A piece of unintuitive advice
Every day, I catch myself thinking something that I know I shouldn’t. Someone cuts me off on the way to work, and I immediately think terrible things that I dare not repeat here. I see someone with a bumper sticker or pice of clothing bearing some slogan, and I immediately write them off as a person. After finishing a few drinks at a party, I think about another, edging toward full-on party mode, on a Tuesday night. Though these are not the worst impulses I have, they’re all related to that part of me that formulates the worst impulse — that selfish ever-grasping impulse for more — for power, for pure, unbridled expression of whatever emotion I happen to be feeling.
I live 99% of my life — as I’m guessing you do — suppressing this worst impulse. I try to be generous, kind, and practice restraint. That is fine; it’s what we should be doing most of the time. But only doing that is actually not good for us. It effectively ignores the deeper issue. If we ever wish to be better people, we need to address those parts of us represent our worst impulses. We need to set aside time to do exactly the opposite of what we spend most of our days doing. Perhaps we can actually gain something if we give way to our worst impulse — at least for a little bit.
Get to Know Your Id
Freud theorized that there are three parts to the human psyche: the ego, the superego, and the id. The Ego and the Super-ego are the parts of the psyche that have been influenced, modified, and restrained by the outside world — incorporating values and norms in order to create a personality in accordance with the balance of civilization. The id, on the other hand, is that raw, wild beast within each person, operating on impulse, instinct, and unadulterated passions.
It’s that id that, since we so wish to control it as adults, we can’t afford to write off. Yes, it is the germ of our worst impulses, and is the driving force behind exactly the actions that we shouldn’t take, but ignoring it while we stifle it is no way to live.
In fact, we ignore or worst impulses at our own peril, and perilous it is. Ignoring your worst impulses is like ignoring the clunking sound coming from your car. You can get by for a while doing it, but eventually, whatever is not working properly will have implications, and you’ll have to address those at some point. If you don’t, everything will eventually grind to a screeching halt — leaving you stranded on a dark roadside.
Diagnosing Yourself
So take a tip from diagnosticians and use the unsavory goings-on in your psyche to figure out the nature of the problem. Like you would follow that bad sound in the engine of your vehicle to figure out where the problem is, take a look under the hood of your mind and follow those unsavory thoughts. They have a basis; they are likely a reaction to something. They didn’t just spring up from nowhere.
But in order to effectively diagnose and treat, you have to sit and observe. You have to sidle up to your id, watch it as it does its thing, without judging it or trying to do anything to it.
You know where this is going: mindfulness. You’ve likely read it in every self-help piece out there, and are probably sick of hearing about it, but there’s a reason it’s ubiquitous these days — it works. Mindfulness is the state that ideally we should all be in as often as possible. There’s nothing fancy about it; it is merely the state of being present in the current moment, and being aware of what’s happening in your mind.
From mindfulness comes the ability to embrace any thought or feeling that pops up, and the the ability to follow it down the rabbit hole to find where it comes from.
Be a Gardener of the Mind
Once you’re down the rabbit hole, you switch from being a mechanic to a gardener. You examine the garden of the mind, infested and overrun with weeds — thoughts and feelings you’d rather not have there. Then you begin the work of pulling out the weeds, tilling the soil around the good stuff in your mind, and cultivating desirable thoughts and feelings. But like gardening, mindfulness takes continuous work to cultivate a bountiful yield of good stuff. You have to be vigilant about identifying and rooting out the stuff you don’t want in your mind.
But, what we often fail to realize is that in order to root out something — be it plant or habit of thought — you have to first grasp it. Think about pulling a stubborn weed. The grip has to be firm, but still a bit loose. If it’s too tight, when you attempt to pull out the weed you will tear it where it meets the ground. The root remains, just under the soil, and the weed grows back — within days, keeping the already strong root as another weed grows. If that happens enough, you will have to dig into the soil, down to the bottom of the root system, and remove the whole thing using a more laborious process.
All of this applies to rooting out aspects of your psyche as well. Fear, anxiety, sadness, anger — they often have deep roots in the fertile soil of the mind. To really get them out, you have to take hold of them and dig to where they have roots. That means taking hold of those negative thoughts and emotions.
That means digging into the soil of your mind — the deep soil that hasn’t seen daylight in years. It means taking care to make sure that you get to the deep roots of the negative thoughts and emotions, carefully taking them out. More than anything, it means devoting time and attention to your own mind, and how it works.
But once that work is done, any future weeds are easily extracted. Being even somewhat mindful, you’ll notice when an unsavory thought pops up, and it will be easier to gently remove. I won’t lie. I’m not there yet — few people are. But it’s something to aim for.
Just know that your worst impulses are not who you are; they are just weeds in your mind’s garden. So get your hands dirty, and see if you can grow something great.