Start Living Outside Your Head
You can start by talking to yourself — in the third person.
More often than not, I find myself living inside my head. I only realize this after I reach a level where I cannot follow my thoughts anymore. They are usually flowing so quickly that I don’t get to catch any of them.
I usually decide to open my eyes and take a closer look into this messy world inside my head, but I always find all my thoughts are overlaid by a stream of emotions which I neither understand nor I can recognize its origin.
I have learned with time that if one seeks to become a better version of themselves, they need to embrace their emotions. They need to surrender to their limbic system to fill them up with all the emotions they can possibly feel, without attempting to suppress them.
However, this is not enough, one also has to put their prefrontal cortex to work. One has to analyze and understand the root causes of all the feelings they have at any point in time: happiness, anger, jealousy, fear, sadness, excitement, motivation, hate, or love.
“What separates those who become great human beings from those who do not, is the capacity to follow their heart-mind rather than to go along blindly with either the senses or the intellect”
— From “The Path” by Michael J. Puett and Christine Gross-Loh
The previous saying suggests that there is no good decision that can come from relying on your emotions or your intellect alone, you have to exploit both.
However, if you just live inside your head, you won’t be able to do that. Your thoughts will be going around your head like a swarm of birds flying in circles, and the best you can do is to only observe them — a thing that you might, or might not enjoy.
You might be thinking now that something doesn’t make sense here…
How would I be able to analyze my thoughts and emotions if I decide to live outside my head? Don’t I need to be inside my head to do that? Don’t we all live inside our heads all the time?
While you are truly and absolutely right, allow me to elaborate.
A Model of The World
So what do I really mean by the inside of the head?
Let’s first consider how we make sense of the world that we live in.
It’s theorized that our brains work by creating an inner model of the world. Such a model gets mainly shaped by the experiences we go through and by the people we encounter.
“Each person you meet influences your mental universe in a way that has the potential to make a substantial impact upon the causality of the intellectual development of an entire species”
— From “Love, God, and Neurons” by Abhijit Naskar
We use our inner model of the world to make sense of reality, predict the outcomes of our actions, and protect ourselves from any possible threat.
The brain, however, can be divided into two sub-brains, one that is slow and conscious, the other is fast and subconscious.
You might be surprised by how much we rely on the fast subconscious brain, even when we think we are coming up with an absolutely sensible decision. Well, you have guessed it! The “intelligent” brain is the slow conscious one.
The slow brain is logical, has the ability to think, analyze, plan, and come up with sensible decisions. It also allows us to live conscious experiences that, in return, reshape our model of the world.
The fast brain, on the other hand, takes the reshaped model for granted and uses it to take automatic — most of the time nonsensical — actions. The fast brain relies heavily on that model, and the worst part is that it’s subconscious.
If you are interested to know more about this I suggest reading “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.
In short, we should realize that most of our knowledge, most of our beliefs, and most of our decisions are based on a model. A model that doesn’t know better than what it has seen in the past. A model that is — inside our head.
Living Inside My Head
Whether people do it intentionally or not, they often find themselves overthinking, living in past experiences that vanished a long time ago, living in future scenarios that they might never experience, getting worried about things that might never happen, or living up to hopes that might never come true.
Like most people, I often find myself in such places, hoping that the more I am thinking about these scenarios and trying to embrace them, the sooner I will calm my mind, find the answers, and live at peace.
However, this is a trap. A huge one. Like a maze. The further you go inside, the harder it becomes to find an exit. Well, okay I admit it, that was a bit dramatic, but you get the point.
All the thinking that is happening inside our brains is mainly based on our current model of the world. Since it is usually covered with all the mixed and complicated emotions that we feel, we are then — most of the time — left with no capacity to use our sensible brain. Instead, we tend to behave and think subconsciously without even realizing it.
We end up stuck inside our heads. Stuck inside our model of the world.
It is usually not until I get mentally overwhelmed that I realize I am inside such a trap and there is no way out but just to forget all about it and finally move on.
While this temporarily leads to a clearer mind, it is never satisfying, because soon enough, I find myself stuck in a similar trap all over again.
Why is that? …
Well, my best guess is because there are questions that are yet to be answered:
Why am I having this feeling? Is that what I really want? Was it really worth it? Was it the right decision to make?
While hoping to find the right questions to ask, I find myself mentally stuck that I am asking only one question instead:
How the hell can I get out of my head?
The Transition
One day I was having my lunch break and cooking a nice meal. Yes, it was one of those relaxing home-office days. It was not too long ago since I have been faced with new challenges in my life that got me questioning, well, almost everything.
While my conscious brain was too busy making sure to put just the right amount of spices into the pot, my subconscious was stuck in a loop of random thoughts, bathed with an ocean of emotions striking like waves; positive thoughts meeting the crests and negative thoughts meeting the troughs.
I have never been that deep inside my head, but I was totally swamped, I knew at that moment that I had to do something — anything, I just need to get myself out of there.
Suddenly, and without giving it a second thought, I found myself rushing towards my workstation, opening a blank document, and writing three pages filled with nothing but all the thoughts that were flowing inside my head.
Whether they were negative or positive, I didn’t care — I just wrote everything.
Luckily, the food did not get burnt.
Living Outside My Head
That was the very first time I have ever decided to write my thoughts. I had never considered doing that before. It just never came to my mind. It was a magical moment.
For the first time, I felt I was outside my head, not by suppressing my emotions and forgetting all about my thoughts, but instead, by embracing them and putting them out there — right in front of me.
I could not only point easily to the questions that needed to be asked, but I could also answer them. Well, not really all of them, since some questions I couldn’t answer at that time and others I may never be able to. However, sometimes asking the right questions, opens a door to a whole new world.
After hitting the bottom of the final page, I felt a huge space in my head got freed. I was not happy nor sad, I was at peace. It was like if I have just faced my worst enemy — and won.
Since then, writing my thoughts has become part of my morning routine, I write every single thought that pops into my head, trying my best not to filter any. However, there are some days when I just open the document at a random time and write nothing short of 3–4 pages filled with just random thoughts. Yeah.. tough days.
I started talking to myself in the first and the second person, but not later than a couple of pages, I had decided to switch to the third person. It was weird at the beginning, but now, by doing so, I feel I am able to project myself into an alternate reality where I can analyze and criticize myself from a newer and a higher dimension.
Also, I like to believe that the reason why all of this is actually working, is that every time I start writing my thoughts, I allow the pace of my fast and slow brains to match, giving my conscious brain enough time to lead my subconscious in the right direction. But this is just a guess, or maybe I have actually read it somewhere. I really have no idea.
To summarize …
I believe that becoming a better version of ourselves is an everyday task that requires us constantly shaping our model of the world by participating in new experiences, meeting new people, embracing new opportunities, making new mistakes, and failing — a lot!
However, I also believe that the true secret to understanding oneself lies in the idea that we should never take our inner model for granted, regardless of how perfect we think it is.
Instead, we should embrace our emotions and then immediately project ourselves outside this model, start analyzing our thoughts, admit our mistakes (at least to ourselves), learn from them, and question everything.
I am positive that the very first step to do that, would be to start writing your own thoughts and talking to yourself — in the third person.
… and for the record, try to re-read everything you wrote from time to time. Believe me, it will be so much fun! Most of the time.
