The Invisible Fog of Our Unconscious

How does someone reach the age of 50 without being exposed to the concept of the unconscious and its underestimated influence on us? If I couldn't expect this from my loving but not psychologically minded parents, what might I expect from elementary school, middle school, and university? If these are the pillars of our personal and academic development, the institutions through which we acquire knowledge and abilities, how come no one has considered including self-mastery as a major cornerstone in any educational curriculum?

How are math, literature, civilization classes a must-have and “understanding yourself” not appearing on the academic walls?

Meteorological fog reminds me how we often act as if we have perfect visibility, ignoring the impact of the unconscious, and how getting in touch with it can alert us to avoid unwanted and unpleasant road accidents. While digging into our psyche might be an unsettling and scary task, my aspiration is for more people to succeed in this endeavour and live a better life.

Milan is my birthplace, but I've resided in Dubai for the past eight years. With its unique cultural melting pot, this city has become my second home. It is a place where I have sacrificed a portion of my Italian identity in exchange for a cosmopolitan, albeit occasionally heartbroken, individuality.

The one thing I didn't miss about Milan and was relieved to leave behind has resurfaced here; in fact, despite having two extremely different climates, Milan and Dubai share something special: fog. If you've ever travelled early in the morning on the Lombardy motorways, or occasionally on the one-hour straight-line commute from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, you'll know that severe fog will significantly affect your driving, and hence your safety.

The good news in this unpleasant scenario is that we can actually see the fog and make thoughtful adjustments: as we exit the garage, we immediately notice that visibility has been significantly reduced by zillions of micro water droplets, and we prudently adjust speed, attention level, distance from the car ahead of us, use fog lights, and so on.

In light of this realisation, we begin to engage in a distinct pattern of driving behaviour that is dictated and required by the brain's increased information access. We act differently because we are aware of how dimly we can see: given the threat to our safety we switch off the auto-pilot and supplement with augmented attention.

Now hypothetically imagine if something in our brain failed to recognise the need to adopt different driving measures. This would mean that we would continue to drive at the usual speed, normal distances, and without any additional precautionary measures. The roads would be littered with a succession of disastrous accidents and casualties.

And yet, we do it every day. Yes, we do.

We conduct and drive our lives in pilot-mode as if we had full visibility of the road, we engage with people around us as if we were in absolute command of ourselves. We believe we see 20/20.

We conduct and drive our lives in pilot-mode as if we had full visibility of the road, we engage with people around us as if we were in absolute command of ourselves. We believe we see 20/20.

But we don’t, really.

Our visibility is undeniably fogged up by the lack of access to our inner self. I am referring to our unconscious, that part of us that we are completely unaware of, and yet it takes the driver’s seat in many aspects of our lives.

Just as fog rolls in and obscures our vision while driving, the unconscious mind can obscure our understanding of our own thoughts, emotions and actions. Like fog, the unconscious is a powerful and mysterious force that can both help and hinder us on our journey through life.

Fog can also unexpectedly clear up and leave us not knowing where we are, the same way when the unconscious reveals itself to us through a sudden epiphany or Freudian slip, bringing both clarity and disorientation (what just happened?). We enter an interaction, an exchange, we take a position, decide what to say and what not to say, we decide to act or not act. However, we fail to possess the elements that are unknowingly and silently driving us, or in fact driving others.

The question for the reader is: Would you allow an invisible individual to drive your car as you sat beside her/him? Or would you hire someone to represent you in court if you didn't know what they were planning to claim? Or more importantly, would you let them say something that you had not authorised them to say and that would be detrimental to your defence?

Of course, the answer is no, you would not. And yet, every day, we accept that this unthinking and unreflective shadow, a side we don't see or control, causes us to say and do things that harm our relationships, without us taking stock, if not post-mortem.

Why is this even relevant?

We go about our daily lives certain that we make well-thought-out rational decisions, guided by linear thinking and logical step-by-step reasoning, and arrive at what we assume to be sensible and sound conclusions.

We are convinced that leadership and management science are at the root of C-suite strategic decisions, whereas all this is highly debatable. 

We are convinced that leadership and management science are at the root of C-suite strategic decisions, whereas all this is highly debatable. 

We do this in parenting, team leadership, friendships, and even romantic relationships. Nobody is exempt.

