There is a lot of stress in the world, in daily life. It is ubiquitous, it is commonplace, it is normal, it is accepted, it is expected. We talk about it, we hear about it, we look for it, we find it. We encourage it. We generate it. We let it build. We exaggerate it in our own minds. We dwell on it, we live in it – except we don’t, ‘live’ that is. Being in a state of stress is the very opposite of living. Being in a state of stress is just surviving, and we know it when we step back and look at it. We know that when we are stressed, we are disconnected from our true selves, our true authentic thoughts and beliefs of who we are and who we want to be. We behave in ways that are harmful to ourselves, our lives and to others, especially our loved ones. We thrive off stress – except we don’t. When we are stressed, we are not thriving, we are not living the life we would choose, and deep down we know it.

Stress comes in many forms, eg. worry, doubt, confusion, irritation, annoyance, frustration, discomfort, pain, etc., but the feeling at the heart of all stress is fear. Fear in the broadest sense of the word. In some sense we are feeling insecure, scared, not sure of ourselves, not on firm footing, not fully in control, not feeling satisfied, not having everything we need right now to be able to relax, not feeling fully safe, not feeling fully accepted, not feeling recognised, not feeling important, not feeling respected, not feeling we belong somehow. The feeling of stress, that uncomfortable, comes from the subconscious as a protection mechanism so that we pay full attention to the perceived danger. In that moment, when we are feeling stress in some way, we become fixed on the danger. the greater the feeling, the harder it is to focus on other important issues in our life. We feel isolated and disconnected, and there is an increasing sense of urgency about our predicament. Fortunately, the subconscious is programmed to return us back to peace as quickly and simply as possible, but unfortunately, that’s where it all goes wrong.

Peace is the natural state that all life is in all the time – until it’s not. Until there is a reason for not being at peace. In the natural world, these reasons are simple and straight-forward. For example: I feel hungry – now I need to try and find food; I feel unsafe – now I need to try and protect myself; I feel tired – now I need to try and rest; I feel horny – now I need to try and mate. In the natural world, the rules are very simple, and every feeling acts as an instinct to drive the living thing towards an action so that when that need has been fulfilled, it can return to peace. Peace is the natural state. Peace should be the natural state we are also in – until there is good reason not to be. But we don’t live in the natural world anymore. We have created civilised societies which are complex and nuanced, and for good reason.

Living in the natural world may be simple to understand, but it is harsh, it is dangerous, it can be very uncomfortable. Nature/evolution has given us a conscious brain which allows us to be objective, step back, see what our problems are, and begin to think about them to find solutions. In other words, having a conscious brain means we have choice. We have options. Using our brain well means making good decisions. Every invention and development that humanity has come up with has been in some way to try and improve our lives, to make them less harsh, less dangerous, less uncomfortable, less unpredictable, easier. The vast majority of human beings now expect to have certain levels of comfort, security, safety, protection, justice, rights, etc., as standard. And the more that less developed areas around the world get to see how others live, the more they begin to expect a better quality of life for themselves.

All of this is good. There can’t be many people who would want to go back to days of living and surviving outdoors, especially in winter, living in tribes or communities where there is a  threat of invasion from our enemies, living in a time where the justice system did not protect the common person, living in a time when medicine was poorly understood, when travel was slow and arduous, when technology we take for granted had not yet been invented, where there was little or no leisure time or entertainment. We are living in a time when the majority of us have sufficient comfort, security, access to technology, access to travel, access to work to achieve a reasonable income to support ourselves, access to leisure, etc. – that, in theory, we should be truly thriving, we should be happy, satisfied, contented. We are benefiting from the hard, painful work that previous generations have put in, eg. democracy where we have a chance to be heard, science and technology where we have more comfort in our homes as standard (water, electricity, gas, heating, insulation, entertainment), a greater possibility of living longer and healthier with the advances in medicine, etc. and yet there is widespread acceptance of stress, dissatisfaction, discontentment, anxiety, irritation, anger – as if these feelings are fully righteous and justified. In fact, there’s something wrong with you if you are not feeling these things. If you are not complaining and criticising and getting annoyed with things, you are not seeing the truth, you are a pushover, a mug, someone who allows themselves to be mistreated.

