The Hierarchy of You

Environment > mood > feelings > thoughts > actions > habits > life.

Energy… Motivation… such an important, critical piece to getting things done.

I missed my daily blog yesterday. I was out of the house from 4pm to 5am… helping my folks with their show… its pretty cool..

But I was so low energy… too busy moping and borderline depressed… not feeling sorry for myself, Im done with that… Granted, part of it was because I havent been able to spend much of any time with my S.O.

That got me down… but mostly I just couldnt explain it… I just *felt* off all day… idk if it was my poor diet of late or super late/screwed up sleeping habits or lack of sun and exercise or what… I just felt like a lacked some major *something*.

I still felt like that today, albeit to a lesser degree. Thus why I failed to motivate myself into finishing or even making much progress on some projects I had in mind.

I suppose it all comes down to recognizing all, or at least the most important factors that contribute to … me. To how I live my life.

Lets break it down.

Your environment creates your mood, your mood dictates your feelings, your feelings shape your thoughts, your actions become your habits, and your habits determine your life.

Environment

Your environment is all the data your body takes in and thus is your first and biggest decider on your fate. This includes the people you surround yourself with, the state of your physical location, and the things (food, media, light, sounds, etc) you consume.

Mood

Your mood is how your body responds to all of that data from your environment. Your mood is how you know you are uncomfortable, or lacking something important, or are safe and satisfied. Its the vague sensation you get when something is wrong but you dont know why, how, or anything… just that something is off and you need to move. Its not just negative… it can also be positive… the general sensation of everything being alright, in order, manageable, or even great. Either way, your mood colors your perception of just about everything in your environment.

Feelings

Your feelings are the emotions your body conveys to your mind for more direct interpretation. Its the feeling of irritability, frustration, and even anger one gets when you realize you havent eaten or gotten enough sleep in a while. Its the sadness, apathy, and discouragement you feel when everything just seems off… Its the joy, optimism, and gratefulness that helps one feel like they can take on the world and come out just fine, it not on top. Your feelings help you understand what you perceive.

Thoughts

Your thoughts are of course what allows you to communicate your feelings. Not only to others… but to yourself. Sometimes you might feel something, but not know why or how you got to such an emotional state. Thus you think about it to figure out which data your body has taken in from the environment and how it impacted your mood… and thus your feelings. Of course its much more fluid and intuitive than that: I am so annoyed at this person. Got me in a bad mood being selfish and stingy.” is just a really simple and basic example of how quickly and fluidly your thoughts communicate feelings. But thoughts are not only responsive. Thoughts are the central, turnkey piece of you. They are the most effective way to change how you feel about something. Though you can do so by just willing yourself to feel better or do some action, almost everything requires some manner of thought first. Therefore, the best of us master our thoughts first in order to impose some measure of control on everything else. Nonetheless, your thoughts communicate your understanding of the world such that you feel the need to act.

Actions

Your actions are what make things happen. Your actions are the primary way for you to communicate your inner world such that others may understand you. How you act can be responsive or proactive. It can be influenced by the mood your feelings have coerced or cooperated with your thoughts to justify any move you make. Thus this is how you carry out your intent, your will, and your desires. Whether that be to recoup from a bad mood or maintain a good mood, actions can change the very environment, and thus every other part of you. However, actions are almost always driven by thoughts, thus they are not the turnkey, merely the vehicle.

Habits

Your habits are the roadmap, or perhaps the road, the path your vehicle of actions travels at the behest of your thoughts and feelings. This is what allows you to radically change your environment and to maintain a certain level of balance. Habits create a cycle where your actions reinforce your thoughts’ justification of your feelings and thus your overall mood derived from the environmental inputs. Because the environment is beyond your control, and your mood is just a thermometer of sorts, the inputs you choose to extract or focus on from your environment are paramount. Habits are the process of acting on a previously established perception of the world (or yourself) to reinforce that state of being. Therefore, a bad habit is born from a negative perception of the world/self where your bad mood created a negative feeling that made you think a certain action was okay… like eating junk food or watching tv all day or whatever, perhaps because you feel like no one cares about what you do anyways. And vice versa for a good habit. Not that habits can be born from the ‘opposite’ mood… meaning you could have established a bad habit because you feel good scrolling through facebook and thought that it would be nice to maintain that feeling; so facebook is the first and last thing you do everyday. Or maybe you used to feel depressed all the time, but you knew creating stuff and expressing yourself made you feel good, so you created a habit where you would write at a specific time everyday and reinforce it by napping in the day and eating right so you have the energy. Habits are how you maintain whatever perceptions you have.

Life

Your life is… the culmination of all these things. It is the overall journey… You can learn to live life with purpose and a manner of control… or simply as any other animal that is slave to its environment. Your life can be one of self agency: constantly self correcting no matter the situation; or it can be one of reaction: always dependent upon how you feel… how some data influenced your feelings and thus guided your thoughts into performing scripted actions. You can become master of your strings, or puppet to them.

The best of us do the best we can to realize these facets of ourselves in order to decide for ourselves how our lives turn out.

Through metacognition…

We can analyze our feelings to discern our mood and change how we perceive the world by focusing on only certain inputs, as well as take the actions necessary to build habits that feed back into living a great life by molding our very own environment.

Success and failure are merely perceptions of the inputs we choose to allow in as a part of us.

Willpower is the amount of strength and confidence with which we apply our thoughts to shape our feelings or actions.

Thus I why I make it a habit to continue, no matter what the situation or the perception, on my #PathofaTrillionaire…