The latest major release of human happened around 200,000 years ago.

Most of the remaining time we were busy running away from predators, trying to find food to survive until the next day.

Therefore, the graceful mother nature patched our brains with the default energy preservation mode. Our brain likes to develop repeatable patterns that will keep us safe.

Every bad experiences in life leaves a significant mark in our brain, hoping to save us from encountering it again.

3 Personal Examples of Bad Experiences In Life

Example 1.

After I got poisoned with a watermelon at age 11, I could not even think of watermelons without nausea for 10 years.

This is an example of how strongly our mind can protect itself against bad experiences. If our ancestors went to deep forrest and their friend got eaten by a tiger, it’s a very useful little piece of emotion to get completely intimidated of a deep forrest thereafter.

Now think of a modern life.

You can’t get away without being dipped in shit at least once in a while. Life is hard. Yet, a traumatic experience in relationships or career can trigger a protective reaction that will create limiting beliefs or even phobias that will ultimately lead to a fucked up life.

Example 2.

I got dumped by my girlfriend after dating her for 8 years.

She cheated on me and walked me out of the door without any explanation. I was driving myself crazy for long weeks trying to figure out what I did wrong and how to fix it.

This situation completely destroyed my relationship with women (also my ego for a while). My mind just blocked all sexual and emotional response to romantic circumstances.

Like with that fucking watermelon, I was terrified of an idea of starting something serious. Instead, I became obsessed with self-development in attempts to restore my self-image.

Example 3.

One business of mine was once growing quite rapidly, and we invested tremendous energy and a shit load of money into forming an office and hiring a team.

Yet, our sales fell short requiring us to get into debt and shut down the place entirely including all dear to our hearts employees.

This traumatic experience has led to my phobia of taking responsibility for hiring people full-time, which had in turn lead to slowing down the growth of my future businesses and sometimes massive losses of opportunity.

I literally built an army of 70+ freelancers for my next venture (obviously was a failure because no one was giving a slightest fuck about the company).

Another Reason that Causes Failure

What was meant to save us from the tiger, now causes us to focus on the bad, limiting our ability to grow and go beyond our fears.

Another little change that happened lately with the human evolution is the amounts of bullshit that our mind processes every day.

The teraflops of TikTok and Instagram memes that we load into our brains is a lot of stress actually. We just fail to listen to ourselves, we have grown unconscious.

Our brain is simply not made to process all of the information to support all of the 35,000 decisions we made each day. Hence anxiety, depression, mood swings, social disorders, phobias.

A Spiritual Journey

Before coming to Bali I was similarly unconscious about how I treated my mind.

Then, I suddenly dropped on this little peace of land in a Muslim country, which by some weird reason is not Muslim but Hindu. All of the crazy stories of Indian monks and levitating gurus are brought to the next level here, and many westerners with their first world problems come here in search of Zen.

I inevitably became part of this culture and religion, but surprisingly it didn’t feel like bullshit even for a skeptic like myself. I was also surprised that the whole spiritual journey is not about praising some external prophets, but instead about becoming more conscious of one’s inner world.

In Bali, the spiritual journey is a journey to yourself.

Little Known Technique to Help You Overcome

What I learned here, is that in order to become aware of what’s happening within myself, I have to first clear all the noise.

Now hold on to something because the next one is a game changer. The main producer of the noise and stress, is our own mind. And most of the spiritual education is, ironically, about shutting that fucker up. One of the most transformative changes for me was to start thinking about my mind as a separate from myself thing.

Previously, I imagined myself as a character in the life-movie created by my mind. I was it’s product. Now, I think of my mind as a chimp trying to save me from a tiger.

The mind is merely a projector in the theatre of my life. I am the viewer and I get to choose which movies to play. “Thinking” is listening to the chatter in your head, “Living” is taking control of it and directing it towards your soul’s desires.

Summary

Our mind is undoubtedly the most wonderful miracle in the universe, capable of unbelievable things.

Learning how to control it is essential for successful life.

“Mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible teacher.” – The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

In 2020, I started more consciously practice meditation, a thousand years old practice found in many religions and traditions, the main goal of which is to clean the noise in our head and learn to control our mind.

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