None of us is alone in this experience. We all have each other.

FINISHED!

It’s about to get so much better.

…if we’re thinking in terms of selling the idea of you to others.

When professional persuaders are trying to convince their target audience to take a particular action, they have to shift their thinking.

Persuade yourself the way the experts would persuade you.

The benefits of not thinking of yourself in terms of character.

Shift focus from what you think of yourself to what you want to think of yourself.

At first, it can sound heartless to think of life in terms of objectives, but not all objectives are selfish. There are objectives we have for ourselves and objectives we have for the well-being of others.

I’m going to say something radical: many of you out there can do more good if you don’t focus on the content of your character as a whole, but by honing your attention on your personal and altruistic objectives.

How banishing this one word can change your life.

Pay attention to what makes you tick, what motivates you, and what’s an obstacle. This includes information on what triggers certain emotions, and what de-escalates them.

Use a marketer’s tools to get your emotions where you want them to go.

These strategies are helpful for your own personal growth, but also for your interpersonal relationships.

How can your life improve using these strategies?

The Buddhist strategy to being in control of your emotions starts with observing their presence and pausing a moment to take inventory of your internal environment.

Give your emotion a name and learn to sit with it a minute. Strategies included!

Learning about the Buddhist concept of there being a garden of seeds within your mind can help you organize and manage your emotions with more dignity.

Learn how to identify the seeds you’re allowing to be watered, and divert that nourishment somewhere else.

Also, hone in on the specific external factors that are watering seeds you don’t want watered.

This step helps divert you away from making personal attacks in an argument.

You’ll learn how to zero in on specific actions that triggered a particular response in yourself.

When I behave a certain way towards you, what you received from me becomes a memory, it starts a process of pattern recognition in your brain. My action becomes a part of your mind.

This builds up over time. Part of our current interaction is colored by previous interactions.

This is the Buddhist concept with a name… but I’ll have to look up that name when I write this lesson.

Putting together everything we’ve gone through so far, here are some ideas for how to reframe difficult emotions the Buddhist way.

Here, we’ll put together all the benefits you can take into your life when you use Buddhist strategies for mastering your emotions.

In this lesson, we’ll define what we mean by “the Watchmaker.”

If you’re looking at things through the Watchmaker perspective, your journey, as a whole, is still in its infancy. You’re not meant to be your best self, yet.

Consider that you’re not defective, but made in this particular way for a reason.

If your life isn’t turning out the way someone else’s is, perhaps it’s because you need to learn different things for your next journey that they don’t.

In this chapter, we’re not going to go over how to talk to other people, because that’s pressing our religious thoughts on them, but we’ll use it to create better dialogues with ourselves.

Wrapping up this chapter talking about the benefits of using the Watchmaker strategy in your everyday life.

It can sometimes help to see yourself as the animal that you are.

You have ancient genes in you because you are an ancient creature.

“You” are not all one thing.

Parts of your mind are cutoff from the conscious experience… and yet, they are still influencing you.

It can sometimes help you to make more rational decisions to stop and consider which brain is currently motivating your actions.

We’ll never know for sure, but we can take some guesses.

Things like Confirmation Bias and getting angry when people believe something different.

Evolutionary thinking can help us make sense of emotions that are in conflict with one another.

Most of our emotions come from some evolutionary advantage. They helped our ancestors get this far. We can thank them for their service and send them on their way.

Reminding yourself that you’re just an animal that spawned here and is trying your best can help put your current status into perspective.

We’re not going to talk in this lesson how to speak to other people from an evolutionary perspective, because that can be taken as pressing your religious views on them.

But, we are going to talk about how to use this strategy to develop a more useful internal dialogue.

We’ll talk about how you can improve your life using these strategies.

Divide the origins of your thoughts into different tiers of programs starting with the lowest level ones.

Programs that are more complex, but still operate outside of the access of conscious programs.

Programs that don’t stay the same as they came out of the box. They become changed by the environment.

One way to look at our stubbornness when it comes to facts.

