In order to help myself, I've been consuming a lot of inspirational videos.

People who have come from a difficult place and have already succeeded at pulling themselves out of a hole and then managed to catapult into super success. People who have made their lives around studying the brain or behaviours.

People who know much better than I do how to do what I am wanting to do.

A lot of these videos have a spiritual theme or the people are religious and they reference that as something that is influential.

I am what I would consider somewhat of a hardcore atheist, but I usually describe myself as atheist / agnostic.

I don’t believe in any god or gods. I don’t believe in a “higher power”. I believe that there is a logical real-world explanation for everything in existence. I do not believe in anything “supernatural”. If it exists, then it is natural, it is of nature. Things that don’t exist, things that are not in nature - those would be supernatural.

But I recognize that I don’t have proof - no one has proof. It is something that cannot be proved or disproved. I would argue that there are factors that make it clear that it wasn’t really done by some intelligent/knowing/purposeful source, but I am also aware that basically any point could be argued for or against. I always have devil’sadvocate.exe running in the background and throwing notifications.

However, I don’t let that keep me from having an open ear to those who are religious or spiritual in some way.

With the human mind - you believe in what you choose to believe and you will believe in it because of that choice. It becomes real to you regardless of what is actually true.

The way you speak to yourself, you embody.

When people speak about any god or higher power, I convert their words in my head to “that person’s definition of the existence of the universe”. Whether that is the universe itself or part of a pantheon.

When people refer to a higher power, I interpret it as a projection of that person’s interpretation of what the universe needs or even what they need on a deep subconscious level.

For other people who believe in spirituality, they would instead attribute certain concepts to a higher power like when you experience something that causes you to have an epiphany - they attribute both the occurrence and the epiphany to the power because it was ~something you were destined to~.