u/Speak-Anima

There are countless different ways to improve focus, but today I want to share the one I personally love the most.

Because it is available to absolutely everyone.
Because we have known how to do it since childhood.
Because it is free.
And because it requires no special devices, equipment, or preparation.

It is breathing.

There is something fascinating about breathing. Most of the time we do not even notice it. It happens automatically, completely on its own. But the moment a person consciously focuses on breathing, they suddenly realize how surprisingly complex — and at the same time pleasant — the process actually is.

I am not talking about advanced breathing techniques, pranayama yoga, etc. (although people who practice those regularly often do report significant changes in their well-being).

you can begin with something extremely simple.

For example, box breathing:
four counts inhale,
four counts hold,
four counts exhale,
four counts hold.

And, like with any practice, consistency matters far more than intensity.

So I want to suggest a small experiment.

For one week, every morning before picking up your phone, opening social media, making coffee, or even getting out of bed, spend just a few minutes focusing on your breathing.

And simply observe whether it changes anything in your state of mind.

Why do I believe that a game format can sometimes be a more effective way to balance emotions and intellect than a traditional psychological session?

Because if we look at human history, we can notice something interesting. Psychology works extremely well with conscious processes — with things people can explain through words, logic, memories, and rational structures. Things that can be formalized through language.

But the emotional side of human beings has historically responded much more strongly to things like art, music, rituals, religion, stories, and symbols.

And I absolutely do not mean that psychological sessions are useless. Quite the opposite — they can help tremendously. But there is an interesting problem: the moment someone says,
“Now we are going to work with your emotions,”
part of the emotional immersion can disappear automatically.

It’s similar to telling someone:
“Now you must feel awe while listening to this music.”
Real emotional states do not appear on command. They appear when a person genuinely experiences something.

And that is why the game format feels so interesting to me. Because games engage not only the rational part of the person, but also the emotional one. People begin investing themselves emotionally into the process, into the symbols, into the possibility of failure, into the anticipation of outcomes.

And because of that, emotions stop being just a topic of discussion and become part of the actual experience itself.

That is why I believe psychological games can sometimes become a very powerful tool for finding balance between emotions and intellect.

One of the most dangerous and foolish misconceptions in this system is the belief that a real desire must be grand and distant.

This is a critical error that almost always leads to self-deception.

Rule: The first (and especially the first several) rituals must be directed at near, verifiable goals — no further than the coming week. Focus on what is already at your doorstep: an exam, an important meeting, negotiations, a performance, or a family matter.

Anyone who immediately tries to “order” radical life transformation, a Ferrari, and enlightenment in one session will almost certainly fail and blame the system instead of themselves. They simply refuse to take the first real steps of the contract.

Starting small is not weakness.

It is the test of your honesty toward yourself and your subconscious.
Only after successfully completing several small goals do you earn the right and the power to work with larger desires. Otherwise, you continue training betrayal toward yourself.

Small is the foundation.
Without a solid foundation, any palace will collapse.

Why shouldn’t a person do multiple rituals for the same wish? For a very simple reason: as much as we try to lie to ourselves, true self-deception mostly exists only on the conscious level. On the subconscious level, lying to yourself is almost impossible. The subconscious doesn’t really process “lies” the same way consciousness does. In fact, most things we hear are initially accepted as truth on a subconscious level. What the subconscious reacts to most strongly is betrayal — broken promises, inconsistency, and abandoning one’s own words.

So if a person once tells themselves that they are committing to something, the subconscious accepts that commitment. But if the person constantly changes the deal afterward, rewrites the rules, and renegotiates with themselves over and over again, the subconscious gradually stops trusting them. Even though technically it’s still the same person, internally it starts feeling like someone unreliable is constantly moving the goalposts.

That’s why a session for one specific desire should only happen once. Otherwise, the agreement with yourself risks turning into an endless cycle of renegotiation where promises lose all meaning. And instead of a serious internal contract, the whole thing starts looking like a Donald Trump press conference where reality gets updated every three days.

