DON’T BELIEVE “NATURAL INCLINATIONS”, BUT DO USE THEM
It is interesting how we can, when “enlightened”, step back and see that all of our ways of feeling and acting are (mostly, at the core) directed from the actuality that evolution fashioned us to perpetuate our DNA (not to make us happy, except to the extent that it helped us live long enough and procreate enough to successfully pass on our DNA). Clearly much of our evolved feelings/actions are not helpful and are obsolete or harmful in some cases, given our current world, where we are safe, even though our chimp brain continues to operate as if everything is life-threatening (as was true 10,000 years ago to a large extent).
But today, to the extent we can, we seek to operate from our higher self’s (higher brain’s) wants to be happy and fulfilled, with a life of meaning, one where we thrive, instead of (Chimp brain) survive.
Our task is to use our higher brain to look at what no longer serves us in terms of feelings, related beliefs, and actions and to alter those to fit today’s world, living largely without the unnecessary fear and anxieties - to basically have few fears and almost no anxiety all day every day.
When we learn about this, we become much more intelligent about it, and we see how our “natural instincts” are not always the best. It is not true that “natural” leads us to the right thing to do or feel or believe - in fact it is a gross falsehood parroted over and over by many people. Natural does not equal “good”. Natural is not best. Intuition is not accurate. And there is much more we could list on this topic, but hopefully you get the idea and see through this misleading belief about “natural” being a good guide all the time. (You can consider it a possibility, but then you need to decide upon it while in your higher questioning/thinking brain.)
THEN, HOW DO I USE THIS TO MY ADVANTAGE
But, once we see what needs to be changed and install it in ourselves, we are left with the task of how to utilize our inborn feeling nature to actually enhance our lives.
Though we do not need to procreate, at some point at least, we can still utilize the good feeling motivation that evolved in us to procreate (have sex, in this case). We can healthily use it, to feel good in the moment but also more lastingly affect the rest of the day and draw us closer to another human being (oxytocin feels really good!).
We can use the dopamine reward (and the natural inclination to hope for what is better and/or good) to have us do things that in fact do produce future benefit in addition to present benefits in some cases. Of course, dopamine is a benefit - it feels good. We just need to not use it inappropriately like in drug addiction or computer games where it hurts our future selves.
Cooperation (and its subcomponent of contributing to others) makes us feel good, likely because it was what worked 10,000 years ago to have us survive better (though it is hardly necessary now for our basic needs and not having it does not really threaten our lives). The same with touch, as it meant something before in terms of survival, so it’ll make us feel good or safer (at that time and) today.
You can go deeper by reading more on the site, such as:
The Story Of Our Happy And Our Unhappy Chemicals
A Tale Of The Mechanisms For Survival
Understanding your very nature: Your (Bio)Mechanical Brain/Body - Summary - See It For What It Is, Create It How You Want It To Be
This could change your life forever. Go as deep as you need to until you understand it so well that you can go through the various means on the site to drastically change your life for the better (such as the beliefs section and the physiological psychology piece).
How to do all that, and what particularly to utilize, is another rather deep discussion we need to do later.
For now, realize:
- Much of what you evolved to do/think/feel is obsolete and should be updated, perhaps using your constant updating mechanism like The Life Improvement Journal, also following a large updating session where you ask what doesn’t serve you in your life, including negative feelings and thoughts, and then list all you can think of AND then go about correcting them, with help from the site or emailing me when you can’t figure it out from the site).
- You can figure out and/or learn ways to use your natural emotions/tendencies for benefiting your current world realities.
Read the links above and explore this to the point of mastery, as it is an essential part of life mastery.
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Consider also reading Impulse Management - The First Step To Self Mastery And Directing Your Life
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