The Human Owners Manual

Tips for Self-Centeredness

A carpenter’s most important tool is his hammer. Even in this day of overabundant battery operated and pneumatic power tools, the regular, simple, centuries-old-design claw hammer still finds its way into his hand dozens of times during the course of a normal day’s work, from precision work that the power tools don’t get right, to fine work that requires a light touch, to using the claw to fix mistakes or to pry a piece of lumber into the correct position for fastening. It sits in a specially designed holder on his tool belt at the most favored, readily available spot. It fits in his hand like an old friend, and if he reaches and finds it missing, even temporarily because he set it down somewhere, he will feel a momentary sense of irritation or anxiety without not having it.

And if something happens to that hammer, say it gets a chip in the face, or one of the claw tines breaks off, it puts a damper on all of his work. Each of the dozens of tasks he uses that broken hammer for during the day takes a little more mental energy, a little more inconvenience, and a little more work-around. As a result, most carpenters won’t even wait until the end of the day to replace a defective hammer with one that is properly functional, even if they have to borrow one from a coworker. Even then, they most likely will not be happy until they get their favorite brand or style back in their hand again. It is their most important tool.

Your most important tool is your self. Your body is the only tool you have to manipulate or transform your surroundings and environment, and your mind is the only tool that can operate your body. It is literally your only channel for changing your circumstances and making a better life for yourself and those you care about, and yet most of us do not pay our self and our mind half the respect that the carpenter pays to his hammer. We allow our minds to fall into disrepair, or to become functionally inoperable, and yet do not take steps to repair it and will keep on using an inoperative or dysfunctional tool without so much as slowing our progress, often toward an unwanted result. Or if we do self-maintenance, it is relegated to “if I have time” or something to be worked on when we feel like it or when we have nothing else to spend our time and energy on - which is effectively the same thing as never.

So, while the term “self-centered” is usually used as a synonym for “selfish” or to mean placing yourself at a higher level of importance than those around you, I would like you to start thinking of self-centered in the sense of centering your whole world on the fulcrum that is your only means of changing it. Think of your self as the center of your universe, not because you are more important than those around you, but because “you” is the only part of the universe that you control, and all of your efforts must necessarily center on that point. This language is not without precedent. Someone who is “centered” is a person who is balanced, who has themselves well and truly under control. It is a place of power and flexibility. It is a place of readiness, where you are most prepared and able to manage the unexpected or move forward in your desired direction. The term self-centered has come to have a bad connotation, because it usually implies that a person is centering on themselves out of an inflated sense of self-importance - a position which is just factually incorrect and the result of sloppy bias. However, there exists also the notion of a person who centers their thoughts and perspective on themselves, not from a sense of self-importance but from the knowledge that their “self” is the most important tool they have for accomplishing their goals, noble or ignoble. And to neglect the care of that self is to neglect your own efficacy and ability to change, to adapt, and to effect change in your surroundings.

So let’s talk about some of the most common ways you can fall down on this goal of being self-centered.

Problem: Out of Bounds

The first, most common problem people face is ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of the boundaries of their power. Spending time and energy trying to change things that are outside your control is wasteful. More so when you are spending your time and energy on those things and neglecting the things that only you can fix. As self-evident as that might sound, I think it not an exaggeration to say that upwards of 90% of the problems facing humanity today from the scope of personal problems all the way to the macroeconomic level are caused by this exact misappropriate of time and energy. Focus on the things that are inside your garden. They are both the only thing you have direct control over, and the only things no one else can do for you.

This takes some self-training. Much like learning to ride a bike, this type of skill cannot be effectively transferred. You must practice it to get the “feel” of what it’s like to be out of your garden, and learn your own internal levers to get back in. However, here are some tips:

Problem: Perspective

Many times the cause of our misalignment is a perspective error. It is quite easy for us to get fixated or myopic on a particular issue, either to exclusion of all other problems or areas that need attention, or to inflate its importance far beyond what the actual circumstances warrant. For example, consider the trope of the wealthy trophy wife becoming obsessed with the details of a random party she is throwing for people who most likely won’t care, or a teenage girl obsessing over the exact wording of a texting conversation, or a celebrity obsessing over how people are talking about him online.

There’s no cause for looking down on these people, or on ourselves when we find ourselves following a similar pattern. For what it is worth, this is an evolutionary adaptation. As a species, we are designed from the ground up to focus on the biggest problem in front of us and “attack” it until it is fixed. It is a compulsion buried deep in our psyche, and we all follow it. These tropes that we often make fun of are actually just a scenario where people find themselves in the enviable position of having worked their way into a pretty safe and worry free life where their “biggest problem” is just not very big. But that doesn’t stop their biological imperative to focus on whatever is the biggest problem they have and solve it with all of their spare energy.

However, the tropes exist for a reason, because it is easy to lose perspective and expect everyone else to find your problems just as big as you do. Which, on more thoughtful consideration, is likely an unreasonable expectation. The derision typically comes from people facing much larger and more pressing problems, who falsely assuming a simple failure to prioritize correctly. In truth both parties are guilty of the very common mistake of assuming that everyone else’s life closely mirrors our own. This is a fallacy we can easily slip into.

To counter this tendency, imaging moving your mind’s eye about 30 feet straight up in the air (perhaps with x-ray vision) looking down on the situation as a passive observer like watching a TV show. What would you think of these characters and how they are behaving? Especially look at yourself with the same critical eye you use to view someone else. Do you find yourself thinking, “That person needs to calm the fuck down”? Many times this shift in perspective is all that’s needed to reset our emotions and give us a new direction with purpose and hope.

Problem: Disjunction

Another extremely common obstacle is when your Operative Mind and your Cognizant Mind do not agree on what would be best right now. That probably happens a lot more often than you think. Usually it looks like doing something you know you shouldn’t, or telling all your friends you are going to do one thing (not deceptively, really meaning it) only to actually choose something different in the moment. This is because your Two Minds can very easily disagree on any one or number of topics, and when it comes time to make the decision, which one you choose can be determined by a variety of factors, many of which are unpredictable.

The obvious solution - once you phrase the problem correctly like that - is to get your two minds to agree. This has the benefit of being (correctly) more confident that your decision is the right one - for all the same reasons that you feel more confident when a friend agrees with you. The probability that you might do something stupid on your own is significantly higher than the probability that two of you will come to the same wrong conclusion. That holds true with your own two minds. If the Op and the Cog both agree, it is usually the right decision. The cost of getting them to agree, however, is time. It takes time (and effort) to work through that process. And the very common fear or objections is “Ain’t nobody got time for that.” But the reality is, in almost all cases, you absolutely do have time for that. The vast majority of decisions, when you really stop to think clearly about them, do not need to be made in the next 30 seconds. Even if you only have an hour to make the decision (itself a fairly rare occurrence), that’s still plenty of time to think through and reach consensus between your two minds. And the time it takes to think it through and do the mental work is most times orders of magnitude quicker that making the wrong decision and having to go back and clean up your mess and start the decision over again.

Problem: Emotional Turbulence

One thing that can kill clear thinking, as you all know, is high levels of emotions, especially fear or anger. The reason, if you’re interested, is quite fascinating biologically. But it basically comes down to those emotions kicking off the flight-or-flight response, which is adrenal in nature. And adrenaline specifically suppresses the creative portion of our brains, thus making it more difficult to come up with creative solutions to our problems than when we’re calm and contemplative.

So as a result of that biological quirk, it often behooves us to intentionally calm our emotions down when they are loud enough to be disruptive. See the steps for defeating fear and defeating anger