Why shouldn’t a person make multiple resolutions for the same desire? For a very simple reason: as much as we try to lie to ourselves, true self-deception mostly exists only on the conscious level. On the subconscious level, lying to yourself is almost impossible. The subconscious doesn’t really process “lies” the same way consciousness does. In fact, most things we hear/read are initially accepted as truth on a subconscious level. What the subconscious reacts to most strongly is betrayal — broken promises, inconsistency, and abandoning one’s own words.

So if a person once tells themselves that they are committing to something, the subconscious accepts that commitment. But if the person constantly changes the deal afterward, rewrites the rules, and renegotiates with themselves over and over again, the subconscious gradually stops trusting them. Even though technically it’s still one and the same person, internally it starts feeling like someone unreliable is constantly moving the goalposts.

That’s why a resolution for one specific desire should only happen once. Otherwise, the agreement with yourself risks turning into an endless cycle of renegotiation where promises lose all meaning. And instead of a serious internal contract, the whole thing starts looking like a Donald Trump press conference where reality gets updated every three days.

Yesterday, while I was at the barbershop, I started talking in English with the barber and his coworker. They were Polish, I wasn’t. And since cutting hair and trimming a beard takes quite a while, we ended up talking about all kinds of things.

At some point, when they found out that I teach English, the conversation naturally shifted toward their experience learning the language. And, unsurprisingly, the main complaint I heard was very familiar: too much grammar, too much memorization, too many tests and written exercises — and too little real speaking.

And that’s when I told them something that, honestly, applies to almost any state education system.

I think many teachers would actually like to do more speaking practice. But the moment you move toward live communication, you immediately run into the problem of grading. Because it is much harder to give fully objective grades for speaking.

For a system to work in a standardized way, it needs standardized tasks: texts, listening exercises, grammar exercises, tests — things where mistakes can literally be counted and converted into a score.

And because of that, I think that if we truly want English classes to focus more on real communication and real-life situations instead of only grammar and tests, then we have to admit one uncomfortable truth: living language is very difficult to standardize and grade perfectly.

And the less a system is obsessed with grades, the more actual communication there will be. But the more dependent a system becomes on grading, the more it will drift toward tests, exercises, and formal assignments.

Because the main goal of speaking is simply to start speaking. And to start speaking means being willing to speak despite your mistakes.

But doing that becomes incredibly difficult when you know the teacher is carefully listening, tracking every mistake you make, and that those mistakes will later affect your grade — and, as parents love to say, “your entire future.”

The game can be played alone, and that is absolutely true. A person can make an agreement with themselves(subconscious/universe/ether/etc.) without involving anyone else.

However, no truly serious agreement, no truly serious contract, is made without witnesses — without some kind of third party that symbolically confirms the seriousness of the intention.

This can be a marriage contract, a political pact, or any other important agreement. What gives a ritual or agreement emotional weight is the presence of at least one witness — someone who sees that these were not just words or passing thoughts, but that a real commitment was made.

And because of that, a person gains additional motivation to follow through on the promises they made to themselves(anima/god(s)/spirits/etc.). This affects both the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind. Because humans are social creatures. We care deeply about how we appear in the eyes of others, and for many people, not wanting to lose face is a powerful motivator.

And that is exactly why having a facilitator or witness can make a session feel much more meaningful and emotionally real.

Of course, it can feel intimidating when you suddenly realize that there are eleven habits you need to build in order to achieve your goal. Sometimes this makes you ask yourself an important question: do I even truly want this goal in the first place?

And honestly, that is already a very good thing. Because for the first time, you are asking yourself sincerely whether you are actually willing to work for what you want.

Again, habits are built through consistency, not perfection. That does not mean you must do something every single day without missing once. It simply means the action needs to return to your life regularly.

