Self-Denial
Wake up one morning and you turn on the news, headlines read “Kevin Durant quits basketball to focus on his acting—says that’s where his true passion is…” most of us would react saying KD is in self-denial because we all know his love for basketball.
Recently, an avalanche of fashion jobs came crashing in, and also work at the office. So I decided to take a break from writing and I occupied myself with other avocations. In truth, my writing break started way before the great avalanche, but I convinced myself that I was too busy to write because of the numerous jobs I had.
The break was indeed necessary to refresh and rejuvenate my creative juices, but when was it going to stop? Research shows that the medial prefrontal cortex is involved in processing self-thoughts, and apparently placing a magnet near that part of your brain can disrupt its activities.
It is crazy that consciously, I was aware that inside the subconscious level of my mind, I knew that I was slowly not going back to writing. I was watching myself in a cinema watching me live life, and even though I could see myself watching those bad things, I could not do anything—like it was a movie, nothing can be done but to watch the acting play out. I was a passenger in my own car but this time, I was also the driver too. Guess it’s never too late to order a big magnet.
Inevitably, as time passed, I stopped reading my essays, which I wholeheartedly loved doing; I used my essays as a self-reminder mechanism. Every time I tried to give up I would read Jumping Hurdles, if I was met with an obstacle, I always Cancel the Can’t and do my best at that point to solve the problem. On rainy days, when I get exhausted, I read my essays on Balance and I try to achieve equilibrium in everything I do. When I get greedy, taking on what I can’t, I remind myself that Opportunity kills sometimes. Those have been the pillars that I rested on, but I decided to take a break, to cool off and I almost did not come back on.
How did I almost put out my flame?—unconscious creative suicide.
Self-Reflection
After a long day or a long week, I take out time to see what has been happening in my cognitive home. I replay decisions I took, and try to make out the real reason why I took them. I always try to be honest with myself, this has become a way of life for me. This has made me understand the kind of person I am becoming—I believe that you will always be on the journey to discover who you are until the day you die, it is only then that you can no longer change, your story becomes absolute.
Till now, I still don’t understand why I almost decided to give up, it is uncharacteristic of me, but still, it was a considerable option. I searched for reasons why people lack motivation and most reasons that came up were the case of boredom, routine, lack of interest, etc. But, my case was different, I lacked motivation because I decided to take a break and my brain didn’t want the vacation to end.
In search of an answer I desperately tried to interpret why I lost zeal; I shifted from the part of my mind that wants to articulate my thought process and entered a more relaxed state, where I began thinking of other things, soon thereafter, writing became more of an emergency thought rather than a flowing stream in my mind. This might be misinterpreted as “being too comfortable” but it wasn’t the case, instead I had experienced a mental conformational change that put me in a more passive mood towards writing.
Self-Sabotage and Self-awareness
During the study of evolution, deception has been linked to increasing intelligence among different species of animals. When they become aware of the perceived deception, they create counter-deceptive measures which in turn requires the other organism to come up with a new system to deceive its opponents, inadvertently creating mental growth.
During my internal investigation, I was keen to notice that my mind used new mental strategies on me; telling myself that I had to read something to write something extraordinary, which wasn’t wrong. Honestly, I started researching new materials but never really put in all the required effort cause it was all smoking mirrors, a big facade; even after actively finding new materials, I didn’t use them.
I never really thought being so self-conscious of your thoughts could have a big effect on how you respond to real life adversities.
Does detecting self-deceit make you smarter or makes your subconscious smarter by finding new ways to deceive you?
As I write, I begin to think, Why would my mind play tricks on me? Aren’t we the same? My inner desires and that of mind’s, aren’t they the same? Could they be separate?
Robert Trivers in The folly of fools asked something similar; How can the self deceive the self? He goes on to say that self-deception occurs when our conscious minds are kept in the dark—True and false information may be simultaneously stored, only with the truth stored in the unconscious mind and falsehood in the conscious.
Empirically, let's consider that the mind has some form of autonomy—partial autonomy. Dragging in on Robert again, he explained; Perhaps because the trait is so unconscious, it appears to have a life of its own and often seems to act directly against my own narrow interest. Most times, we do things unconsciously, things we would not permit while conscious.
Are our unconscious selves our real selves?—it is really scary that sometimes we let go of the wheel and let another version of ourselves captain our ships.
Apparently, my best explanation is that when I decided to rest and not think too much, my mind became comfortable with its new state and refused to go back to stressing and thinking of abstract ideas despite it being my sole desire to do so.
I propose that this partial autonomy is what led to my self-sabotage and existential crisis or, could it be another excuse to belie the truth?
The Truth, The Solution
Self deceit is a dangerous variant of deception, one could go as far as saying it is more desperate than the origin concept, because you become your own worst enemy—blind folded in a battle, almost certain that you will lose. Deception is as old as time, it is ever present in all life. It is a survival mechanism; like some viruses that have to undergo conformational change to deceive host cells to gain entry and destroy them internally, typically Trojan horse-like.
The truth is that initially, I wanted my next essay to be better than my previous ones so that became the nuclear power for my excuses—strings of right reasons that pulled me away from my actual goal. Reading more would improve my writing but instead, I found myself not doing anything meaningful. Overcoming this took a lot of thinking as to why I became stagnant because I know well that consistency and practice is key to improving; read all you want, if you don’t practice often, you remain average.
The scary thing was that I was aware of the solution, but I couldn’t make that mental shift to get back on track. Until I realized that this train of thought could be helpful to someone else going through something similar.
How can I claim to provide self-oriented values if I couldn’t overcome a simple but not so simple pause?
This feeling fueled my tank and kick-started my writing. I can gladly say that I am at peace writing this. My advice is, question yourself, decide what you want to do, and do it.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
“ALWAYS REMBER THE REMOTE FOR YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS, AFTER YOU PAUSE REMEMBER TO PRESS PLAY”— ESHEKU EMMANUEL
It’s been an amazing year and I am grateful for the people that followed me on my journey of self-discovery on who I am. I hope my writing helps you as much as it helps me.
Hope you have an amazing week.
Thanks for not leaving me hanging😁😁😁always enjoy ur writing.keep up the good work
Good work. Keep writing. I always look forward to your write up