Your mind may be convinced that you are an exception at this moment and that you are in complete control of your life and actions. And that's OK. Yet an extra layer of self-awareness can in fact help us make fewer road victims, including ourselves.

Increased understanding and acceptance that "there is always more beneath the surface" can help a leader be more effective, a life partner be more understood, and a parent be more sensitive to his own background and thus a better parent.

We appear to have a natural tendency to discard anything we cannot prove, what we can't touch or tangibly explain. Even worse, the unknown frightens us and even leads us to deny its existence.

My challenge to the reader is: If you can save a life by adopting an adjusted driving style on a foggy day, why not consider the avoidance of many work conflicts and misunderstandings, by gaining additional insights into yourself, into your team's hidden dynamics, or the triggers that can derail you personally, or an entire organisation when you are the CEO sitting at the top?

Since birth, humans have sought psychological safety. And the moment we feel this safety is under threat, we unknowingly store away deep-seated fears, desires, and memories that become not immediately accessible to conscious awareness. No human is exempt from this programming of our species, regardless of how well you think you know yourself. It is a mechanism that aims at protecting us from pain.

I am neither a psychologist, nor am I equipped to venture into the meanders of Freudian definitions, so I’ll stick to the simple idiom that we’ve all heard, the expression “the tip of the iceberg”. This adage signals that something considerably bigger (and relevant) lies beneath the surface, unseen by our sight, and intangible to our touch.

Something considerably bigger (and relevant) lies beneath the surface, unseen by our sight, and intangible to our touch.

Yet we know it is there. And so to say that our “hidden part of us” is in fact the largest portion of who we are, would probably not be an overstatement.

As I write this article, I am uncertain whether I am addressing mostly leadership pitfalls that we see daily at work, or the most immediate contexts of our private lives. After 26+ years of working life, and about half a century of “just life”, I look back and I question how many times I would have personally said or done something differently if I had known, if I had paid attention to the inner hidden forces that drove me here or there, pushed me in fight, flight or freeze mode.

If I had known what? I could not have done anything differently if it had been invisible - like the fog. Well, this is the beauty of being in this world. We are not alone. We are surrounded by many other people. The invisible to us can sometimes be visible to others, given one condition: our willingness to be psychologically vulnerable and open.

Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable takes different shapes, yet one of the most underutilised and underestimated displays of vulnerability is related to the art and practice of not-knowing.

One of the most underutilised and underestimated displays of vulnerability is related to the art and practice of not-knowing.

Knowledge and experience are incredible assets as we navigate through life. They can give us confidence, but they can also drive us to be overly convinced and prevent us from seeing things from a different perspective. What if we could educate our minds to enter dialogues and interactions equipped with a not-knowing attitude, without assumptions and prejudice? What if we could look at ourselves through the same unbiased and uncritical lens?

What if we could temporarily disengage from the mental cages that our education, experiences, relationships, successes and failures have erected within our psyche? How powerful would it be to enter an interaction or self-reflection free of any foreknowledge?

How powerful would it be to enter an interaction or self-reflection free of any foreknowledge?

The challenge lies within the way we are wired; whether by survival instinct, cultural habits, upbringing, or societal expectations, we are in fact predisposed (and maybe expected) to use and consume this abundance of knowledge. It's there, it's available, and we believe it should be used and showcased. It guides us in making decisions (micro and macro) on a daily basis and governs our interactions with other humans. And most importantly, with ourselves.

How do we take the blinders off towards our unconscious so that we can evolve into a truer version of ourselves? What can we do to tame this seemingly uncontrollable knowing instinct? How can we transition from being a book authored by our life stories to being an empty manuscript, or pretending to be one, full of blank pages? This is the goal of discovering more.

Most people have a coach, some others have naturally established a dialogue with a trusted friend; others refer to a therapist like most people go to the gym, to work their way through their mental issues. If our intention is to learn more, there are plenty of sources that can be of support.

While Milan’s metaphorical fog evaporates with rising temperatures, the mist of our unconscious is a daily reality that requires serious and deep efforts for us to become more acquainted with it. After all, whether we like it or not, our unconscious plays an invaluable role in maintaining our daily lives; it keeps us afloat in the same way the iceberg's buried section keeps the tip above water. Therefore, we may as well get along with it and pay attention to what it has to say.

There might be fog out there, and some inside us. So, just keep an eye out and drive cautiously.