Even if you begin with once a week, and after a few weeks move to twice a week, that is already much better than trying to change everything at once, burning out, and giving up completely.

It applies to any useful habit in life. You do not need to promise yourself a perfect new life starting Monday. Sometimes one small step today is enough.

Right now I’m finishing a collection of short stories called Burning Chrome by probably the most important cyberpunk writer ever — William Gibson. And I hadn’t read cyberpunk in a long time, so I forgot how heavy and depressing the genre really is. Because cyberpunk shows us our own world, but with technology twisted into grotesque and almost unrecognizable forms.

Yesterday my son and I went to a playground. There was a group of teenagers there, maybe 13 to 15 years old. And what I saw honestly looked like a scene from another planet. Instead of talking to each other, five teenagers were sitting separately in different corners of the playground, silently staring into their phones.

And in that moment I realized that cyberpunk had already arrived. I understand that this is the new reality, and that clinging to the past makes no sense, and that this is simply the new normal now.

But it gave me a very strange feeling — for a moment I felt like a complete alien on my own planet.

Which, honestly, is exactly what good cyberpunk is supposed to make its reader feel.

I have a family of students where I tutor both the children and their parents. Some time ago, the parents started going to the gym and seriously working out. And on Saturday, looking at my friend and student Sergey, I couldn’t help but compliment him — he looks amazing and is in incredible shape. Especially after I found out that he is already 45 years old.

And we started talking about how important personal example really is, especially when it comes to how we treat our bodies and our health. At the same time, we talked about the fact that it is never too late to start exercising.

And yesterday our mom ran a half marathon in Białystok. I’m very sad that Albert(our son) couldn’t meet her at the finish line because he was already asleep. But that’s okay — soon enough he’ll run his first race together with his mom.

And I think that’s the main point of this whole text: it is never too late to start taking care of your body. And besides helping you personally, it brings enormous value to your children, because children imitate their parents far more than they listen to them.

Why is it so important to perform some kind of closing action at the end of a ritual? Again, for every person this can be something different: deep breaths, a loud clap of the hands, a short meditation, and so on.

The reason is very simple. Any psychologically important event for us needs to have a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined ending. You can see this everywhere: at the beginning of a party, in musicians saying goodbye at the end of a concert, and then coming back for an encore as the true finale. You can see it in sports, where players shake hands or bow after a match. You can see it in any major event that has structure and therefore requires a clear opening and a clear conclusion.

If this does not happen, the value of the event slowly dissolves, and over time something that once felt meaningful becomes just another blurry piece of everyday routine inside our minds.

That is why, if you want an event to feel truly powerful and leave a mark on the subconscious, it needs a distinct beginning, middle, and ending — like any good story.

So if you want a ritual to feel genuinely meaningful, it must have a clear opening and a clear closing.

P.S. I think this is also one of the reasons why scrolling TikTok never feels sacred in the same way that watching a film in a movie theater does.

Why, at the end of the ritual, should the sigil specifically be burned instead of, for example, torn apart, eaten, or destroyed in some other way?

Fire, as an element of nature, is unique because humans are the only living beings on planet Earth who managed to tame and use it. In a sense, we are the children of fire. Fire has always fascinated humanity, and throughout almost every important human ritual or symbolic moment, fire is present.

For example, considering that today is Victory Day — the eternal flame. Or candles on birthday cakes. Or candles inside temples and churches. Fire constantly accompanies the symbolic life of humanity.

Fire is also unique because it is completely uncontrollable for animals. It fascinates them while simultaneously terrifying them. And that is precisely why, when a person watches their symbol burn, the subconscious becomes maximally focused on that moment. Fire creates a state of both awe and fear inside living beings — just like Kipling described it in “The Jungle Book.”

So you received your answers from the subconscious. What happens next?

This is usually the point where many self-help systems begin to fall apart, because they either don’t understand — or simply don’t explain — how to transform insight into action.

