Updating your Psychology

Throughout my life, there has been a peculiar reoccurrence. I have never really been the first pick - the first student, the best sportsman, the best in co-curricular, etc.- but I have been a close second. This has manifested in my attending the second-best engineering school, cracking the second-best MBA examination, being on the dean’s list but not being the gold medallist, etc. It is not that I did not want to be first but I think somewhere I was happy being good enough.

I tried to understand the reasons for this. I recently started reading a bit about psychology and how it affects us. The book “ A Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Cambell” talks about the subconscious and the link between our dreams and our subconscious. If we are in the simulation, the dreams provide insight into how we would behave as NPCs. It shows the broad based parameters in which we operate. Why do we do certain things, how do we react to extreme events and what are the things that matter to us or are guiding us? These rules in our subconscious invisibly guide us. They determine how we act and react to situations. If we want to change what we do, we must change this code. The first step is to understand these rules - which means to understand our psychology.

Hence, I have started doing an exercise. Just after waking up, I try to remember my dream, and in this half-sleepy state, I plan to write it down. Some days, I also try to make the connection between why it came, what is affecting me, and what I need to change, and other days, I just record it. My hope is that slowly, I start making subtle shifts and change my mindset from not being satisfied being the second to actually going for the kill.

I need to be at a point where I should be ruthless and aim to destroy the person ( at the given activity) who is first than just to beat him marginally.

That is the NPC rule I want.