LivinGology

Managing the Unmanageable

"Even the most stable brain operates just a millimeter from madness." Time


I've recently found out about a program called Mind Manager. As you might have guessed by the name its purpose is helping you manage your thoughts. The software is quite easy to use as unlike other programs (with more mechanistic approach)  it represents the reality of our thinking more accurately. What you get when you open the software is an empty sheet with no lines, cells or margins, just empty space, exactly like our mind before having a great idea to fill up that space with. Ok, say we've got the idea. Then we have all the freedom of writing whenever on the sheet we feel like to. After writing down something we feel proud of we can put a delighted emotion next to it, like every piece of information in our memory is accompanied by a certain emotion. Probably the best thing about the software are those little cubicals with pluses and minuses, connecting the topics. Again it resembles a lot our very own mind with its hundreds of thousands internal 
connections. We keep track on most of them consciously, while many work on unconscious level and there are those that fade away with time. The program is less likely to forget or end up with schizophrenia and can prove better than our memory and thinking in some ways.
The logical question here is can we manage our mind? We, men, manage people, companies, projects, but how about our own mind and life respectfully? The problem with the carrier of our psyche is that there are still many uncertainties about it and how can you manage something you don't know well? Psychology, the science that is supposed to improve our understanding of ourselves is one of the most unclear sciences which doesn't even have a single definition of what mind is. Another constraint to maniging the self are our emotions. Every single еvent in our lives is
accompanied with certain emotional shades. We just cannot separate them from the rest of us. Neurolingustic programming claims emotions can be managed by learning how to call them out and how to surpress them whenever we want to. I've tried that and it does work. I am happy when I decide to be and I am never sad as I decide not to be. The problem with that is that others are not aware of the fact they can control their emotional flow and thus you cannot communicate with them very well.
Unlike things we typically manage, say projects, when it comes to our mind we don't have the habbit to write down what is going on in it. There is no such thing as Life Plan. Instead we are used to rely on our memory, some hardcopy materials (like pictures, letters etc.) and good old friends. As we don't have a clear plan how can we manage the process of our mind? How can we
measure the results? How can we lower the risks? There are two answers: society and common sense. The major framework of our lives is created by us, the society we live in: we go to 
school, some of us to univeristy, we work, make family and kids, we try to contribute with something to humankind and we die. During that period of time what navigates us is our common sense and intuition. Again, no
plan, nothing to manage. Then, why are we surprised that things didn't turn out the way we wanted them? Living
is like loving - everybody thinks they just know how to do it but a few are those who actually can, and it's usually because they had the time to think about it and learn how to do it. 
In a few words, mind cannot be fully managed as there are too many things that are not up to us. From the other hand there are quite a lot that ARE up to us and neglecting them just because it's easier is no use as we have just one life to live. So, you might never come accross Mind Manager, but it's probably a good idea to keep a natural copy of it in your head.