Understanding People

From: Understand People series playlist by Jem Veda

Ego

Ego is the self-concept each of us has made up, constructed arbitrarily.

Ego turns out differently depending on both the nature and nurture.

The more we are in the ego, the more self-absorbed, self-oriented, selfish we are and vice-versa. Bigger ego obstructs seeing the bigger picture. Ego demands that you are right all the time and you’re owed all you want.

How to spot ego:

• constantly enthralled in who they are
• always need to share their perspective even if not asked
• very resistant to hearing and understanding other perspectives

Projection

We project our own experiences, thoughts and beliefs to others.

Projection happens most when we see something in others that we don’t want to see in ourselves. But it also happens more casually because it does not make sense to figure out each person and their particular circumstances fully.

Always doubt your perspective to avoid projection.

People Live In Bubbles

We all live in our heads and it is almost impossible to truly understand any other persons bubble. The bubbles consist of personal anxieties, experiences and beliefs.

Each of our bubbles (ways of thinking) benefits us individually. We think the way we do because it is useful for us. Even if someone seems crazy, realize that their way of thinking helps them.

Our bubbles become individual realities for us and it may become difficult to see how it would be possible to see outside of it.

Need For Belonging

There have been multiple studies where people will dismiss what they actually see and hear in favor of agreeing with whatever the group has agreed on.

Need for belonging creates emergence and allows us to build ever greater things and structures, but the need also distorts our views and may come at the cost of our authenticity. This need may also lead to greater influence of manipulation of our selves.

Scarcity Mindset

Scarcity is a mindset that is taught, it’s not inherent to an extent. There literally isn’t unlimited resources, but people tend to overemphasize lack. Important to note that a lot of the time, giving produces MORE not less than taking, even though the scarcity mindset will drive more selfish hoarding (The Art of Loving - what is love).

Even limited things and events will come to you again, even if in different forms.

Self Sabotage

Preventing oneself from doing something to avoid failure, discomfort, usually in endless loops (like discussed in Dr K’s Guide - Anxiety).

View yourself as what you wish to become, make it part of your daily design, not as something to achieve. You don’t arrive at the ideal, you must live it.

Discomfort seems more discordant than it seems, it seems like an awful thing to avoid, yet it leads to the best stories, the most growth.

Pleasure & Avoiding Pain

Getting things out of the way clears the mind. Annoying things take time and effort, seem not to give much in return. Yet avoiding them literally takes brain power.

All goals also contain annoyance and pain, which can not be avoided otherwise there will be a wall.

The brain kind of gets used to, and adjusts baselines, so it becomes delicate to work towards building the baseline you want. Baseline of only seeking pleasure may lead to a very complacent life, which might be very comfortable and totally okay, but it may lead to a design that will make it hard to take what you want and need.

Victim Mindset

It is easier to blame anything and everything else rather than ourselves. But it also is a toxic way to rid yourself of your responsibility, authority, efficacy.

Individuation

Teenage years, puberty is the first step in realizing that we are whole kind of separate beings with their own self. Which in turn also brings a more visceral sense for interpersonality and the need for acceptance. Which in turns starts shaping the persona, shadow and the self.

Human need for autonomy and control is fulfilled by having the possibility of saying no, denying (as described in Never split the difference - negotiating). Which is where the rebellious parts really start to emphasize the actions, especially in puberty.

The more one goes against the grain the more people it will alienate. The ones who will not be alienated, will however be the truest to you. On the other hand staying in the crowd and getting validation is comfortable.

Limiting Beliefs

What we perceive as being possible and impossible. Left unchecked it can start looping and strengthening on each one, things might start to seem more set in stone than in reality.

Kind of the brains way of making connections between experiences and solidifying them into limiting thought patterns.

Identity Traps

What you WANT and what you NEED (like in Zom 100). Need here means what we think we need, what we are fed from society as a whole, expectations of family, friends, power figures. Need, from the outside. Want, from the inside.

Traps:

• that you need to be somebody else, that you need to fit yourself into a shape that’s not you, that’s more “perfect”
• that others will do things as you would

Consumerism

A lot of what we buy is artificial solutions to artificial problems. We really have to extend and notice to see if what we buy is necessary or result of manipulation.

Social Status

It is very relational and depends on each culture how social status dynamics work. Even more specific when in smaller groups inside those cultures.

Status components, weights depend on culture and group:

• social proof
• confidence
• attractiveness
• appearance
• possessions
• associates
• beliefs
• job
• mate
• country of origin
• speech and tone, non-verbal components and attitude
• languages spoken and fluency
• education

Addictions

Body’s way of fixing problems is to hang on to anything that alleviate or make some problem better, even if temporarily and in short term. The less support and worse the problems and lacks are the easier it is to get addicted.

It’s never about the addiction itself, rather the underlying problem that feeds on it. Where does the addiction come from and where will it lead?

Most commonly:

• validation, attention
• eating
• caffeine
• porn
• being right
• ideology
• sex
• drugs
• social media, the phone
• arguing
• nicotine
• shopping
• hate
• looks
• accumulating things and wealth
• dependent companionship
• gaming
• comparison
• opinions of others
• gossip
• keeping busy, fomo

Self-Interest

Everyone goes for what’s best for them.

Selfishness is taught to be bad, yet it is necessary to an extent. If you have no love and energy to give, then you need to focus on your self interest more.

Each relationship should be two-way. One party can’t only take or only give.