And the next step must become a habit.

Because the subconscious does not really understand time the way the conscious mind does. For the subconscious, there is mostly the present moment, a vague past, and a vague future — similar to how small children or animals experience the world. It does not understand planning, KPIs, five-year strategies, and so on. The subconscious understands habits. Something either becomes familiar and repeated, or it does not.

Many books about productivity are built around this exact idea. One of the most famous examples is Atomic Habits.

For that “agreement” with the subconscious to actually happen, a person must create the habits that the subconscious wants to see.

And this is where consciousness becomes important. The subconscious signals what it needs, while the conscious mind is responsible for building habits around it.

But for something to become a habit, it must be repeated consistently. Brushing your teeth ten times in one day will not suddenly make them healthy forever. You need to brush them every day over a long period of time.

The same goes for the gym. Going five times in a row and then quitting changes nothing. Results only appear through long-term repetition.

And it’s the same here. The important thing is not the information you received. It’s not the resolutions you made on New Year’s Eve.

What matters is what you actually do every single day.

So you received your answers from the subconscious. What happens next?

This is usually the point where many self-help systems begin to fall apart, because they either don’t understand — or simply don’t explain — how to transform insight into action.

And the next step must become a habit.

Because the subconscious does not really understand time the way the conscious mind does. For the subconscious, there is mostly the present moment, a vague past, and a vague future — similar to how small children or animals experience the world. It does not understand planning, KPIs, five-year strategies, and so on. The subconscious understands habits. Something either becomes familiar and repeated, or it does not.

Many books about productivity are built around this exact idea. One of the most famous examples is Atomic Habits.

For that “agreement” with the subconscious to actually happen, a person must create the habits that the subconscious wants to see.

And this is where consciousness becomes important. The subconscious signals what it needs, while the conscious mind is responsible for building habits around it.

But for something to become a habit, it must be repeated consistently. Brushing your teeth ten times in one day will not suddenly make them healthy forever. You need to brush them every day over a long period of time.

The same goes for the gym. Going five times in a row and then quitting changes nothing. Results only appear through long-term repetition.

And it’s the same here. The important thing is not the information you received. It’s not the resolutions you made on New Year’s Eve.

What matters is what you actually do every single day.

Today my wife was supposed to participate in an event where people presented business pitches. She prepared seriously: created a great presentation, wrote a great speech, and rehearsed everything carefully.

But yesterday we got the response that our camp, our educational system for children, and the app through which we want to create camps were not selected.

Meanwhile, among the selected projects was an app that helps owners determine the emotional state of their dogs so they don’t take them to the vet unnecessarily.

Naturally, she and I laughed a lot about this. Then we started thinking about which of our friends would actually understand the absurd humor of the situation. And we realized that mostly only friends who have children would really get it.

At the same time, I understand that many people would say: “Well, that actually sounds like a useful app.” And they’re probably right. Most likely, those people simply don’t have children. But that’s not really the point.

This reminded me of the TV show “Городок”. As a child I loved it, but for a long time I didn’t understand why. Later I realized: it always starts funny and ends sadly.

Last summer we went to Rhodes. In the old city center we met a woman selling souvenirs. She fed Albert(our son) ice cream, and it was obvious how happy it made her just to interact with a child.

Later she told us she had two adult children around our age, but they didn’t want children because they wanted to focus on their own lives.

When we were leaving, we told her we hoped her children would someday change their minds and give her grandchildren.

She looked at us with eyes full of both pain and love and said:

“They don’t know what they’re losing.”

The conscious mind and the subconscious cannot communicate directly. In order to establish a dialogue between them, a person needs what we could call an interface.

Humanity has invented a huge number of such interfaces: from medieval Tarot and the poetic Chinese I Ching to the inkblot tests of Hermann Rorschach or the unconscious writing techniques of Carl Jung.