Essentially, what is going wrong, is that humanity has forgotten what feelings are for. We have forgotten what is natural. We have forgotten how to live efficiently. In nature, energy is never wasted. Animals do not waste time flexing and tensing muscles if they don’t need to. They use the minimum amount of energy required to fulfil every task. Energy is precious. When life is harsh and unpredictable, we need all the available energy we can get. We have become so comfortable, so safe, that we have allowed ourselves to forget that energy is our most precious resource. And now we squander it on stress, ultimately on fear and insecurity, that, for the most part, is completely inappropriate, irrational, unnecessary, exaggerated, wasteful and misspent.

When we lived in nature, we knew that our energy was precious and not to be wasted. We knew how to be at peace. We knew what our feelings were for. We knew that our feelings are a precious energy that we had to pay attention to and use wisely. They are what helped us choose an appropriate action to help us survive so we could return to peace. We knew that once the action has been fulfilled, we no longer needed the feeling, it has done it’s job and we go back to peace. We even learned that we could generate more energy through generating good feelings. We learned that we can access greater levels and higher forms of energy than other animals because of our conscious brains. We learned to feel deeper love, deeper connection. Rather than just being an unconscious player in Nature’s perfectly balanced and harmonised system, we could actually start to feel an appreciation for balance and harmony. We realised that feeling good about our lives, about ourselves, feeling safe, secure, that we belong, etc. gave us the energy to create and explore, to search for more, to seek out greater understanding and truth.

When we feel truly connected to ourselves, when we feel truly alive, that we are living the life that feels right to us, we feel our lives have meaning and purpose. In fact, the feeling is so deep and natural that we don’t even put it into words. When we are feeling truly connected, we do not question life’s purpose in that moment. We only really question the point of life when we are not feeling it, when we feel disconnected from ourselves, our role, our purpose, the point of us. And what is it that disconnects us from our true selves, our inner self, our sense of who we truly are, where we belong, what makes us feel good, feel right, feel at peace? Stress. Fear. Insecurity. Not feeling safe. Not feeling in control. Not feeling we belong. Not feeling accepted and loved for who we are.

And what is it we feel when we are connected? Love and Peace. When we love what we are doing, love who we are being, love who we are with. When we learn to accept our past and accept who we are, accept our mistakes, accept what we have done and what has been done to us, we can begin to move towards a deeper, more sustainable sense of peace. If we can learn to be at peace with our past, we can be at peace in the present. Then we can face the future with a greater sense of peace, acceptance, hope, joy, excitement and optimism. But to make peace with our past requires us to learn to love ourselves and love others. And to learn to love ourselves and others we need greater understanding. For us to genuinely make peace with ourselves, with our lives and with all others – and it can’t just be said in words, it needs to be felt – we all need true understanding of how our feelings work, how they make us think and then how they make us act. We then need the understanding of how to better manage our own feelings, thoughts and actions. This is the stuff we have never been taught – at least, not properly. We may have been lucky enough to see some good examples in our life but mostly we are surrounded by poor practice and bad role-modelling.

This is what we have forgotten and lost over thousands of years. As we have moved away from living in nature, we have lost the natural wisdom we once possessed. Generation after generation have then embedded the normality of living in fear, repression, suppression, conflict, survival, to the point where, today, even though we are blessed with more comfort and security than any other previous generation, we have little idea of how to live and thrive sustainably. How to stay connected. How to love our lives. From times when life in society really was scary, dangerous and uncomfortable, when it really was about survival, the trauma of those times has been passed down, imperceptibly to the next generation, so that the new generation is unable to see the relatively better times they are living in.

