“Life is ten percent what happens to you
and ninety percent how you respond to it.”
— Charles Swindoll
In this article, I would like to talk about the two aspects of us that coexist within us as one being, namely “the animal aspects of us and the Creative aspects of us”.
The lesson I Learned from Avengers Movies
Now, Recently I was re-watching the Avengers Saga movies which end with its final delivery, the grand finale, in the form of “Avengers: Endgame”.
What happened there was that we were expecting something usual but what we got was unexpected and it got all of our attention and we will have it in our memory for a long time.
Now, the important question is- what did we learn from it?
So, if we see it from an objective point of view, there were two guys far from each other, both super-intelligent but self-absorbed, one was an irresponsible genius (Tony Stark), the other was paranoid and over-responsible (Thanos).
Events happened in their life that leads them to think new thoughts, make new choices, and demonstrate new behaviors which changed them forever.
Then one day, the paranoid one threatened the world of the irresponsible genius who is now becoming a more responsible and good human being.
The genius one win the first battle, which provoked the paranoid one to attack harder, and then events lead them to face each other, the paranoid one defeated the genius and all his friends and took the second most precious thing to him.
So, the genius one survived and accepted the failure and started a family, his friends killed the paranoid one and what’s done is done.
Then after so many years of hopelessness, he was given a second chance to change what happened in the past by moving into the quantum field and bringing infinity stones which are the symbol of all possibilities. They were able to bring the stones and in one snap they change their defeat into victory.
And, as a consequence, they also brought back the paranoid one and there was a war between the two sides and at the end of the fight the genius one, Tony Stark got the stones and used them to remove the paranoid one, Thanos, and his army from existence.
Now if you watch it with concentration you would find that these two characters are like two types of voices in our head, which are always talking, they oppose each other on everything, and when we make any important decision, a war begins between them in our mind, and whoever wins, the decision goes in its favor.
One of them is motivated by survival emotions like fear, anger, etc. which is like Thanos.
Other is motivated by the creative emotion of faith, joy, etc. which is like Tony stark.
Now, why did I bring up this story?
I want you to now think of a time, in your life, when you really had a great idea, you wanted to execute it, and you knew if you are able to do it successfully, you would be the Happiest person.
But the problem was that you didn’t know how to do it, and then a war had begun in your mind, and if you are like most people, you would have given up your idea and let your fear won.
Now, if you see from a logical point of view, everything Thanos did in the movie was driven by the desire to help the life in the universe to survive in the long run. He had experienced the extinction of life on his planet due to overpopulation, so he thought the same thing is going to happen to all life in the whole universe. So, according to him, the only solution was to eliminate half of the population of the universe.
That’s what the survival emotions does, it causes us to choose the worst-case scenario out of the infinite possibilities, and emotionally embrace it and act upon it.
It’s the same with your dream we talked about, when you had that dream you knew that it was a good idea, you knew that it would make your life better, but then you gave that idea to your survival mechanism and it gave you all the logical reason why you should not work on your idea and convinced you that the best thing to do is to give up your idea.
Inner Mechanism within Us
We have a mechanism within us whose sole purpose is to bring conditions, circumstances, and experiences in our life that are in harmony with our mental and emotional states.
This automatic mechanism work either as the survival mechanism or the creative mechanism depending upon our thoughts and feelings.
In his great book “Psycho-Cybernetics”, Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote about this mechanism as-
“Every living thing has a built-in guidance system or goal-striving device, put there by its Creator to help it achieve its goal—which is, in broad terms—to “live.” In the simpler forms of life the goal “to live” simply means physical survival for both the individual and the species.
The built-in mechanism in animals is limited to finding food and shelter, avoiding or overcoming enemies and hazards, and procreation to insure the survival of the species.
In man, the goal “to live” means more than mere survival. For an animal to “live” simply means that certain physical needs must be met. Man has certain emotional and spiritual needs which animals do not have. Consequently for man to “live” encompasses more than physical survival and procreation of the species. It requires certain emotional and spiritual satisfactions as well. Man’s builtin “Success Mechanism” also is much broader in scope than an animal’s. In addition to helping man avoid or overcome danger, and the “sexual instinct” which helps keep the race alive, the Success Mechanism in man can help him get answers to problems, invent, write poetry, run a business, sell merchandise, explore new horizons in science, attain more peace of mind, develop a better personality, or achieve success in any other activity which is intimately tied in to his “living” or makes for a fuller life.”
