Every organism is biologically wired to behave in ways that have a good probability of survival. Whether by design (i.e., a higher power) or simple, random chance (i.e., “the ones that were not wired that way are dead”), organisms have certain instinctual behaviors that they perform to survive, grow, and reproduce. From beavers building dams to wolves traveling in packs, there are an endless variety of techniques and mechanisms that life uses to continue itself and become more of itself.
Humans have a set of these, from the nurturing instinct to care for babies to the fight-or-flight response to handle threats. These worked for thousands of years to keep humans alive and reproducing. Unfortunately, many of those instincts are counterproductive in modern times. An example is the fight-or-flight response to civilized stress, such as a civil disagreement is difficult to live peacefully in society when you want to punch your political opponent in the face. College exams, mate competition, and other situations where stress levels are high and your body’s responses (e.g., increased heart rate, sweating) are drawbacks and not benefits.
So what are the ideal behaviors? Unfortunately, often times they are the opposite: being calm under pressure so you can use your advanced cognitive faculties for exams; not being anxious and afraid when asking a potential mate out; being able to hide your emotions during business negotiations. Stress prepared you to be alert and fight off or get away from the threat, not to do complex mathematical calculations. Nerves are useful to get blood to your extremities, not to have engaging conversations with potential dates. Facial expressions were meant to communicate your emotional state to other members of your group from a distance, not to help you win a business deal.
Strangely, there are so many activities in life that require certain amounts of biological capabilities and mental mastery over everything else. For example, to be the world’s best pole vaulter, you have to both be physically gifted enough to perform that activity very well and be able to perform in a competition in front of millions of people (insert obligatory joke here about the recent Olympics where one competitor’s other physical gifts actually ruined his performance in the event). It is very possible that someone could possibly be the best ever at a sport or event and just not have the mentality to do it under competitive conditions. This applies to everything from chess (chess mastery plus performance in competition and speed) to computer science (ability plus discipline and interest). Steve Jobs was famous for growing up as a tinkerer along with his friend Steve Wozniak—the latter was a much better engineer than the former, but it was because the former was more interested in the intersection of business, design, and technology. Steve Jobs possibly could’ve also been a great programmer, but he just didn’t have as much interest (just as Steve Wozniak never really cared as much for the business side as Jobs did).
So your life’s success is up to your ability to optimize your balance of talent, desire, and discipline. If you have the physical potential to become a great baseball pitcher, then you have the talent. If you want to pitch in the major leagues, then you have the desire. But if you don’t want to watch film to study your opponent’s batting tendencies and instead want to pick up girls (a competing biological instinct), then you might not have the discipline required to be the best. It’s a combination of your biological gifts along with your ability to override any instincts that might take you away from your goals that will help you succeed.
There are trade-offs galore in life that you have to make between what “feels” better or might be preferable to what is ultimately better for you: staying up late and partying vs. sleeping; drinking alcohol vs. water; going out with friends vs. studying; spending vs. saving. Some are near-term vs. long-term happiness trade-offs, while others are what’s good for you vs. others (do you take the last slice of pizza or give it to a friend who might remember your generosity and help you later?). Some are biological response vs. the rational response, while others are what your ingrained ethics say vs. societal ethics.
A few examples of these include eye-for-an-eye revenge vs. justice, arguing back against a superior vs. conceding for the good of your career, and going with friends to a movie that you don’t care for. In the first example, vigilante justice might seem good in the moment, but then it would create complete chaos since people’s retaliations are often escalated versions of the original and, therefore, will cause the first person to claim that was unfair and escalate it even further. In the second, it might feel good to argue, but then you either won’t get a promotion or might not even have a job at all. In the last one, you compromise on a movie that’s not the one that you really want to see because you want to spend time with your friends more than you want to see the movie at this exact moment (or you’d prefer to see the better movie now vs. the lesser one but would prefer even more to maintain these friendships). You are always fighting competing interests to make the best decision for your life.
It’s not all bad news, though—you do have a lot of good instincts. After all, your “gut”—aka your emotions—are wonderfully fast calculations of your assessment of a situation given your desires, beliefs, and experiences. For example, you can immediately get a bad feeling because you’re in a strange part of town, believe that it is not safe, and want to get somewhere less risky. That tells you to get out of there, and it will often be the right decision if your assessments are accurate. So for every time your biology makes you do something strange—my personal favorite is the behavioral economics study where people were willing to hurt themselves financially to punish others, which is against the idea of pure self-interest but instead toward the social good of correcting others’ unfair behavior—it makes you do something right, such as speaking in a more attractive tone of voice when talking to a potential mate or pumping blood to the right areas of the body when there really is a physical threat. Unfortunately, when it goes wrong is the most memorable and, therefore, why it seems to be more of an inhibitor than a help.
So, the best thing you can do is mentally prepare yourself for the decisions you will have to make in your life and practice making the best ones for you. You see this all the time in activities like fire drills to train yourself not to run and trample over people trying to get out of a building or speech rehearsals so you can go from memory to an extent if you get nervous right before going on stage. There are even more graphic or comical examples like in There’s Something About Mary where the protagonist is told to masturbate before a date so his biology isn’t a hurdle to its success. One of the most famous in history is Odysseus from The Odyssey ordering his men to tie him to the mast so he didn’t succumb to the siren song. He knew that he couldn’t resist, so he took the decision out of his own hands while he still had his wits about him.
You are not going to be perfect; not human is. You might party one night when you were supposed to study and rest. You might lose your temper before coming to your senses and having to apologize to the person you screamed at. You might panic and perform terribly in a test or competition. Unfortunately, that is life. As long as it wasn’t a fatal mistake, you’ll still be alive to try again or try something else. The point of life is to keep growing and moving forward, so as long as you keep trying to improve yourself to attain the best outcome possible, you are going in the right direction. Just be wary of the competing influences you’ll face—you have your own biology, others’ needs and opinions, and your current vs. future state all to worry about as you’re figuring out what to do in any given moment. Do the best you can to factor it all in and make the best decisions possible—and learn from your mistakes if you don’t!