Stress is separation, division, isolation, disconnection, dissatisfaction, dischord, unhappiness, discontentment. Love is connection, belonging, unity, acceptance, peace, harmony, happiness, contentment, satisfaction. Stress is survival. Love is living. Love is thriving. Love feels right without having to question it. And if every development, invention, discovery that humanity has put into the world has always been about creating greater security, understanding, comfort, control, then we are living in truly abundant times. We have never had it better. We should be living in appreciation and gratitude. But how many people truly are? Humanity has forgotten how precious life is, how precious energy is and we are squandering it on wasted, inappropriate fear and insecurity. We are continuing the unconscious programme of previous generations, believing we are living, when really we are spending much of our time just surviving. We may well get moments and periods where we love our lives but mostly we are just dipping our toe in the water and not realising that we should be aiming to stay immersed in this feeling until there is a very good reason not to be. And at that point we should be working to get back there.

We have forgotten how to love. We are not aware that we don’t know how to love. We don’t know what we don’t know – yet. We can’t see what we can’t see – yet. We only know what we have learned so far. And we don’t realise that, for the most part, we have not been taught well. So it is time to take control of our own learning. It is time to learn better lessons. It is time to look at our beliefs and decide which are helpful and beneficial and which are holding us back and disconnecting us from a life filled with greater meaning and purpose. It is time to learn some new lessons that we can pass on to future generations. There are ways in which we can change so that what we have to learn consciously, with effort, can be passed on to the next generation and learnt unconsciously. There are things we can do differently to the norm and to what everyone around us accepts as normal that can be passed on implicitly so that future generations don’t even realise that their happiness, peace and satisfaction is something we have had to consciously learn and put into practice. There are practices that, if we had been taught them, and had them role-modelled from birth, we would now be doing naturally, unconsciously, not even knowing we are doing something extraordinary.

And why should it be extraordinary to love our lives? But what does that even mean? What does that look like? I think that just about everybody, if pressed could find what is good about their lives, remember what they appreciate, realise how much worse things could be. And it’s in that moment, when we are feeling appreciation, gratitude, realising how we are fortunate, that we are focusing on what we have. In that moment, we are being an optimist. In contrast, when we are stressed in some way, we are focusing on a problem, what we don’t have, what we need to fix, what’s missing, what we are lacking. In that moment, we are being a pessimist. So all of us can change from being optimists to pessimists depending on what we are feeling in a given moment.

Now, of course, there are times, often, where we do have real problems, issues that need resolving. There will naturally be times where we are feeling stressed because life is presenting challenges that we have to find a way through. I am not prescribing that we pretend everything is fine when it is not, that we suppress or deny what we are really feeling. We, in ourselves, need to be aware and acknowledge what we are feeling. That is the whole point of feelings. Every feeling is there to be noticed. The subconscious is aware of everything that is going on within us and outside of us. It is in charge of our survival. It only draws our attention to issues that it believes may be important. Every feeling comes from the subconscious to try and get the attention of the conscious brain. The conscious brain is the boss. And it should be the boss who makes the final decisions. The problem is that strong feelings override and overwhelm the boss, rendering the boss incapable of making a decision.

When there are strong feelings in our system, the conscious brain becomes incapacitated, so the boss is not available. So we are literally incapable of rational, objective thought. We are incapable of solving complicated problems. This is how our system is designed to work, so that, when we are in a life-threatening emergency, our conscious brain – which is slow, methodical, thoughtful, considerate, objective, wanting to look at the problem in its full context, from every angle – is shut down, and our subconscious – which is rapid, able to find the simplest most effective solution in milliseconds, incapable of context, only thinks in black or white terms, on or off, all or nothing, is mostly concerned with immediate, short-to-medium-term survival – takes over. In an emergency, this system is the most effective way to ensure our survival. In a complicated, non-emergency situation however, only the conscious brain has the ability to get us through. So, all the stress we are seeing around us, day-to-day, is people trying to live and solve complicated problems whilst under strong emotion – and it’s never going to work.

