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During the early years of my teaching career in Finland, I realised that I have a superpower - people tell me things. They tell me all kinds of things and tend to open up far past where they would normally be culturally comfortable. Through observation, there is a simple reason for this.

Most of my client sessions are about developing personal and interpersonal skills to support professional growth and business results. However, I still teach the odd English class and this morning spent some time with a client who is at a very low level. What I spent some time on today was the valence of words and their emotional weighting to the positive or negative and, the habitual thinking associated with language.

https://i.imgur.com/c6ApUzo.jpg

Our mother tongue comes saddled with all kinds of experiential baggage and the example I will give is a simple word like Mother, who for many might be laden with a positive charge, but for Norman Bates, a quite different emotional value might be evoked. Remember that "emotion" is about the movement of feelings, but it doesn't say which way they move. 

Our thoughts are driven by the emotional baggage of language as it is there that we have developed meaning and context to terminology and concepts themselves and over time, these form thought patterns. When people talk of "destructive thinking patterns", I believe the pattern is at least partly influenced by the emotional valence of the words they use and think in, but that gets off track - "off-track" is a common *habit* of mine.

Habits not only create familiar safe zones, they also lower the brain power required for thinking, as the brain can act on autopilot when staying in its lanes. From a physiological standpoint, the brain is energy intensive and will look for shortcuts to save time and calories by developing rules of thumb that can be applied, even if they are not aware or sensitive of the real conditions. As long as they recognize a pattern, they can fall into a set routine. If they don't recognize a pattern, the brain stays switched on.

For my clients, speaking in English with me essentially forces their minds to leave their known tracks and venture into new areas of thought, as there is far less resistance placed by habits. This means that not only are they more mentally engaged, because of the lack of associated emotions with the words themselves, they can look more objectively at what they are talking about. This means that they can approach for instance, a work challenge from a different perspective, or open up about their personal lives in ways they normally wouldn't.

We are culturally conditioned to act in certain ways and talk about certain topics, and this means that a lot of the discussion that actually affects our daily lives becomes taboo. Things like money concerns, a failing marriage or a chronic illness are often classed "no-go-zones" for open public discussion. This means that a lot of our life experience gets closed into a cultural box, with no outlet.

For me,, I have found that once a person changes into a secondary language, their social guard drops and they start to open up and become much more free, *naturally.* Most do not think about this and they may not even recognize that they are doing it. This could be partly because while they are focusing their efforts on the language, they do not have the mental energy to simultaneously pay attention to the cultural boundaries. However, I think that the lack of emotional attachment to the words themselves magnifies their willingness to share.

I believe, that while people do learn from me, the largest part of my service is being able to give space for an individual to be open with themselves by exploring life with a little more objectivity, and far less emotion. Emotions are harmful, even the good ones. Sure, we all want to feel, but when we attach ourselves to feelings themselves, they can be a key cause of suffering. Attaching oneself to something as transitory as emotions is like falling in love with a cheeseburger, then eating it. AS they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too, and emotions change over time as they are experienced. 

While I write for an audience, I am able to achieve much the same as my clients through my writing. Due to the slowdown of thought through typing speed and my consideration of what I say and to whom, I essentially, disempower the emotions of my thoughts by creating the time to feel and then process them before blurting them out into the world. 

Often when I write, I am in a mild flow state where the world gets closed out and narrows into a small area of thought where my mind doesn't wander  to the problems of my world, but does seek for tangents that arrive relating to my topic - Which is how I get off track and why I never know what the end of my post is going to be, regardless of the starting point. 

While the process and flow makes it all sound like writing is easy for me, flow is only felt when skill is challenged accordingly, which means to feel flow, one has to be somewhat outside of comfort zones. The conditions need to test skills and push some of them into autopilot, like running on a field of play, but also introduce new challenges that need to be considered, like a dynamic and skilled opponent on the same field. This is where I like to write. 

I was talking with @galenkp today about how I like to write and also to a client about the therapeutic nature of work for me. For my own experience of flow, a feeling that is enjoyable in hindsight, I require my skills to be pushed, which means working. For me, Steem *is work,* in the sense that it pushes my skills in several areas, plus I have to also consider the dynamic opponent that the ecosystem offers from a technological and social perspective. 

Steem is addictive, and while some are addicted to the potential to earn, that is only one of the factors that comes into play in creating the conditions that I require for my own sense of success, which is meeting the challenges I face. For me, this is the Proof-of-Brain mechanism in play, not the curation to evaluate content.

I know that this might not be the Proof-of-Brain mentioned in the whitepaper and many might disagree, but there are many games going on at Steem and it seems that many do not really know which they are playing. I believe that while many might blame the complexity of the ecosystem and internal noise for not giving a clear path, for me, the path *is* clear. 

*I spend my time doing things that I consider create and support the conditions that empower me to be the best version of myself I can be.*

My path is not your path. And I wonder about all of those negative voices in the world spending their time and energy in places doing what they obviously don't like and whether they consider what they are doing ti evoking the best in them. Perhaps, they got into something for the wrong reasons and rather than adapt to the ecosystem, their autopilot habits kicked in and it became obvious they aren't suited to the conditions - but stay because they still want the results. 

While people blame Steem for their experience, everyone needs to remember one thing about the Steem blockchain. Steem doesn't do anything by itself, all it does is track user behaviors. People should remember this when it comes to evaluating the *real reasons* why outcomes are what they are. 

Know thy self. 

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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