Survival mechanism
Our built-in mechanism when used as a survival mechanism, its job is to ensure our survival.
It’s the same mechanism used by an animal when it’s chased by a predator, all other function of the body is shut down and all of its energy is used to run from the present danger. It’s also called the stress response, it’s what the body of an organism innately does to protect itself from apparent danger. When it survives the threat or danger in its outer environment body returns back to balance.
When it comes to human beings, this survival mechanism or stress response is turned on when we are in any danger in our outer world as well as when we are thinking of some threat or danger that we have experienced in our past or we might experience in the future.
To keep it simple, think of it this way- when you have an idea or a desire that you want to experience but you have no knowledge or experience on how you are going to accomplish it, then doubt and worries start to come into your mind which turns on the survival mechanism which perceives this new idea as a threat and it starts to bring into your mind all the valid and logical reasons about why it can’t be done, or why you should give up this idea, it also causes you to feel so anxious and uncomfortable that you just want to return back to a normal or familiar feeling.
When you finally decide to give up your new idea and return back to your old normal self, you start feeling better.
It happens with almost all the new things you start working on- like a new job, starting a new business, moving to a new city, starting in a new college, meeting a new person, etc.
The main reason for this is that when we engage in anything new we naturally think about what could go wrong, and unwanted images come on the screen of our mind, so to protect us from those unwanted results the survival mechanism causes us to move back to our comfort zone where we don’t like it but we are comfortable.
That’s how most of us are programmed to live our life, to play it safe.
Creative Mechanism
The creative mechanism is the flipside of the same mechanism. When our built-in mechanism work as a creative mechanism its job is to guide us and provide us with the resources in order to accomplish our desired end goal.
Now, when we have a goal in our mind that we want to accomplish and the doubts and worries begin to come in, but we understand what’s causing them and we don’t get emotionally involved with them then we have a chance to cause our inner mechanism to work as a creative mechanism and help us to accomplish our goal.
We can start by asking ourselves a simple question- how would it feel like when I accomplish my goal?
When we ask that open-ended question we turned on the creative center of our brain whose job is to bring an answer to that question and we automatically begin to see ourselves in our mind as the person who has accomplished that goal.
When we gain enough knowledge on how to do what we want to do, we begin to close our eyes and see ourselves in our mind living in the reality that we want to create, and we get emotionally involved with the images in our mind & begin to feel the emotion ahead of the actual experience, we gave our creative mechanism a project to work on, and it brings that inner experience from thoughts into reality.
Once you have successfully impressed your goal upon your creative mechanism then everything you need to accomplish your goal would come to you through the law of attraction in an orderly sequence of growth.
It would come like a seed grow into a plant and then a tree, everything comes into it in perfect order and at the perfect time.
Think of the Tony stark side of the movie, when he was given the idea to bring back all lost life, he knew what’s at stakes, he knew that there would be a potential danger for him and his family & friends, but instead of giving in to the survival emotions, he thought how amazing it would be to get everybody back.
So, he focused on the desired outcome, get emotionally involved with the idea, took necessary actions, and ultimately accomplished what he wanted. Although in the end he died, but he became immortal in the eyes of all his fans.
Now just imagine, if Thanos, instead of going with survival emotion would have embraced creative emotion or Tony stark would have given in to the survival emotions that were coming into his mind how different the Marvel universe would be.
The same rules apply to you, if you are not living a happy and productive life, it’s probably because you have been living by survival emotions which trigger the survival mechanism and keep you stuck where you don’t enjoy your life. Your life could change completely if you begin to live by creative emotions (faith, courage, compassion, love, joy, worthiness, empowerment, etc.).
The process of change is not going to be easy and everything in you would wanna quit, but I assure you if you keep going, keep overcoming the survival emotions, keep embracing the creative or elevated emotions, and keep working towards you end goal, you would ultimately realize that the struggle you had to go through was worth it.
If you want to learn about the survival and creative mechanism within us in greater details, read Dr. Joe Dispenza’s incredible book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself”, there is a chapter by the title “Survival vs creation” in which you will get to learn the science behind how our brain and body work in survival mechanism and in the creative mechanism. This book will teach you, in an understandable approach, the science of changing your life.
Thank you very much for your time.
-Parvez Alam