, etc.)

Notice that in scenario 2 the ego has the greatest pull. Your mind will come up with all kinds of excuses for you. In psychology this is called “devaluing a domain”. If you suck at school and you care a lot about it, your self esteem will take a hit, and you will be stressed. The ego’s duty is to make sure you devalue school (the domain) so it doesn’t hurt your pride or place added stress in your life. While this can effectively reduce stress, it really won’t get you anything in life except comfort. People with strong egos will go tremendous lengths to change their beliefs. I was watching Dr. Phil (the man) the other day, and he was doing a show with morbidly obese people. One of the guys was given 2 years to live unless he changed his diet. He said he would, “but healthy food is too expensive”. The guy was spending $34 dollars a day on junk food! It was plain to everyone in the audience that he needed to change, but his ego kept protecting him from feeling the stress he needed to change.

Most people’s egos aren’t that strong or controlling, but they probably are keeping you from gaining that competitive edge. How many times have let your ego come up with an excuse like “I can eat whatever, I worked out today”, “it’s raining, I don’t have to go to class”, or maybe “whatever, that company was full of squares anyway”.

It’s the hardest way, but the best thing to do is just face your stress and do everything you can to reach your goal. Until you reach the your goal you may be stressed, but this can be a powerful driving force. Instead of letting your ego relieve stress through devaluing your goal, use action. Maybe you aren’t the best student yet, but if you studied hard and did everything you could, you will relieve stress in a more positive way.

not that this is an exact science, or that any two people are the same, but here are a few general relationships I’ve noticed.

The ego is sneaky. A lot of time you won’t even be aware when it is influencing your thoughts. One little exercise I do to avoid this is to pretend that I am a good friend of myself. Objectively, how would I advise this person to act? Being able to stand back as a neutral 3^rd party and make unbiased, emotionless decisions is a great skill. Never make important choices when you are emotional, especially angry. The ego is an emotional entity, so be smart and wait until you can look at the situation neutrally.

Understanding other people’s egos will help you gain more power too. Another concept I learned about in psychology is the attribution bias. The attribution bias states that when we attribute the cause of an event or action to someone else, we tend to attribute it to their internal disposition. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic you probably assume they are a bad driver, or are just plain incompetent. The more likely scenario is that external factors caused this to happen- they were late, had a momentary lapse in judgment, or maybe they just spilled their coffee. My point is you can gain more control not only be being aware and decisive with your own thoughts, but also understanding other people’s.