Emotions and consciousness are, without a doubt, two of the most complex concepts in existence, and we hardly understand how to navigate the endless intricacies of our feelings. Emotions are fundamental to the human experience and all complex living organisms as a whole. Without them, survival would be impossible and meaningless altogether. Wouldn’t you think that by now, with all the incredible advances we’ve made with science and technology, we would have a confident understanding of the most quintessential component of life itself? I think it feels fair to say yes.

Yet, true understanding continually eludes us. It’s easy to look at life through the scope of biology, determining what things are alive based on whether it fulfills all 7 of the required characteristics for biological life. Sure, while that might be the scientifically proper way to identify life, that’s not what I’m talking about here. 

Philosophers have debated for centuries what the true meaning of life is. Being alive in itself is not enough to give life meaning, and neither does reproduction. The universe does not care if we exist or not, because in the grand scheme of things, there’s not even a solid reason for the universe to exist in the first place. I know this sounds bleak, but stay with me here, I promise things will lighten up soon. 

Does the Universe Matter?

Think about it. If the universe suddenly blinked out of existence, what would happen? The answer is nothing. It’s not like the universe MUST exist in order to support the existence or prosperity of something else. Everything that exists in our realm of consciousness is already inside the universe, so if the universe were to no longer exist, nothing would suffer or benefit, since the only things that can be impacted are within the universe to begin with. 

Now, if there’s not even a reason for the universe to exist at all, how could anything in existence ever have any meaning to it? To be blunt, it doesn’t. Nothing actually matters. There is no universal right or wrong, no good or bad. The universe does not care about anything and it doesn’t need certain things to happen. What happens, happens, and that’s just how it goes. It’s neither good nor bad, only the fact that something happened. 

Nothing Matters, and That’s Fantastic

Since nothing in the world truly matters, that means we get to give it meaning. Each and every person alive gets to decide how they live their life and what they find meaningful. In a reality where nothing has meaning, everything has the potential to be meaningful if we decide. There’s an infinite number of things people can use to be their guiding motivation in life. Some find meaning in helping others, some find it in art, some find it in life threatening adrenaline rushes, and some find it in the beautiful balance of mathematics or physics. I could literally go on forever, but you get my point. 

While every person finds meaning differently, there is always at least one core guiding motivation for every person’s source of meaning - happiness. We all do what we do because we want to be happy, and if we end up in a situation where happiness is absent or lacking, we wish for happiness. Sometimes we take the actions necessary to find it, sometimes we don’t, but we always want it. 

The Eternal Conflict Between Peace and Impulse

We live in a time where mental health disorders have never been higher. It’s absolutely staggering how many people suffer from anxiety, depression, PTSD, and so many other mental health complications. By definition, an inherent quality of these issues is not being able to fully control one’s emotions. However, this is not a quality exclusive to mental health disorders. Every person to ever live still struggles with emotions, but some learn how to seize control. 

Emotions are confusing, painful, overwhelming, and flat out difficult to handle, at least sometimes. For the most part, we know how to handle happiness, but there can be no happiness without anger, despair, sadness, envy, fear, emptiness, guilt, and any of the other countless negative emotions. There’s so many forms of unhappiness, and they all hurt us differently. More often than not, our unhappiness is so overwhelming to the point where we act in regretful ways and can’t think clearly. Negativity has a tendency to consume our minds momentarily, leaving us feeling helpless, hopeless, or both.

Now what if I told you that there were ways to never feel like this again, and never lose control? What if I also told you that this is fully achievable by anyone who puts in the effort? I imagine you’d be extremely interested and ready to get down to business. So let’s do it. The first, and most important, point to remember is that true happiness is never found by acting on impulses that you think will make you happy. Regardless of whether you think it’ll give you short term or long term happiness, if your actions are rooted in impulsivity, you’ve already lost control. All consequences that follow, both good and bad, are purely products of chance and luck. Therefore, each and every decision should be made only after careful, sound deliberation. Notice here that I didn’t say “after long deliberation.” Although quality deliberation may require extended periods of time depending on the situation, there are other situations where quality deliberation can be rather quick. In everything that you do, you should always prioritize quality decisions.

The enemy of control will always be impulse. Just as we don’t want to be a slave to our anger or sadness, we also never want to be slaves to a pursuit of pleasure. With proper deliberation and the elimination of impulse, control in its essence will be achieved. At this point, a lot of people make the mistake of believing that the suppression of emotions is the same thing as having strong control over emotions. For some reason, it’s a common assumption that, if you aren’t reacting to your emotions, then you’re suppressing them. Luckily, this is far from correct. 

