Multiple Personalities
~ 4 Minute Read.
I recently listened to this podcast/interview by Tom Bilyeu with Moran Cerf 1. Tom’s entire channel is amazing, do please check it out if you have the time!
Moran talks about putting EEG caps on people’s head to detect which person they were when they made certain decisions and what influenced them to be this person in that situation.
Let’s take a step back. Have you ever gone to bed telling yourself “I’m so motivated to get up tomorrow” and in the next morning felt like a totally different person who then hits the snooze button instead? I actually write about this experience in “Getting Up” and event Mel Robbins mentions this. 2 When Moran Cerf mentioned these different “puppeteers” in your brain are actually identifiable via EEG, that made total sense to me.
Interestingly what you eat seams to have an effect on which person you are. For me personally this is strongly connected to sugar for example. 3 If there are sweets lying around that I like, I litterally feel two versions of me fighting to get control and take some or leave it. This could also be some instinctual (lower level) self fighting against my rational (higher level) self. Once I let the instinctual self win, it appears to win more easily in the next challenge.
Mel Gibbson talks about “Robot State”, a habitual and automatic decision maker, vs the state where your prefrontal cortex has control over your decisions. They may be similar or analogous to the instinctual vs rational self.
In “Comfort Zone” I hint at being able to increase your comfort zone, hence the set of things that your instinctual self doesn’t react scared or anxious to.
I almost see this part of me as the “animal” part which is connected to the “human” (prefrontal cortex?) part of my self or my brain. Is that so? Is it maybe valuable to admit, that we still have that animal part inside us, to ensure we learn to control it appropriately? Maybe it’s just a metaphor or visualization I’m too focused on that makes be believe they are more separate that they really are.
Gaining more control over yourself and your decisions feels like an important part of life to me. I make it a daily practice to keep control in situations where it is tempting not to. May that be when avoiding a chocolate bar or a glas of some alcoholic beverage. 4 I am actively trying to put the strings into the right puppeteers hand.
Getting up in the mornings has started becoming an issue again, though. To me, it feels like the most important fight in my life. Now some moning personality of mine is starting to rationalize that I need the sleep once I woke up, suggesting I sleep another round after breakfast, 5 which is throwing me back into old routines that I had gotten rid of.
I will keep you up to date on that.
- 1
- How to Bend Reality to Your Will and Become Unstoppable | Moran Cerf on Impact Theory
- 2
- Mel Robbins on Why Motivation Is Garbage | Impact Theory
- 3
- I try to avoid refined sugar, but especially if there are free sweets lying around, it is still a pretty big challenge.
- 4
- Yes, I also avoid alcohol since two months ago. More strictly than sugar even.
- 5
- Even though I sleep for at least 5-7 hours, don’t worry, I know sleep is important.
Written in 50 minutes, edited in 15 minutes.