Does Your Mind Control You? Or Do You Control Your Mind?

Does your mind control you

We mostly spend a lot of time inside our head. So why not make it a better space?

Ever wonder why we have mindfulness meditation, memory enhancement programs, mind mapping strategies, brain development supplements?

Ever wondered what that signifies? It means that our mind can be made better. It is a very powerful tool that can even be more powerful with the right amount of care and training. Our minds can serve us better and work to our benefit instead of being our enemy. 

We can’t control what happens around us but we can most definitely control our own thoughts. 

Our thoughts are formed and heavily influenced by what we see while walking outside, our overall physical wellness, our food and beverage intake, how we were raised and the environment were immersed in, or an external stimuli. 

When you’ve been told far too many times that you won’t go far in life, you’ll begin to think less of yourself.  When you’ve been raised by a strict culture into  thinking you must only marry Chinese, you tend to subconsciously reject those who aren’t Chinese, or your rebellious nature would go off and pick anyone else just not Chinese. 

When you’ve grown to believe that the earth is flat, then most likely, you’re now a supporter, if not a member of the flat-earth society. 

It’s fair to say that if you started to have an unhealthy mindset, it’s not entirely your fault. But failure to cultivate your mind once you know it’s  unhealthy , that’s gonna be on you. Your holistic well-being is no one else’s responsibility but yours alone. 

Another typical scenario where we can see that most of the time our  thoughts are unchecked  would be when you’re on the table, ready to eat then suddenly you remember something that makes you furious. So you lash out on the food that you have on the table. Then after a few days you notice that you put on all that weight and feel guilty afterwards. 

Ever noticed when you’re thinking happy thoughts? You get up out of bed jumpy and ready to take on the day’s challenge. 

But when you wake up and think depressing thoughts, your body follows, too. You roll back in bed, you’re skipping breakfast if not binge-eating and you don’t want to move an inch. These episodes can happen again and again and form a habit. And once it becomes a habit, it becomes a little too hard to curtail. Old habits die hard, as they say. 

You know what could have stopped that? Mindfulness. Checking where your mind goes when it goes off to wander. We know it’s a lot easier said than done. But hey, it’s not impossible! And when you are finally able to achieve that mindfulness, you will thank yourself and your body for it. 

You can always start training your mind by apprehending your thoughts. There are times when we see or remember something, our thoughts begin to take off. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we realize that we’re thinking. We find ourselves thinking about the impossible, the fantasy, the bad memories, the happy times and the things we want to forget. In that exact moment, when we become aware that we are thinking, catch your thoughts and assess them. 

Ask yourself, what brought me to these thoughts? What are the triggers? Ask yourself questions but the most important thing is that you catch and check your thoughts. 

The next thing you can do is to practice dissociation. When we recall a memory, we immediately find ourselves reliving the past. We put ourselves back in that painful memory, and thus we are unable to think and observe ourselves as a third person. 

When we see our friends having a hard time getting over their past, we become persons who are able to think objectively.  We see solutions that are not seen by our friends because they’re associated with the painful memory.

Practicing dissociation for ourselves can be a helpful strategy to train the mind and lead us back to more healthier thoughts. 

The mind is so powerful. The quality of thoughts that come from our mind may either make us or break us, and that’s all the more reason we should learn to control it. 

It’s not easy. Many times you’d be running in circles, and you might get frustrated. But you know what they say, practice makes perfect. Commit to this and you will thank yourself later on.

Linda Thomson