It was unlocked hugely by an insight I got long ago that is a deep truth that I always keep an eye on, which is that;

The more honest you are with others, the more honest you are with yourself.

It is one of the effects of “mirror neurons” phenomenon and the realisation that our subconscious, our “self” does not explicitly distinguish between you and other people the way your prefrontal cortex and conscious mind does. This is old research by now but to me it makes so much sense and I see the effects in people around me all the time.

In dream or deep meditation, “god experiences” (I forget the English name for it) or with psychedelics, this comes to the surface and provokes many “we are one” messages and compassionate teachings such as the golden rule and karma etc. But bottom line, most of our brain just doesn’t give exactly a fuck about who is who at any given time. Just the relationship between them.

Similarly, if you talk down on yourself, you are also more likely to feel like other people are not enough. We all mirror each other and react to subconscious signals every day. This is an cascading effect, that will become exponentially useful if you consciously choose and gradually adjust how to be towards others.

(I kind of go off on this tangent now, because I apparently like talking about it but feel free to ignore the rest if you aren’t into the specifics of my understanding of why it is like this)

Our bodies are talking to each other (subconscious to subconscious) with immense bandwidth, from smells and hormones, microexpressions, physical notes (leaving objects or others in some specific state). But most of it is discarded and not raised to system 1 (frontal lobe)

By learning other people’s predictions, our body can predict events and sometimes chains of several events between several people, and intuit how they came to be at a certain place at a certain time or why the car keys are in a new place, inferring other events, and all these predictions occurs in system 2, subconsciously and continually so that our focus can be on what’s at hand.

By being predictable we incur safety and signal affinity. Any deviation from normal will be evaluated by system 2 if it should warrant a notice to system 1 to investigate, and that will most often be a signal of discomfort, as unpredictability of any kind is an “expensive” metabolic operation.

A very dry explanation that perhaps gives a little insight into the crisscrossing neurological mechanics. It’s good to first understand that the body is continuously budgeting for any prediction error, and for instance meeting new people or interacting with someone that speaks differently than we expect, is draining from a pure metabolic standpoint. The body needs to have prepared glucose and other material and if it happens many times in a row with no rest period for the thoughts to settle, the stress can make you straight up ignore what others say and just answer your prediction to what they just said. It’s the cheapest mode of operation and most common during a day.

I digress a lot but it’s fun because I just pieced together a pretty solid understanding of the whole and previously I had just so many sporadic and isolated insights that lately has found each other into a cohesive model and it’s kind of cathartic to just share it blatantly. It’s a tiny bit probable that my ADHD medication makes me ramble a bit and I hope I didn’t overwhelm ya. Cheers!