Mantra

You prompt the machine. The mantra prompts you.

Same mechanism, both directions. You give an AI context and intention so it acts aligned. A mantra gives you context and intention so you act aligned. A pepeha — declaring your mountain, your river, your people — is the deepest prompt. You declare what grounds you before you act.

Under cognitive load, pressure, fatigue — the trigger fails. That's why you need both: the mantra (intention) and the system (enforcement).

The Cascade

Level	Mechanism	Fails When
Mantra	You remember the phrase	Cognitive load, fatigue, emotion
Rule	Context loaded, you apply it	Pressure, context overflow
Hook	Fires automatically on event	System misconfigured
System	Environment prevents the error	Never (if designed right)

Mantras set the intention — the setpoint. Systems enforce it — the controller. A PID loop needs both. Without the setpoint, the system has nothing to control toward. Without the system, the setpoint is just a wish. The goal is flow — where neither is conscious.

By Context

When	Mantra	System It Activates
Under pressure	Act on principles, not emotion	Decision filter
Lost direction	What's the most important question?	Existence questions
Drifting	Measure what matters	Performance scoreboard
Overthinking	Ship, then iterate	VVFL loop
Scattered	One task, full attention	Flow state
Ego rising	Make others the star	Character
Comfort zone	Comfort kills creativity	Potential
Money warping	Money is a poor measure of wealth	Financialization
Alone	The journey is plural	Players
Anxious	Confidence is having systems to find a way	Control system

The best mantra is the one you don't need because the system already handles it. That's why :::tip Mantra blocks appear on pages throughout the site — mantras in context, where they're needed, not in a list you'll never revisit under load.

The Upgrade Path

From	To
Remembering a phrase	Phrase embedded in environment
Willpower under pressure	Protocol that fires automatically
Personal discipline	Shared standard that compounds
"I should remember to..."	Platform that makes forgetting impossible

Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

The Prompt

Your pepeha IS your prompt. The Tight Five questions are a pepeha for any domain — five declarations that ground you before you act. When you know your mountain, your river, your waka, your people, and your fruit — you don't need someone else to tell you what matters.

Direction	Prompt	What It Aligns
You → Machine	Context, role, constraints	AI output to your intention
Mantra → You	Conviction, identity, values	Your action to your purpose
Pepeha → Community	Mountain, river, waka, people	Identity to belonging

The prompts page teaches you to prompt machines. This page teaches you to prompt yourself. Both are alignment mechanisms. Both need context, intention, and a feedback loop that confirms the prompt landed.

Context

• First Principles — Under pressure, reason from what's true
• Tight Five — Five elements that hold under load
• Flow State — Where mantras become unnecessary
• Control System — Engineering what mantras try to do
• Prompting — The capability mantras develop
• Prompts — Turning questions into AI conversations
• Behavioural Biases — What mantras counter
• Protocols — When mantras graduate to shared practice
• Pepeha — The deepest prompt: identity grounded in belonging
• Gratitude — The signal that confirms your prompt landed

Questions

If the mantra prompts you the same way you prompt the machine, what's your system prompt?

• When a mantra fails under pressure, is the problem the mantra or the absence of the system behind it?
• What distinguishes a mantra you've internalized from one you merely remember?
• If your pepeha declares what grounds you, what happens to people who've never been asked to declare it?