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Executive Function

December 5th, 2025

Ownership. What do you think?

I'm starting to realize that what separates people from success, that is getting what they want, from failure, that is not getting what they want, is ownership. It's taking responsibility for the outcome, not necessarily the blame, but the outcome of situations and taking action to alleviate setback.

It's quite a common sentiment online, I see it everywhere on Twitter or Threads—people complaining and people saying this and those negative renditions of the world.

For me, someone who was defanged when they were very young and taught to be very helpless, it can be hard to undo the conditioning and change the mindset.

It's very easy to believe and convince onself that they are helpless, and they are subject to the forces around them and can do nothing to alleviate their situation. In fact, most if not all people fall into this trap one time or another.

It's true though. The forces that push you here to where you are currently, odds are high if not hundred percent that you were in no means in control of them.

Anthony De Mello - Awareness

I'm sitting and writing again. It's Friday night. A judgement washes over me, I should be out there having fun, meeting people. But I also have a sore throat, so really I ought to rest up and not push myself.

Laundry runs. I will need to fold it later.

Somehow, the thought comes to mind, that I forgot to be a little less non-judgemental, a judgement of non-judgmenetalness, and so on and so forth.

But it's really all a part of me, isn't it? And, it's that I am more human than not, and that I feel myself superior to other people because of how I act and how I was raised. It's true. I do feel that way. And I do feel inferior to other people as well. It's true as well.

I listen. I run. I sleep. All the sorts of things that ought to happen and not happen, then there's me.

My eyes widen everytime I say the phrase, "Sometimes I forget, and I just get lost in the flow of things." It's like I forget that I am living a life, a dream, and I look out the window to see the lights. "One day I will die," I tell myself.

"Dreamy Embarcadero" I say. It's night. People are out and about. Going and flowing from here to there. I do not know what there is to come, or what is to come, but it is how it is.

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now.

Perhaps the one thing that we ought to really practice is self-observation, and these journal entries are the culmination of my self-observation. They're how I feel. They're how I interact with myself, my perspective, and effectively my world.

What does it matter, good or bad? What does it matter? Why, doing this or that, what does it matter?

Observe what I want—happiness. Observe how I do things to never get it. Observe how I act when approached by it. It's as if I consciously want it and unconsciously don't want it.

There are many levels to this, watch how we are conflicting in ourselves, so ebb and flow, and how we interact with the words to color a reality that's obfusicated.

A better understanding. An understanding of all the colors really, that coalesce and combine in our palette of the soul.

Why, how I think of others as less than me, because my experiences, well, it's no different than anyone else. It's the same really, isn't it? I tell myself these words, but my mind can't come to believe it, perhaps because I am judging a superiority complex right out the gate.

But doesn't everyone have a superiority complex? I realize it now. How could you not? Because you experienced a life unique, nobody on earth or from history has experienced such a thing. The only logically thing is to think of yourself as differently, but frankly, all the emotions, all the feelings, all the embodiment of what we are as human beings, why, the only way we could understand one another is if deep down inside we were actually the same as one another.

Who am I proving to, who am I writing to? Who am I intending for these words to read? Understanding without ego, sure, I want to attention. I want people to like me. That's why I edit these words from time to time, but at the same time there's a part of my ego that wants to say that I don't want to be seen as attention-seeking, so sometimes I'll write without editing my words too. It's true. It pricks a bit, stings a bit, but that's the truth of it.

I like getting attention. I am lonely. And I do get annoyed at too much company as well. It's true.

These feelings and emotions that come up inside, yeah, there's a lot of them. It makes me hot. It makes me bothered. It makes me judgemental, and frustrated, and to ask me to not judge them? Well that's a tall order, because I feel I have to judge these things in order to survive.

That's the truth of it, isn't it? I want and need to judge things in order to determine if they're safe to keep. If they're going to help me survive. If they're going to help me be accepted into the pack. That's the truth, no? I have to judge things. Or rather, It's that I feel and perceive the world in which I have to think and judge things and cognisize on them.

Because that's the experiences I have, and that's the experiences most people have. The hurt and harmful and ego causes the self to withdraw and determine what not or what to do.

But that's different than understanding. That's protection. Being hurt is hurt. Being protecting is protection.

There's something all of us can do. That's probably to judge, but at the same time understand. It's possible to do both, isn't it? Why, that's probably the answer. Not accepting all of it, not just that I mean, but, all of it.

To have all of it. To be all of it. Judge and accept the judgement.

When I'm not afraid to put it into words, that's when the real understanding happens.

To say the things that make me most uncomfortable.

• I have a superiority complex. I think that my experiences make me more unique and distinct than other people, in a better way.
• I have mother and father issues. I seek validation and attention from authority figures.
• I like being recognized and seek attention.
• I am lonely. I frequently masturbate and watch reels to self-soothe.
• I do want control over other people and my circumstances, I don't want others to fail. I don't want to fail. And I don't want to be seen as wrong. I don't want to be proven as wrong.
• I don't respect other people's opinions and boundaries unless they align with mine. If I'm to be attached I have to forcibly align their opinions and boundaries with mine, or else I feel like my ego is under attack. I feel like I become less justified in what I do and what I choose if the people I surround myself disprove or disagree.
• I always feel like people if they're to be attached have to become enmeshed with me. They have to become the same. They have to become a part of me, and partly is because that's how I interpreted love and relationships as. It's a bad, no, not a bad template, but a template nonetheless.
• It's how I learned to love. It's how I learned to attach to people. I learned that love was attachment and enmeshment and codependency to an unhealthy degree. It's not bad, it's just how it is.
• Why, there's still a part of me that says it's bad. It's true. It says it's bad. There's a part that says it's good and right and makes me feel better. I think, ultimately, I'm going to have to accept that it's all just a part of me.
• There's a part of me that wants to push and fight back. There's a part of me that can't just detach. That's okay. That's all a part of me and my experiences.
• It's true. I do like to enmesh with people. And at the same time, when it's all done, I do like to un-enmesh with people. I don't want to replicate my mother's situation, I've been burned bad enough.
• That's actually okay. I think most if not everything I just said is okay. I think, it's helped. It's practically a confession of being... human.
• It's not good or bad actually, I think that's just the frame. De Mello says brainwashing, but I like the phrase "language games" more. We play a lot of games. It's fun!