All of these systems have the same goal: the conscious mind asks the question, and the unconscious provides the answer. It only feels as if the answer comes from outside, when in reality it comes from within ourselves.

And honestly, you don’t need cards, magical sticks, or runes for this. One of my favorite interfaces is incredibly simple.

You can take your favorite book, ask a question, open it to a random page, read a random line out loud, and then interpret it. The very first interpretation that appears in your mind is often the answer from your subconscious.

Yes, this requires practice. Yes, different systems work better for different people because we are all different.

It’s similar to sports. At first, sports are always difficult, and there is no single perfect sport for every human being. Everyone eventually finds what works best for them personally.

The same applies to subconscious interfaces. So I’d genuinely love to hear what interface works best for you.

When people think about the subconscious, they often assume it is entirely part of the brain. However, this is an oversimplification.

There is a well-known metaphor, described for example in The Happiness Hypothesis: the subconscious is like a large, powerful elephant, while the conscious mind is like a rider sitting on top of it.

The elephant is strong and generally willing to cooperate. But it does not obey automatically. If the rider ignores its nature, fails to understand it, or does not build a connection with it, movement becomes difficult or chaotic.

On the other hand, when there is alignment, movement becomes smoother and more directed.

For me, this metaphor is a useful way to think about building an internal dialogue and aligning different levels of thought and behavior.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using a function I came up with, and I really like it. I call it “the jester function.”

Let me explain. Historically, kings and rulers often had a jester — someone who could mock their ideas freely without punishment.

This role was actually very important because it helped those in power avoid falling into things like personality cults. It kept them grounded.

At some point, I realized that AI often does the opposite. It usually doesn’t challenge ideas. It may question something completely absurd, but in general, it tends to support the user.

So I asked AI to do the opposite — to criticize my ideas and act as my jester.

And through this, I started noticing many flaws in my thinking that I hadn’t seen before.

It helped me refine and improve my ideas.

In a way, it even becomes a form of self-development: when your “genius” ideas are taken apart by cold, impersonal logic. There’s nothing personal about it — it’s just a function.

So for personal growth and maintaining balance, I would recommend anyone using AI to try this approach.

I sent my game to one of my students, Fedya, for review. While reading it, he pointed out something interesting.

When he reached the moment where you roll a d12, and the number 12 instantly “closes the doors” and ends the session, it triggered immediate resistance in him.

He said he couldn’t accept that a random number was dictating his actions.

And I was actually very happy about that, because that was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

Because despite what we like to believe, we don’t fully control our lives, and that’s completely normal.

I really liked his reaction because he is a thoughtful, intelligent, and talented young person. And the fact that this resistance appeared shows that the process I intended to trigger with this mechanic is working.

So this is not just a game. Through this game, I’m trying to show people that they need to let go of control. That sometimes our decisions lead to bad outcomes regardless of our intentions.

And I think accepting that is part of growing up — realizing that sometimes, no matter what we do, our intentions won’t lead anywhere.

Really curious, is there anyone here who tries to teach their players something through your mechanics?

I sent my game to one of my students, Fedya, for review. While reading it, he pointed out something interesting.

When he reached the moment where you roll a d12, and the number 12 instantly “closes the doors” and ends the session, it triggered immediate resistance in him.

He said he couldn’t accept that a random number was dictating his actions.

And I was actually very happy about that, because that was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

Because despite what we like to believe, we don’t fully control our lives, and that’s completely normal.

I really liked his reaction because he is a thoughtful, intelligent, and talented young person. And the fact that this resistance appeared shows that the process I intended to trigger with this mechanic is working.

So this is not just a game. Through this game, I’m trying to show people that they need to let go of control. That sometimes our decisions lead to bad outcomes regardless of our intentions.

And I think accepting that is part of growing up — realizing that sometimes, no matter what we do, our intentions won’t lead anywhere.

Really curious, is there anyone here who tries to teach their players something through your mechanics?