The amount of stress we are witnessing in society means that most people are just surviving, they are living unconsciously most of the time – which is not really living at all. They are not in tune with their true selves, they are constantly going from short-term fix to short-term fix. They are not living in peace or in harmony. They are not loving their lives. They are feeling disconnected, isolated, insecure. We all become monstrous versions of ourselves under stress. The subconscious which is being allowed to take over and solve our complicated problems can’t do it. That isn’t what it is designed to do. It is utterly amazing at what it does but it can’t consider lots of difficult options from different angles in context so it can’t solve the complicated problems we face daily in a civilised society. It will keep us alive, but it won’t help us truly live.

So, I am proposing that the main thing that none of us have truly learnt, is how to properly use our brains in the way they are designed to be used. We haven’t learnt it because we haven’t been taught it. We haven’t been taught at home, at school, at work or from society in general. And actually, what we have learnt is the opposite of good practice. We have learnt how to stay annoyed, stay irritated, stay worried, stay anxious, stay indignant, stay pessimistic, stay focused on what is wrong with our lives, what we are lacking, what we rightfully deserve. All feelings are normal and valid, the feelings are not the problem, the problem is that we are practising ‘staying’ with the feeling rather than noticing it, calming ourselves, returning back to consciousness, deciding how appropriate the feeling is, and what decision and action we need to take to return to peace, our natural state.

I think that, if asked, most people would say they had a good level of emotional intelligence. Some would admit they don’t really know what that means, and for most people, that should be the most appropriate response. Emotional intelligence is the subject we have not been taught. Emotional intelligence means knowing what to do with our feelings in any given situation and so includes understanding how our brains and bodies work in terms of feelings and thoughts. There is so much bad practice that is ubiquitous that has seemingly good rationale behind it. But because so much of what we understand, and so much of what we do is going on everywhere, we can’t imagine how things would be if we did things differently. And we don’t even know what we should be doing differently. We don’t know that what we are doing is wrong. So we keep repeating it, and we keep ending up in the same unsatisfactory situations, whether that’s on a personal level or when we join with others in relationships or on the macro level of society. I would like to put forward some new teachings, some new ground rules that can help us all live more peaceful, harmonious, effective, meaningful lives.

What we need to know as individuals

On an individual level, we all need better understanding of how our brains work, specifically the important difference between the subconscious and conscious parts of the brain. When we truly understand the different roles these parts of the brain play we can begin to learn how to maximise the effectiveness of our brains and minimise the preponderance for stress. Stress, in some form, is at the heart of all mental health issues, and so reducing stress is what we need to do to create a more peaceful, fulfilling, happier, healthier life. When I talk about learning to use our brains well, I do not mean in the sense of high academic achievement, I mean in the sense of using our brains in the way they have been designed to be used, using our brains properly. And this is what we have not been taught and don’t even realise that this is something we don’t know!

What makes us so different to other animals is this huge conscious brain that we have. We have a subconscious brain which works in exactly the same way as it does for all animals all the way up to the most complex mammals but we have a conscious brain which gives us access to infinitely more intelligence than the next most intelligent animal. What I am suggesting is that, in general, as a species, for much of the time, we are failing to use this complex tool with which we have been endowed in the manner Nature has designed it to be used. I suggest that, the vast majority of undesirable behaviour we witness in ourselves and in society is a result of us operating through our subconscious rather than our conscious brain. And that, with a new collective understanding, humans can more effectively continue their progress towards a more evolved, peaceful, harmonious and increasingly civilised state of being.

So, through observing animals, we can get an understanding of the role of the subconscious. The subconscious is a truly amazing piece of kit. It is constantly monitoring internally, within the organism, to ensure everything has what it needs to function well. Should anything start to become depleted, internal sensors communicate through feelings to make the animal seek out the chemical/nutrient it needs. Once satisfied, the whole system can return to homeostasis, ie. peace. The subconscious is also monitoring everything going on outside itself, in the environment, to make sure it is safe. The main job of the subconscious is survival, to keep life going, to keep the organism alive. So anything in the environment which may pose a threat must be taken seriously and a strong feeling, ie. fear, is the mechanism by which the organism is forced to focus on the threat and take the necessary action to get rid of it, whether that means getting away from it, or using a secondary emotion of anger so the organism attacks.

