The Centrality Of The Mind

Without your mind, you are nothing. But even a brilliant mind, left uncontrolled, possesses the power to change your greatest experiences into tribulation, and can transform the heights of bliss into the depths of despondency. The greatest battles I’ve ever fought have been waged against my own mind, and I can honestly say that I’ve lost quite a few of them, often without even being aware that I was at war. The average person goes through life with his emotions pegged to fortune. Left to its own devices, the mind will be positive when times are exceptionally good, and melancholy when times are very poor; I’m not entirely sure how successful anyone but the most devout mind watcher can be in defying the extremes life can throw at you, at least in the short term when you haven’t had time to watch your thoughts.

Most of life is not a part of any of these polar extremes however, but falls somewhere between mildly negative and mildly positive, with the bulk falling into stark, bland, emotionless neutrality. At first glance, this seems like a natural way for things to work, but accepting this model of emotions without acknowledging your own great power to affect things is to forfeit most of the happiness which you can achieve in life.

Starting the summer after sixth grade, and lasting, with varying intensity, until I was part way through my senior year of high school, I was what most people would consider depressed. I was never close to killing myself, but my whole life was diffused with a sense of bleak foreboding and fear. I remember thinking at one point that my very eyes appeared to see the color of certain rooms with a black, severe tinge, despite regarding them as pleasant today. I went from being something of a jolly, socially adept, physically and academically talented child to a withdrawn, sullen, academically disappointing kid with little physical skill, seemingly over the course of a summer.

Looking back, I can hardly imagine the change. I always loved playing baseball, and was a pretty talented catcher, but during my 7th grade year, I couldn’t even manage to throw the ball down to second when someone was trying to steal. My arm was strong enough, but my aim would veer to the side, as I was convinced it must. My grip became unsure, my arm unsteady, my batting technique faltered, and in short, I went from being a first class player to barley tolerable. My physical abilities had not deteriorated, but my mind had. Looking back, I can see things as they really were; my dark mind convinced me that I could no longer play baseball, and so I could not. Back then though, I looked forward to games not with my old eagerness, but with only foreboding, convinced of my own ineptitude, and the sureness of my embarrassment when others would see how far I had fallen. I had set myself up in a repeating cycle; convinced of my inability in all areas of my life, and the darkness of the world I lived in, that is all I could experience. Because that was all I experienced, I could not find a happier place from which to reevaluate things. Curing my depression had nothing to do with my experiences improving, and everything to do with me changing my mind.

Most people have heard enough athletes say their efforts are 90% mental to believe that there is some truth to this, but if you were to suggest that nearly everything revolves not around the reality that you perceive, but how you interpret that reality in your mind, you would find quite a few raised eyebrows. Even most of those who would say that you might be onto something would quickly amend that they don’t have the patience or aptitude to control their minds enough for that to be a factor of positive change in their lives.

My own depression was not arrested in one dramatic change, but gradually improved, ebbing and flowing over a number of years as I proved to myself the validity of this model, though I didn’t really know how I was working though my problems at the time, and I went about my changes in a haphazard and perhaps damaging way. I won’t be going into detail about exactly how I escaped depression in this post, but needless to say, it had nothing to do with improving circumstances in my life, because everything I needed for happiness was already present, as it always is. I had only to work with my mind. Less extremely, every day happiness should not be pegged to events; to be happy, you must simply think the right thoughts.

How To Harness The Power Of Your Mind

You are what you think about, plain and simple. Change what and how you think for the better, and so too will your life improve. It’s an easy enough concept to understand, whether or not you believe it, but taking this information and actually making changes to your thought process can seem daunting. I honestly can’t claim to be a complete master of my mind even today, but then, I’m not sure many who don’t spend their days in meditative contemplation can really claim to have cemented total control over their mind. I occasionally will find myself indulging in a negative thought, for that’s exactly what it is that I’m doing, and reaping the consequences in my life.

Take your average day. Say nothing overly negative or positive happens. You don’t win the lottery, but you’re not stuck in traffic for four hours and your boss doesn’t bother you overly much. If you could live this day twice, you could have two completly different experiences in terms of your level of contentment. Why? Because on one day, you allowed yourself to indulge in whatever thoughts came to your mind, and on the other, you diligently stuck to positive, grateful, happy thoughts which reaffirmed your own level of competence, personableness, and skill.

One interesting analogy that I came across in studying meditation was from Buddhist and Hindu monastic traditions. They say, in reference to meditative troubles, that the mind is like a drunken monkey stung my a scorpion, and I’d say that that’s exactly what it is. Have you ever tried to meditate? Especially if you’re a beginner, or if you’ve had a rough day, or if you’ve let your practice slide for awhile, it can be nearly impossible to quiet your mind. On some days, you can sit for an hour in lotus, infuriated -to your own aggrievement- at your inability to clear your mind. Your subconscious continues to parade a line of thoughts through your head, seemingly out of nowhere.

You need not meditate to solve your thought problems, though I would suggest that you try it. However, the way that meditators advise that you overcome your obstacles to clarity is the same way that you can escape damaging mental habits. There are several things to do. First, don’t allow yourself to become annoyed with yourself over failure. Merely observe thoughts, good or bad, as they arise, and let the ones go which are negative. You’ll start to be shocked at some of the things that come up in your mind, and the way that you justify them. You’ll start to see your mind as that drunken monkey, or, as I sometimes see my own, as more of a petulant child than the control center of a rational adult.

One trap that I find myself indulging in is what I like to call “storytelling”. It’s not a bad idea at all when the stories you weave are positive, which can raise you up and excite you, but I often make them negative, for what reason I don’t know. For instance, like many people, I sometimes find members of my family to be annoying. When I know that I’ll be spending time with them, I start to imagine their annoying habits in action. I see scenarios in my mind in which they do something which I know will infuriate me, and sure enough, I start to get annoyed in real life. My mood darkens, and nothing has even happened to me yet. Instead of thinking about how great a trip will be, I’ve draped it in failure and torment weeks before I even set out. On the other hand, if I concentrate on imagining a positive trip, I often find that things go really well. Whether or not a trip really improve as a result of my thinking, or I merely perceive them as better seems something of a moot point; I’ll take a positive delusion over rage any day.

The stories we tell ourselves, the thoughts we think, and the state of our minds are really under our control. We justify our moods to ourselves. We should feel rage over what that person did to us, or shame at what we did to them. We indulge in replaying incidents over and over, imaging alternate scenarios and telling ourselves that we deserve revenge. We love thinking about how bad we have it, failing to realize that we have it so bad because of we think about how bad we have it. When we mentally roll in a mire of failures, fears, and darkness like a pig rolls in mud, is it any surprise that that some of it clings to us?

Watching your thoughts is a great way to escape this pattern. When negative thoughts arise, let them go. Switch to something you’re happy or grateful about. If you’re like me, you’ll start noticing more and more things to be happy about popping up in your life as a consequence. But even if you don’t, you’ll certainly feel better, which is really what matters at the end of the day.

If you have trouble watching your thoughts dispassionately, simply use your emotions. Watch your stress level. When you start to get angry, or fearful, or feel incompetent or uptight, quickly look at the last thing you were thinking about. I’m willing to bet you were thinking in negative terms. Switch, quickly, to something positive. As you get better at this, you’ll find yourself slipping into negative thoughts less often, and as you start dwelling on the positive, your life will get better and better.

Rise above your petty justifications for your unhappiness. You can always find a reason to be unhappy. It takes a stronger person to always be happy and cheerful, and I can tell you from experience that as good as it feels to be mad sometimes, you’ll be happier and more successful in the long run if you stick to the positive.

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