The concept of Dual Worlds and the ABCDE model

The concept of Dual Worlds and the ABCDE model

Very rightly said

Life is complicated, and to achieve things that we all need is often very difficult. Some may remain contended with what the little they have, yet on the other hand some may demand more, and more, and even more. And my question is, why not? Every person has the potential to become great, in any field. If you try enough, you can be a successful student, scholar, photographer, scientist, pianist and just anything else. Life's tasks, in proper and effective life management process, are thus to be divided broadly into three main classes: 

1. Daily tasks: These are must-dos that you must perform in order to keep yourself alive and breathing. Additionally, as you perform your daily tasks with better degree of success, it automatically powers you up for your other goals. 

2. Short-term goals: Like, learning to play the guitar or piano. Or maybe learning to speak a new language, or play chess. These are goals that can be achieved if you stick to learning it for a while, and within a few months you'll achieve skills required to perform them. Short-term goals can only be achieved properly if and only if you incorporate into your daily routine of tasks the necessary steps required to accomplish them. That is, say you're learning a new language. Then, you must do something to add to your current level of understanding regarding the language, maybe do a bit light-reading using it, or speak it for a while etc as a part of your daily routine. 

3. Long-term goals: These are life-time achievements that you'd like to enjoy, for example, being an IIT engineer or a particle physicist. They require careful planning, and a lot of devotion to the task itself. 

In order to be more successful in your daily life, there are foul distinct viewpoints or 'modes of life' as I call them, which you can incorporate into your life to make it better than before. First of all, life improvement is really important nowadays, because just by changing our very notion about the world and its different elements, we can live more happily than before. Before we begin, let me elaborate a bit about the concept of 'dual worlds'. 

We live in a strange and yet seemingly marvellous universe. In this world, we happen to have some degree of control, and yet at other times we just feel we're powerless to do anything capable of changing its very course. The proponents of Arya Samaj or the Vedantists of Hinduism, or the Islams or the Protestants might interpret this differently by including something called 'soul', but to be honest unless any credible information if found out regarding its existence, the soul (and God, as well) are as good as non-existent. Besides, if they can't change or affect your lives, why are you supposed to believe in them, and learn the lines of prayer to appease the entities you're aren't even sure exist at all? So, here is a better and an alternative way to improve your life, logical life improvement in the light of neuroscience and psychology. 

Learn to be an optimist, it's far cooler
than being a pessimist :)

In my opinion, the world itself can be classified into two major divisions, namely the 'physical realm', where everything obeys the laws of physics, and the 'mental world', resulting out of how you perceive the physical world. The physical or material world is the entire universe itself, with you yourself acting as one of its elements. It's like Set theory once again, you're just A, belonging to the universal set U. And in this U, you have to interact with A`, your complement, a disjoint set that doesn't include you. The physical world is just way too difficult to be changed by a single person overnight, and you actually have little to zero capacity of changing it. On the other hand, in your 'mental world', you're the captain absolute. You are the centre of your mental or personal world, because this mental world is nothing other than a model or simulation of reality that is run by the 'software' or neural engineering of your brain. You actually have the power to change everything. That's because you are in charge of your feelings. 

Let me elaborate my point with an example. Say, you're returning from the market one day and a crow just drops its faeces on your shirt. You can't change the fact, because it has already happened, and it is an action that took place in the physical world. But more importantly, anger and irritation grow inside you, that is, they cloud your mental world. You CAN CHANGE this. If you just get too angry and start cursing at the crow, your blood pressure will rise and your precious energy and time (that would be spent better in other activities) would be wasted. Since you can't change the reality, why not therefore plan a suitable course of action, guided by logic? Just accept it, "okay, this is just bad. But well, the good thing is, my home is nearby and I'll soon be in a clean shirt. This one just needs a bit cleaning, that's all", you smile and go away. The other people who might have made fun of you otherwise are disgusted at having been denied the excellent opportunity to have some good time at the expense of your anger. This is logic, this is the ability to change your life, changing the very way you perceive things. 

Peace of mind is absolutely required, and this cannot be achieved in the name of God or any related phenomenon. You just need to concentrate, because within your brain is the very seat of intelligence, logic and reason. This is the Pre-Frontal cortex, that has the potential to make you more powerful, more reasoning and more logical than before. Don't give in to your emotions, because they would always misdirect you. Instead, give in to logic and reasoning. Try to maximize what you get from your life by utilizing every moment that you get. This is life, this is the better way of living. 

The ABCDE model, in another way

The physical world lives on, while the mental world is born with you and dies with you alike. It's just a simulation of reality that is indescribably precise, getting a constant flow of input via the sense organs. It's just a model of reality. But the main difference is, you are the boss in your mental world. In computational language, every single event that is happening around you acts as a sort of input. Your brain takes in the input, processes it, and releases the output based on which you're acting yourself. 

This is also known as the ABCDE model, where 

 

A = Activating event (input)

B = Belief (what's already stored inside, and this affects your initial response)

C = Casual Response (what you're willing to do, urged by your emotional brain)

D = Decision (what your Primate brain or pre-frontal cortex decides)

E = Execution (what you're actually doing in response). 

Or simply, Input => Process => Output. 

You have minimal control over the input, but you can actually alter the output by altering your processing technique. 

Here's another beautiful example from my real-life experience. I was just showing my mother the different parts of South Calcutta, close to the Victoria Memorial a couple of days ago. A bunch of scruffy boys, somewhat older than me, were sitting beside the central grounds (Gorer Math, for those of you familiar with Calcutta), started talking nonsense like "Huh, showing Calcutta! What a loser! Ha ha" and they all started laughing at me. Now, this acted as the A or Activating Event in my case. I did nothing wrong. Politely saying (and now too loudly either) "See Maa, that's the way leading to Victoria Memorial" isn't anything bad. Yet, they started cracking jokes. Why? Because it's their nature. Most people would try to get their anxieties off by mocking, criticizing or pulling the leg of someone for no good reason, and this behaviour arises as a by-product of evolution and natural selection. Not going into further details why some people are like that, let me go on with my story. So, their behaviour triggered inside me my already existent belief (that acted as a sort of guidance system), that whenever anyone mocks you for no good reason, they're doing something wrong and you should just protest. This completed phase II or B of the ABCDE model. Now, my normal response was eagerness to protest. I could have said "Hey you bunch of shitty, scruffy maggots, what's your problem?". That's anger, the casual response or C built up within me. But before executing it, I wanted to analyze the situation. Between C and E (executing of response), there is a D or Decision phase. So, I examined the situation, thought that I've only come here to take a couple of good shots of Victoria Memorial and Gorer Math, and show my mother (who isn't very much familiar with these parts of Calcutta) the very same. We've thus come for a little bit of local travelling, and if I just give in to my anger and say something rebuking in return, the only possible outcomes will be either further mocking and rebuking by those guys, or even a direct fight in which I'll be severely outnumbered, one to four I guess. 

So, my decision was to just walk on and ignore those fellows, and I executed that plan. The entire event  remained in my memory, but the feeling of anger vanished when I told myself "It's alright, stay calm and stay cool. Enjoy the beauty around you and use your camera to shoot a couple of nice photos". That's the way the ABCDE model works. 

You have minimal control over A,B and C, but you can actually control D and by that extension E. So, use it well, and be guided by logic and reason rather than emotions. This makes life simpler and better than before.