Emotional Suppression Versus Deliberation

Emotional suppression is where someone is avoiding their emotions, shoving them down deep and trying to ignore them. One of the many problems with this is that the emotions never truly go away. They build up, and since none of them are properly processed, there will always eventually come a time where everything rises back up to the surface and wreaks havoc on the mind.

On the other hand, to have control of one’s emotions means that the emotions are internally contemplated and no action is immediately taken. By no means are they ignored, as they never should be. Emotions are vital to the ability to survive and thrive in this world. They’re intended to give us guidance on how to interact with our environment, keep ourselves safe, and recognize patterns for the future. However, while emotions are supposed to provide insight on how to behave, there are countless instances where emotions can feel so sudden and intense that we become blinded. It can be extremely easy to lose sight of what truly matters most to us, and instead focus on instantaneous impulses that we will later regret. Immediate gratification will rarely give us long-term satisfaction according to our core values.

More often than not, when we react on impulse according to anger or sadness, we regret some, or all, aspects of our choices. Even if you’re able to justify it afterwards, there’s still the probability that it could have been handled better. Even the slightest bit of regret will impede on our happiness. Impulsive reactions will always have a very high probability of harming our happiness, so we should try to avoid them to the best of our abilities. Therefore, our best chance at ensuring happiness in every situation, or at least avoiding negativity, will be to carefully analyze each emotion as it arises. By no means is this easy or pleasant in the moment. It’s going to be difficult, and sometimes even painful, but when you take the time to make a choice true to your character, values, and the person you hope to be in the future, you will be constantly minimizing regret and simultaneously maximizing the probability of happiness. Eventually, the veil of negativity will rise, and you’ll thank yourself dearly that you didn’t feed into immediate gratification. 

The Strongest Among Us Are the Most in Touch with Their Emotions 

No matter what angle you look at it, a strong sense of control over our mind will always be a good thing. So, when a tough situation arises and negativity or pain tries to force its way into your consciousness, let it in. Face it head on, and challenge it. No matter how bad you feel, you’ll feel worse later if you act regretfully. As you get used to facing difficult emotions and combating them with sound, logical analysis, you’ll grow stronger everyday. The world will slowly lose its ability to control you. 

The Mind is Nothing Without the Body

While it’s extremely important to maintain full, strategic control over the mind, it’s equally important to take care of your body with deliberate intention. If we truly want to maximize authentic happiness, it’s absolutely necessary to prepare your body for stress resistance, too. Afterall, poor mental health can lead to poor physical health, and vice versa. 

When you break everything down to the fundamental basics, a major component of mood and stress relates to how the body activates certain responses. Happiness is impacted by neurotransmitters and hormones like dopamine and serotonin, whereas stress is largely caused by hormones like cortisol or epinephrine. Every biological compound that can impact mood is the product of a specific biological process, and just as these mechanisms can be turned on, they can also be turned off.

By simply incorporating key ingredients into your daily diet, you can provide your metabolism with an abundance of specific compounds called adaptogens, which are designed to counteract different stress responses in the body. This way you can optimize your entire physiology to put less stress on your mind, so then you’ll be even more capable of maintaining control over your emotions and impulses. 

Our Mission

Neurohacker Collective’s mission is to optimize the quality of your mind and overall life through scientifically proven methods of diet supplementation. When it comes to boosting mood, we strategically target 6 quantifiable variables. These include resilience, mental toughness, calmness, support for stress, cognitive performance while under stress, and one’s ability to overcome stress-related fatigue. Incredibly, we have sound evidence that almost every person who takes our Qualia Resilience daily supplement will experience a boost in at least one or more of these categories.  

Even if you only gain support in one category, regardless of which one, your body is going to be more primed than ever for increasing mental fortitude. Our formulations are, by far, some of the most premium supplements on the market, because they’re able to support the mind and body, too. Human biology is a complicated beast that’s made up of too many moving parts to count. With that, there’s immense demand on our diet to provide all the necessary nutrients for every process to occur properly and maintain homeostasis. Our Qualia line of supplements is specially designed to address many of the most important requirements that are also the most difficult to meet. In the end, you’ll be physically healthier, and mentally more resilient. 

You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Take control of your mind and body so that you can find true, authentic meaning in life. Optimize your resilience, and fight for your happiness. In a world as challenging as this one, happiness rarely happens by accident. All good things are yielded and retained exclusively by deliberate execution of well formulated plans.