The subconscious is always acting to protect and preserve the life of the organism to which it belongs. It also has an amazing storage capacity. It stores every experience the organism has ever had so that it can use these experiences to pattern-match to new experiences. If a new experience is similar in some way to a previous bad experience, the subconscious will alert the organism through an uncomfortable feeling, ie. stress, to alert them to the danger. Again, an amazing system designed to preserve the life of the organism, and it is important to realise that it is always through the use of feelings that the organism is driven to action. If the animal is currently satisfied, needing nothing, and with no threat in the environment, then it is at peace, feeling neutral. It is only once there is a need that must be met, that it will not be at peace and it will be experiencing the appropriate feeling to get the need met.

As I have said, humans have exactly the same mechanisms in our subconscious brains and so we are capable of behaving in exactly the same way as animals if we are being driven by our feelings. But we have been given a conscious brain which is able to intervene. Our subconscious is amazing but it is not designed for complex problems that require contextual thinking and the ability to look at the problem from different viewpoints. The subconscious does not do context, it thinks in simple black-and-white, all-or-nothing terms because, in nature, the rules are simple, there is no context needed. It is only in the civilised societies that human beings have felt driven to create, where problems become far richer in context, and therefore require far more intelligence to navigate.

The next vital piece of understanding we should all have been taught is that our conscious brains are designed to be shut down when there is a feeling present. The stronger the feeling, the more the conscious brain closes down. The stronger the emotion, the less intelligence we have access to. This is precisely because of how differently they function. The subconscious is designed to operate rapidly, able to make a decision instantly in an emergency. Drawing from its huge storage of experiences, it can instantly draw a conclusion and send a feeling that brings about immediate action. The conscious brain, in comparison, works very slowly and methodically, wanting to see the situation from all possible angles so it can decide the most appropriate course of action for success. If the conscious brain were left to decide the course of action in a life-threatening emergency, the chances are we would be dead before we had the chance to do anything.

So, for good reason, we are designed to lose the ability to think rationally and methodically when under the influence of emotion. Personally I prefer to use the word ‘feeling’ rather than ’emotion’. This is because our system doesn’t differentiate between different types of feelings. Anything we feel is designed to get our attention, whether it’s an emotion like fear, or a sensation like pain, discomfort or hunger. For any feeling, the mechanism works the same way. The stronger it gets, the less able we are to think intelligently. So the importance of understanding the connection between feelings and how our brain works is huge. Not understanding this human mechanism leaves us prey to being hijacked at any given moment, whether we are feeling something from within ourselves or perceiving a threat from outside ourselves, it is easy for us to lose access to our available intelligence.

So, therefore, something we all need to learn to do better is to be calmer. Even a small amount of irritation, annoyance, worry, doubt, fear, etc. starts to shut down our conscious brain. If it is not the conscious brain which is doing the decision-making, then it’s the subconscious deciding what action is appropriate. But the subconscious should only be making decisions in a life-or-death situation, and how often can we truly say that we are in that kind of emergency. If we are not in a life-threatening emergency, we should be remaining calm and in control so that we can keep the conscious brain engaged, examine all our available options, remain rational, and decide the best course of action. This is how we are designed to function optimally. We have been given this conscious brain but, when we are faced with a difficulty, we easily become hijacked by our feelings and then lose the ability to effectively problem-solve our way through the difficulty.

