The Engineering Model of Personality: Changing Yourself and Others — Understanding the Structure by Mikhail Tsepkov

Mikhail Tsepkov invites you to look at yourself and your personality as something like a complex mechanism or program. Not just a set of traits, but a system that can be understood, studied, and — most importantly changed.

“Emotional markers are a way to remember immediately.
The level of the inner ‘kitten’ is responsible not only for emotional reactions
but also for the mechanism of emotional markers, by which even a single experience can be remembered for a long time.
This is ensured by the work of the hippocampus — the only area of the brain
where new neurons actively grow throughout life.”

This is the main idea in Tsepkov’s model: emotions play a crucial role in how our brain records and retains experiences. The “kitten” represents the emotional center that creates these emotional markers, which help transform fleeting experiences into lasting memories. The hippocampus, a brain region essential for memory formation and learning, is unique in its ability to generate new neurons even in adulthood, supporting the brain’s plasticity and our capacity to adapt and change. This explains why emotional context is key to habit formation and personal transformation.

He divides our inner life into three main parts:

• The Crocodile — our basic instincts and habits that often operate automatically and unconsciously. This is the ancient part of the brain responsible for survival and quick reactions.
• The Kitten (Cat) — emotions, feelings, motivation. What makes us happy, afraid, angry, and helps us make decisions on the emotional level.
• The Little Human — our mind, awareness, what thinks, analyzes, and makes conscious decisions.

Understanding how these parts interact allows you to manage yourself: change harmful habits, control emotions, and set the right goals.

Key ideas

• Habits are not just actions but links between actions and emotions. To change a habit, you need not only to do something differently but also to feel something new and pleasant in the moment of replacement.
• Awareness is the ability to notice what’s happening inside and not react automatically. When you become aware of your thoughts and emotions, you gain a choice in how to respond.
• Motivation is not just a desire but a chain of goals and values that truly ignite you. If the goal is unclear or not yours, you will quickly get tired and give up.
• Other people are complex systems too. To better understand and influence them, it helps to think about what is important to them now and what drives them.
• Memory and emotions are connected: habits are consolidated thanks to emotional experiences. The stronger the emotion, the deeper the habit is “recorded” in the subconscious.
• Neurons and connections: frequently repeated thoughts and actions form stable neural connections — this is your behavioral “program.”
• Brain energy is limited. Conscious thinking consumes a lot of resources, so it’s important to conserve energy, delegate routine, and not try to control everything at once.

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How to apply these ideas in practice?

1. Change habits through emotions
   Say you want to stop eating sweets after dinner. Simply telling yourself “I won’t eat” often doesn’t help. But if you replace the habit with something pleasant — like drinking herbal tea and feeling relaxed — your brain will form a new positive association. Repeat regularly to cement the new habit.
2. Learn to manage emotions
   When you feel anger or anxiety, don’t suppress or ignore it. Instead, say to yourself aloud or internally: “I’m angry,” or “I’m scared.” Take a deep breath, step back a bit, or shift your attention to something else — then the emotion will stop controlling you. Use breathing, movement, or changing your environment to reduce emotional tension.
3. Set real goals
   Goals should be clear and personal. Not “I want to lose weight,” but “I want to feel light and energetic to play with my kids.” Understanding why you want this creates motivation that helps you move forward. Ask yourself: “Why is this important?”, “What will I gain?”, “Which values does this goal support?”
4. Develop awareness
   Keeping a journal — writing down your thoughts and feelings in different situations — helps you notice recurring patterns and how they affect your behavior. Learn to pause before reacting, so you choose your response rather than act out of habit. Awareness is the “observer” inside you that helps you choose reactions and avoid autopilot traps.
5. Understand other people
   When communicating, try to imagine what is important to the other person right now. What worries them? What motivates their actions? This helps find common ground and avoid unnecessary conflicts. Remember everyone has their own perception filters and emotional triggers — take them into account.
6. Conserve energy and avoid overload
   Don’t try to control everything or think constantly. Automate simple tasks, delegate what you can, and make sure to rest — the brain recovers when you switch to something else. Use planning techniques to reduce the load on your “little human.”

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Additional useful insights from the book

• Psychological models are tools, not dogmas. MBTI, DISC, Spiral Dynamics, and others are “maps” that help understand yourself and others but don’t replace reality.
• Internal conflicts arise from level struggles: sometimes the “crocodile” and “kitten” resist the “little human,” and that’s normal. Change takes time and patience.
• Emotional intelligence can be trained. The better you understand and manage your emotions, the more effective you become in life and communication.
• The brain is adaptive and plastic. It can and should be trained by creating new useful neural connections.
• The engineer metaphor: you are the designer of your life. Don’t expect instant changes; work systematically, step by step.