Get Your Mind On Your Side

For many of us, the mind is a battlefield. And what we don’t realize is that the battle is never-ending. The mind is not the place where we can find a solution, nor does it want to stop its constant activity, as this is how it keeps itself entertained.

You are not your mind

This is the first important concept that you may have never realized: you are not your mind.

To understand this concept, we can illustrate it with an example: imagine a chessboard in which the white squares symbolize the friendly part of your mind, and the black squares represent the opposite. On the chessboard, you encounter different pieces, like pawns (thoughts), kings and queens (feelings and intuitions), knights (memories), etc…

Sometimes, just like with a chessboard, your life can be like an intense and complex game with all of these elements. It’s important to remember that the board, the thing that sustains everything, is you. Something that will always remain constant.

The mind is biologically designed to detect danger, but that does not mean that it’s always spot on in its abilities. The dangerous situations that you’ve encountered in your life send you a warning signal, but you don’t have to let fear control you. Don’t overgeneralize.

Don’t feed your mind with toxic fertilizer that lets the weeds (bad thoughts) flourish. But also don’t try to ignore the dangerous situation or constantly substitute bad thoughts with good ones.

This would end up being exhausting, and you’d achieve the opposite result: you’ll pay attention to your inner world but disregard your real actions. Simply try to change your activities and habits instead of thoughts.

Strategies to help yourself and your mind

Maybe you’re not giving your mind a chance to stop thinking in a harmful way. Consider the two following situations:

Your mind tells you that you have a really bad feeling about something, that if you leave the house you are going to witness a disaster, so it’s better to just stay inside. You’re not looking for anything real confirm this idea that just popped into your head. You simply believe it without looking for alternatives.

Another example is when you’re tired of thinking or feeling a certain way, but nevertheless you continue reading the same books, hanging out with the same people who do not bring anything good to your life, and doing jobs that don’t satisfy you. You continue doing all the same things.

Ultimately, you’ll end up believing everything that your mind told you, settling on those ideas without looking for alternatives. Obviously, doing more of the same thing won’t bring you different results.

Sometimes, laziness regarding taking action in your life and making decisions is the first step that leads to dreaded mental disorders.

Therefore, you should talk to your mind about your feelings, passions, language, and actions. Tell it that you take it into consideration. And that you want the both of you to be happy.

That you can’t ask it to stop its activity, because that would stifle its nature, and you are its ally, not its enemy. That you thank it for the balance it’s given you in many situations, for helping you make the right decisions. That its complexity has given your life some absolutely splendid moments, and that you always count on it to have something relevant to say.

But also that you need peace to contemplate things without needing an analysis. That you want to accept its presence and it to accept yours, and that together you can reach maturity.

In the end, you’ll always have each other, so forget about the past and build a real relationship with it, the kind that inspires you to achieve big dreams and that makes you forget how small you sometimes feel.

Isn’t it time to build a real future together?