Calmness is the key. But it needs to be genuine. We need to be honest with ourselves about what we are feeling. If we are not calm and at peace, then now is not the time to think. We need to put some time between the problem and the solution. If we are not calm, we are not ready to think or decide the best action. We need to stop and slow down. Breathe. Take some time out. Get away from the problem. Do something which allows our feelings to settle, to cool down. We need to understand that feelings are incredibly powerful. They are designed to make us take serious action, ultimately to fight or run for our lives, so they have to be powerful to make us do that. So we need to realise that when we are in the grip of a feeling, the temptation will be to act on it, as if it is an instruction, a call to action. It takes effort to resist the pull of a feeling. This is why we need all the correct information first, so we can take the difficult action of resisting the temptation of acting on our feelings.

We need to realise that the difference between us and animals is this conscious brain which is designed to intervene and choose the best course of action. If we are not at peace and acting on our feelings, we are almost certainly making the wrong decision. For human beings, feelings are a ‘question’, not a call to action. Feelings come from our subconscious attached to a pattern-match from a previous experience in our lives. The subconscious recognises a similarity between the current situation and previous one and if there was something unpleasant or dangerous for us in some way in the previous situation, it will send us a feeling to get our attention. If we act on that feeling we are reinforcing the pattern-match, we are responding to the subconscious letting it know it made an accurate match. But what we should be doing is recognising we have an unpleasant feeling, stopping ourselves, slowing ourselves down, breathing, calming ourselves, and then once calm, deciding whether the feeling was actually appropriate.

So much of what we get tripped up by are pattern-matches from our past, even from our childhood, that are not actually relevant or appropriate to the current circumstances but until we are calm and able to rationalise, our brain continues to treat the pattern-match as entirely appropriate. So the pattern-match stays and we keep getting sent unpleasant feelings whenever something similar occurs. As I said, the subconscious does not do context. It does not care if we are now a strong independent successful adult and the original experience was when we were a small helpless child. It is in charge of our survival and will continue to make us aware of any dangers until we consciously feedback that this situation no longer represents danger to us. So if an unpleasant experience in our childhood continues to match to situations in our adulthood and we continue to act on the feeling that comes, the pattern-match remains as a completely appropriate response, and will continue to affect us forever until we consciously realise that it is no longer appropriate.

As I said, feelings, even though they are powerful in how they make us want to act, should actually be treated as questions from the subconscious to the conscious brain. The subconscious is asking, “Is this feeling still appropriate?”, “Should we be scared right now?”, “Should we be angry at this?”. The subconscious knows it is not in charge of complicated problems. It knows it is charge when it is a life-threatening emergency. So if the conscious brain allows itself to be taken over by a feeling, the conscious brain is effectively handing over control to the subconscious to deal with a complicated problem. The subconscious will then do what it is good at and rapidly pull out the first, instinctive reaction that matches the feeling. As I have said previously, under stress, we are all capable of becoming monstrous versions of ourselves. That is because the subconscious is deciding the best course of action that would be completely appropriate if we lived by the laws of nature, where life-threatening emergencies are real and survival is paramount. We still mostly manage to keep some conscious brain involved to stop us going too far but can still find ourselves acting in a way that we regret once we have calmed down.

To reiterate a point, it is very important that we realise how powerful feelings are. When we are in the grip of fear or anger, for example, in that moment, the feeling feels completely justified and appropriate. When we are angry with someone, we feel completely in the right, and feel they are completely in the wrong. This is exactly how the machinery of our brains is designed to work. 50,000 years ago, when we lived by the laws of nature, there was no room for reasonable doubt that we might be wrong and the enemy might be right. We needed to be fully prepared to fight for our lives, so we had to feel fully justified in whatever action we needed to take to ensure our survival, and ensure we got rid of the threat, so we could return to peace. So the moment we get even a little bit annoyed, irritated, frustrated, we are at the thin end of the anger wedge, and we will have the feeling that we are 100% right and justified and the other party is 100% wrong. Only once we are calm, can we start to see the problem from their perspective and accept that they may have a valid point and so start to search for a solution that is the best way through for everybody. Now we are choosing to live consciously.

What we need to know in relationships