You are a killer: dominate your mind

I'm Dr. Orion Teraban, and this is Psych Hacks, Better Living Through Psychology, and the topic of today's short talk is you are a killer. This is a very important episode for people to listen to carefully. I'll begin by sharing a bit of my own experience, which I will use as a springboard for actionable advice later in the episode. When I was a young man, my mind was a prison. I was trapped in my mind, subject to ruthless, unremitting internal criticism, and constrained by all kinds of programming installed by my family and my society. In fact, it took a long time to even recognize the programming as programming, as fish can't see the water, and to understand the relationship between this programming and my suffering. Today, I am happy to report to you that this is no longer the case. My mind is no longer a prison. In fact, my mind is now a beautiful garden. I love being inside my mind. There is peace and quiet and a stable and abiding sense of freedom. Sounds nice, right? Well, what you have to understand is that a garden is not a natural thing. Gardens do not exist in nature. Wilderness exists in nature. Gardens are always the product of intentional design, and that design, for lack of a better word, is maintained through violence. That's right. All the beauty and serenity, the pastoral peace of the garden is created and maintained through violence. What must you do to create and preserve a garden? You must dig up the earth. You must pull out the weeds. You must kill the predators and pests that would devour your crops and blossoms. And you must maintain this state through constant vigilance and the willingness to aggress against that which threatens your design. You won't hear many psychologists talking like this, but it's absolutely true. If you want a garden, you do not need to understand the weed. You need to eradicate it. You do not need to communicate better with the earth. You need to break it open. You do not need to empathize with the pests. You need to destroy them. You live in a home made of dead trees on land that was cleared of life so you could lay its foundations. Whatever comfort or convenience you enjoy is based on this fact. Man must dominate the world to make a home of it, which is precisely what dominate means. Like domestic, dominate comes from the Latin domus, meaning home. This might make people uncomfortable, but your home is what you have dominated. And what you have not dominated is not your home. You must make your mind bend to your will. You must dominate it before you can ever hope to make a home of it. And until you do, you will be as one living in the wilderness, uncomfortable, vulnerable, and subject to any forces greater than yourself. But let's take this a step further, shall we? I told you that my mind was a prison and that I'm not in prison anymore. How do you think that happened? Do you think one day my self-limiting beliefs and internalized programming got together and said, you know what, Orion? We were just talking and we decided, well, you've suffered enough. We're sorry. We're sorry for torturing you all those years. That wasn't really cool at all. And I guess our collective conscience is bothering us now, and we now have enough pity for your wretched state that we're going to let you go. So, um, sorry about that. Cool, right? All the best. Like, do you think something like that happened? Do you think my captors let me go? My friends, my captors did not let me go. I'm free today because I killed those motherfuckers. And I would do it again. And I will do it as many times as is necessary to preserve my freedom and guarantee my survival. As God is my witness, I will never, ever again allow those forces to have dominance over me in my own mind. Introducing my innovative first novel, Starry Night. Step into the world of painter Vincent van Gogh, genius, sinner, prophet, madman. Relive the final 10 weeks of his life in this breathtaking tale of art, love, loss, and meaning, and challenge what you think you know about life and relationships. Once you see through Vincent's eyes, the world will never look the same again. Starry Night, now available in ebook, audiobook, and paperback formats. The links are in the description. This is the mindset that I want you to consider adopting if you're really serious about improving your circumstances and building a life worth living. You have to embrace the reality that you are a killer, at least in potentiality, if not yet in fact. Whatever is holding you prisoner, whatever self-hatred, or internalized judgment, or unfortunate trauma, or incorrect model of reality is destroying your life, you have to be willing to fight it and you have to be willing to kill it. And if you're willing to fight by any means necessary, you may succeed in effecting your liberation. The key is to align with yourself, to align with yourself against these psychological jailers. You have to say, I deserve to exist. I am alive and I deserve to ******* live. I deserve to be free, you sadistic motherfuckers. And you have to say it with conviction, you have to really mean it. Now, when you talk like this, will your captors just let you go? No. But it does make them stand up a little straighter. That's not how prisoners are supposed to talk. Don't you know your place? Go back to where we want to keep you. If you behave, maybe we'll eventually let you out on good behavior. And I'm here to tell you that that isn't ******* true. No people in the history of the world has ever been liberated by inspiring pity in their captors, right? They liberate themselves when they stand up, fight back, and say, never ******* again. And thus begins the work of cultivating the garden. You must break apart the earth and destroy the weeds and kill the pests. There can be no mercy in this process because your adversaries will have no mercy for you. You become a killer. And it's not bloodthirstiness that drives this. It's not love of violence. It's a deep, abiding respect for peace. And it is maintained through the discipline and sacrifice of the warrior who would surrender his life before allowing his garden to succumb. The individual has the right to self-determination. But too much emphasis is paid these days to political self-determination. And it is not for people to put the world to rights before they've succeeded in restoring order and balance to their own minds. And unfortunately, the vast majority of humanity is in chains. Not physical shackles that manacle their wrists, but psychological chains that bind them mentally and spiritually. These chains are the captors that people must depose. Indeed, this might be the only true duty and responsibility of the individual. And if people do not dominate their minds before seeking to dominate the world, then they will only succeed in producing another dystopia. Yet another bloodbath to exceed the massacre that came before it. It is an otherwise endless cycle, and it has devoured millions and millions of lives. It is much better to cast off those internal shackles first, which is good news, as this act is within the power of most human beings. But understand, your psychological liberation will not be granted you any more than your political liberation will. Your therapist cannot give it to you. Your priest cannot give it to you. Your ideology cannot give it to you. You will have to fight for it, and you will have to be willing to kill that which would keep you imprisoned. Real talk. What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience? Let me know in the comments below. And please, send this episode to someone who would benefit from its message. I know you know someone who needs to hear this, who is trying to make their lives better, but is stuck in therapy and endless podcasts and self-improvement. This is actually what works. Send it to them, as it's word-of-mouth referrals like this that really help to make the channel grow. Other value propositions. Anyone looking to join my free weekly newsletter, for which I write original content, no AI, or book a paid one-on-one consultation with yours truly, can find out more on my website. There's also my books, The Value of Others, in which I explore my economic model of relationships, and Starry Night, my novel which describes the final weeks of painter Vincent van Gogh, and my private member community, The Captain's Quarters, where, among other things, I host bi-monthly group consultation calls with a wonderful group of people. Check them out. A lot of great value. The links to everything are in the description below. As always, I appreciate your support, and thank you for listening.