Like the cycle of life according to Hinduism: first you depend, then you learn, use what you’ve learned for yourself, in the end you use what you’ve learned and experienced to give back. But first you have to learn and focus on yourself to even have something to give back.

Ego Defense Mechanisms

Things we do to protect our egos and emotions:

• Displacement - take negative event and project it to something less threatening
• Regression - stress and anxiety lead to regressing to simpler times
• Repression - push down and eliminate traumatic events
• Projection - project thoughts, feelings and beliefs onto other people
• Deflection - brush any attack or question related to pain points
• Intellectualization - overuse logic and mental gymnastics to explain everything and dismiss emotion
• Rationalization - twist and turn facts, opinions to fit their beliefs and actions after the fact
• Sublimation - channeling negative emotions and thoughts to something positive, different
• Denial - not come to terms with something that occurs, deny reality
• Distortion - change things and events in the mind to defend the ego
• Reaction-Formation - covering up true feelings, going roundabout to avoid directly acknowledging negative emotions
• Compartmentalization - separate parts of life into different lives
• Victim mentality - give away locus of control and turn responsibility off oneself

Self-Deception

Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

“I’m fine” - it’s okay to be not fine

To avoid:

• ask questions - In this moment am I deceiving myself? How did I deceive my self in that situation before?
• feedback - Don’t dismiss feedback from others, even subtle non direct way
• tracking your actions - Raw facts, what have I really done, requires a lot of honesty

Neuroticism

Defined as a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings. Susceptibility to negative emotions. Neurosis exists on a spectrum, everyone is on that spectrum. Persons with elevated neuroticism may respond poorly to stress, interpret ordinary as threatening, experience minor frustrations as hopelessly overwhelming.

It can be described as dependence on outside factors to align with internal view of world.

Important to notice our neuroticism to prevent it from distorting our view too much:

• what sets you off and why?
• what kind of comfort does your neurotic tendency bring?
• when did a tendency begin?

Synchronicity

When a group of people begins to think in one direction, their “thought/brain waves” superimpose over on another, and in the ocean of energy they create invisible but real energy-information structures - kind of like pendulums

Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are. We are very heavily influenced by who we are around. We have to be mindful of who we want to be and surround ourselves with people that facilitate and accept that. Also covered in Childhoods of exceptional people

Social Games

• Cherry picking - dropping in to get something specific, very transactional relationship
• Fronting - faking a lifestyle, status, beliefs to gain something
• Passive-Aggression - not stating things, using negative emotions under the surface / indirectly
• Victimhood - play victim to gain sympathy and push responsibility
• Reductionism - simplify or cut up problems too much, removing nuance
• Indirection - avoiding the problem, pushing the elephant in the room forward to avoid discomfort
• Downplaying - dismissing problems, emotions, opinions, situations
• Humor - going around difficulties through humor, using that as a way to cope or to use as a crutch
• Gaslighting - pushing responsibility for their actions onto others through manipulation, manipulating the worldview of others to fit their view instead
• Self-serving bias - dismiss evidence that does not support their beliefs, ego
• Framing - omitting information, changing focus to something instead of other things in the big picture

Trauma

Trauma - challenging emotional consequences that living through a distressing event can have for an individual.

Deepest trauma comes from the childhood as that is when we are the cleanest sheets and there is no ability to contextualize. After that all of what comes next is kind of piled on top. Except PTSD which might be even more serious and seriously disrupt life by recurring through triggers.

Brain tries to protect you and is always looking for threats. And the brain takes past experiences and tries to avoid and protect you from them if they were negative.

Lying

Reasons people lie:

• gain a reward
• protect personality, the ego
• avoiding negative emotions
• privacy
• flattery
• maintain previous lies
• status and admiration
• power, manipulation
• bolster arguments
• get attention
• avoid awkwardness
• avoid embarrassment
• convenience
• distorted beliefs
• pleasure from the sake of lying
• avoid negative feedback

Attachment Styles

Key to Writing Criminally Good Relationships

How caregivers act towards and meets child’s needs forms the foundations for how the child perceives and acts within relationships. It’s like an early template is formed for all future relationships.

It’s a matter of what and to what degree we find safe.

Styles:

• Secure - caregivers were reliable; comfort in expressing, secure in the wild so to speak, less or no fear of the unknown
• Anxious / Fearful - caregivers weren’t consistent; comes from unpredictability in childhood; results in constant fears, need for reassurance at every step, deem themselves as less worthy, fear of abandonment
• Avoidant / Dismissive - lack of emotional or physical responsiveness; mistrust in others / environment, need to though it out on their own, high self reliance, overly value independence and fear interdependence, fear of disappointment and pain, hard to open up
• Disorganized / Ambivalent - particularly tumultuous, unpredictable or neglecting; desire and fear in conflict, push and pull, want to feel the love but also maintain a distance

To reform and redesign attachment:

• Get comfortable being alone, truly alone, alone with thoughts and the self: hobbies, events, eating out, parties, bars etc
• Study your anchors, what sets you off, what do you have strong reactions to?
• Find your comfort zone and comfortable habits and analyze them, doubt them, hard to do as the ego really likes consistency
• Don’t let thought loops go unchecked, find feedback, open up
• Give people time to show themselves, they might have really strong walls up, it takes time for people to show who they really are, this also helps rebuild the thought process of mistrust and assumptions
• Disassociate from the past, the ego will want to hold on to the past as “it’s what we are”, yet it can prevent us from growing into what we want
• Meditate - Dr K’s Guide - Meditation
• Reframing situations and events in the past, find new viewpoints
• Self-awareness