Another way to look at some of the odd quirks we engage in that don’t make sense… at first.

Your conscious mind has a lot of work it has to do.

A new way to look at those so-called NPCs.

Here, we’ll look at a few ways you can change the way you talk about human behavior or oddities.

You’ll be able to take these new skills into your daily life to become stronger and more resilient.

A nice little anecdote to get us started with this concept.

I’ve found that, when thinking of things in this way, people make a lot more sense.

If we didn’t already know about bias, this would predict it.

If you look for it, you can watch certain keywords trigger a record-match to occur…

How the Matching Game could predict the Horn and Hallo Effects (if we didn’t already know about it).

There’s something that’s failing to connect one thing to another.

Some matches will be stronger and more urgent than others.

Threats get encoded with a much bigger trigger than ordinary events.

A single event in a small sample pool will have a bigger impact than that same event in a bigger sample pool

How the Matching Game predicts some observable tendencies.

Thinking in these different terms can help you become more charismatic.

Explore ways to improve your life with the Matching Game.

It’s a simple concept, really…

We can look at it like an exchange of engines…

It helps if you think of there being thousands of mini-engines with very minor jobs scattered all throughout your brain. Let’s talk about some of them…

When one of those engines find something alarming, they send out a signal for attention.

The most important engine. Also the only conscious engine. Much bigger than the other engines and has multiple other engines churning inside it.

How to use this new thought process to think through conversations more thoughtfully. Lots of thinking being done here.

How to gain even more control and direction in your life by using the Multi-Engine Strategy.

There are photons you can’t see right in front of you.

…and yet, photons are the only thing you’ll ever see… even if sometimes they’re invisible.

We’re all trapped inside our skulls with only electrical impulses to keep us company.

The memory and the current moment.

Look at the situation, your assets and liabilities, and make the most of what you’ve got.

A new perspective on our internal voice.

How will considering things in this new light change how you move through your day-to-day life?

Learn how to peer into this part of yourself and accept it for what it is.

Identify how your shadow self has helped you survive at some point in the past, even if it was your ancestors.

How to use your shadow self in a way that meets your objectives… both personal and altruistic.

Facing the darkest true part of yourself is hard, but it’s worth it.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a common tool used by mental health professionals.

We’ll talk about common cognitive distortions and how they could be holding you back in life.

In this lesson, we’ll go over techniques you can use in your life to help you relax and relieve stress.

This is helpful for people who catastrophize and frequently imagine worse-case scenarios for things ahead.

Concrete steps to a better, happier, healthier you.

There’s a reason why these methods are used by the people who understand the human mind.

We’re going to change it up this time and talk about the benefits first.

Strategies for being a little happier every single day.

…and how your personal attachment style impacts your relationships.

What is anxious attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

What is avoidant attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

What is disorganized attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

How to develop a secure attachment style.

Your future partners will thank you… and so will Future You.

Change your life by keeping a journal of things you’re accountable for and things you’re not.

I don’t know much about stoicism… yet. I’ll research it heavily for this section, but I do know that many people have reported it changed their life.

Stoicism and our modern usage of the word “stoic” don’t always align.

I’ll add more lessons to this section as I do research.

If you’re in a low place, framing where you’re at as part of your hero’s (or anti-hero’s) journey can help you get up off the ground.

Consider this the start of your epic novel about your journey from where you are now to where you’re going.

Things might feel darker before they feel better.

Don’t be afraid of taking a while to get here.

There’s a lot of talk out there about “toxic masculinity.” This is his healthier cousin.

There are many ways to provide your protection… both for yourself and others.

Focus on how to be a good leader - not how to be a good boss.

Even if you’re not a leader in anything externally, you can still be a leader in your own life.

Another healthy masculine trait is care-taking.

Strength and empathy are a powerful combination in any human, but especially men.

Keep yourself grounded so you can be a strong leader of yourself, your family, and your community.

Tear down the moldy and damaged parts of your internal environment to make way for a better life.