Let’s be clear from the outset: no one has a final, definitive answer to what is happening inside the human mind. Between your ears lies not a tidy machine but a living cosmos of neurons—about 86 billion of them—firing, rewiring, and weaving together the story of your life. Neuroscience has illuminated much, but the mind remains partly mysterious. That’s not a flaw; it’s the frontier.
Philosophers and psychologists have offered maps of this inner world. Freud and Jung sketched early models of the psyche. Modern therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are grounded in evidence and have helped millions reshape unhelpful thought patterns. Other approaches, like Neuro‑Linguistic Programming (NLP), are less scientifically supported but remain popular in coaching circles.
What follows is not a literal diagram of the brain, but a metaphor—a simplified model to help you navigate your own mental landscape.
1. The Executive Brain
This is your conscious mind—the narrator in your head. It plans, analyses, worries, and insists it’s in charge. But its processing power is modest: it can juggle only a handful of complex items at once, and it handles information at a rate of about 40–60 bits per second. Useful, yes, but hardly the whole story.
2. The Implicit Brain
Beneath the chatter lies the vast unconscious. This is the powerhouse of memory, pattern recognition, and intuition. It processes millions of bits of sensory data every second, integrates them, and often delivers its conclusions as feelings or sudden insights. When you “just know” something without being able to explain why, that’s your Implicit Brain at work.
3. The Survival Brain
At the foundation is the ancient circuitry we share with reptiles and fish. It governs instinctive responses: fight, flight, freeze, feeding, reproduction. It’s not subtle, but it is fast—and sometimes it saves your life before your Executive Brain has even caught up.
This “Executive–Implicit–Survival” model is, of course, a simplification. The real brain is not three stacked layers but a network of interwoven systems. Still, as a metaphor, it helps us locate the “X” on the map: the place where self‑esteem, resilience, and joy can be cultivated. That “X” lies in the dialogue between your Executive Brain and your Implicit Brain.
Your Journaling Activity
Here’s a practice to strengthen that dialogue and train your attention toward joy:
Each Morning
- Recall a moment of joy (a different one each day).
- Describe or sketch it in detail—capture the sights, sounds, textures.
- Notice your body’s response: the lift of your face, the warmth in your chest, the ease in your shoulders.
- Create a portable reminder: photograph your journal entry or distill it into a single word or symbol. Glance at it during the day to re‑evoke the emotional state.
Each Evening
- Reflect on the day’s impact: How did recalling joy influence your mood, behaviour, or interactions?
- Note specific shifts: Did it soften stress, sharpen creativity, or change how you treated others?
- Weekly pattern check: After seven days, review your entries. What patterns emerge?
The mind is not just a machine to be studied—it is a companion to be trained, befriended, and explored. Treat it with curiosity, and it will reward you with resilience, insight, and a deeper sense of who you are becoming.
Further Reading
- Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive psychology, 41(1), 49-100.
- Salamone, P. C., Legaz, A., Sedeño, L., Moguilner, S., Fraile-Vazquez, M., Campo, C. G., … & Ibañez, A. (2021). Interoception primes emotional processing: multimodal evidence from neurodegeneration. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(19), 4276-4292.
- LeDoux, J. E. (2009). Emotion circuits in the brain. Focus, 7(2), 274-274.