You are the Captain of your Mind!
You are the Captain of your Mind !
Your mind is naturally healthy and constantly trying to supply you with optimum functionality. Ironically, mind outcomes such as anxiety, addictions or depression, are actually confounded best options the mind has identified to protect or drive you. In fact, a confused mind might make wrong choices, but always with good intentions, thinking that it is acting in your best interest. As soon as your mind discovers and embraces better options, it will substitute the old unproductive choices with healthier and more efficient solutions.
Try to imagine that you are the owner, or captain of your mind - or that you now have a new daughter or son: your body and mind. It is your responsibility and job to guide, protect and love him/her just as you would do with your own child. From the time of birth, you have constantly talked to your own mind. This conversation is key. However, try to re-frame this, and think of yourself not as the friend, enemy, or parent of your mind, but as the leader, or captain of your mind. You are the coach and owner of every thought that flows through.
· You and your mind are different entities, united in a powerful team, where YOU are team-leader.
· You have two voices, yours and the one of your mind.
· Your mind needs your leadership, your unconditional love, and your protection.
Imagine that you are the captain of a large ship (your mind!). Your task is to direct the ship to its destination and prevent or troubleshoot problems. Be a fair leader. Reason with your mind, train your mind, and listen to your mind. Oblige your mind to follow your commands – but always from a position of fair leadership (responsibility, guidance and validation), unconditional and unlimited love, and protection - without judgment or regrets. You can guide your mind to power, joy and fulfillment. You have the power to clear unnecessary recurring thoughts from your mind and to clear confusion or unmanaged use of valuable brainpower. You also have the ability to guide your mind to perceive tasks, endeavors and projects as choices, instead of needs. Reassign your thoughts and emotions from survival to development. You can shift your thinking from, “I need to do my assignment,” to, “let’s enjoy my assignment working with minimum effort and maximum results.” From, “I have to attend a meeting,” to “I’m excited about my meeting.” From, “I fear my future” to “I am curious about my future.”
You are also allowed to be proud and territorial over your mind and body. You have full responsibility over its’ emotional and physical maintenance, and no one is allowed to mess with it but you! Guide your mind to see, instead of ‘trying to be seen,’ to choose, instead of ‘trying to be chosen,’ to love, instead of ‘trying to be loved,’ to be, instead of ‘trying to be.’ Unconditional love, gratitude, and forgiveness are the key to miracles. The time is now to establish a haven of love and protection around your mind. Do not allow anyone to judge or abuse your mind because it is YOURS. Safeguard yourself from unnecessary loss of freedom, danger, disrespect, dependence or abuse. Self-leadership and self-reliance are your most precious realities. Every life event, whether good or challenging, builds your mental fortitude and strength.
Exercise #1
Here is a daily tool you can use to help your mind imprint and visualize the life that you desire.
· Every night before bed, create a short story where you visualize yourself comfortably in the life you desire, experiencing all the satisfying results of your hard work. The story must include all of the feelings, emotions and sensations that a real-life situation would offer. After a few minutes of this real-life visualization, let yourself fall asleep. Your mind will immediately process this visualization as a real event due to the amount of sensations, emotions and feelings attached to it, and will imprint it in your memory as an episode of your life that it considers real. If you do this regularly, every night if possible, using different stories, however based on the same life goal, you will imprint in your memory a fully explored and totally real parallel life comfortable to your mind and safe to your survival system. This will allow you to reach that goal in your real life without resistance from your survival system and unconscious. Since in your mind you have already been there, this pathway is wide open to you.
Addiction, anxiety and your brain’s survival system.
Do not waste time trying to fix symptoms. Fix the root causes, and the symptoms will disappear. Here is a good example: alcohol addiction is typically a consequence of anxiety. Anxiety is the consequence of unfulfilled emotional needs, unmanaged thoughts and emotions, and/or psychological trauma. Therefore, if you want to beat addiction, don’t focus on drinking or on anxiety; fix instead the mental challenges that are causing anxiety. When these are resolved, anxiety ends and the addiction fades away. On the same note, if you have social anxiety, don’t try to remove your fear of people. Remove your fear of judgment and rejection, and your social anxiety will disappear.
Let’s explore the mind’s survival system and how it operates. The mind’s survival system is an essential “safety software package,” operating from your unconscious mind, which has the main task of protecting you from physical or emotional danger. It has been your best friend and your worst enemy. On one hand, it’s a lifesaver, protecting you from physical and emotional damage, but on the other hand, it is the cause of most of your fears, anxiety and depression.
Your mind collects all of the data collected by our senses (as well as our thoughts and emotions), with a list of possible threats. In the case a match is found, the mind responds by using a priority defense procedure. It works in a similar fashion to our immune system, in that it filters out everything that enters the body against a list of previously identified threats. As soon as viruses or other threats are identified, the immune system will attack and destroy them. Another good example similar to the survival mechanism of the mind is the antivirus that protects your PC. It constantly compares all files that you download with a list of already discovered viruses, and takes a defensive action every time a match is identified.
Have you ever wondered why we often sabotage our best chances of success? The answer is simple. Success will take us into unchartered, unfamiliar territory considered by our survival system to be unsafe. Therefore, our unconscious mind often holds us back. Our mind’s survival system will feel unsafe thinking the step forward is too far into the unknown and, therefore, too big a risk. Our survival system keeps a safe zone for every aspect of our behavior. Our precedent for successful experiences determines this. In order to keep us safe, it will allow us to cross that line maybe only 5 to 8% of the time.
Let’s re-assess the operation of our mind’s safety system. Our brain constantly collects and processes millions of data derived from three typical sources:
· The external data captured by our senses – eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch, psychic, etc.
· The internal data generated by our body – the list is endless, however the ones perceivable are physical pleasure, pain and discomfort;
· The self-generated data originating from the mind such as thoughts, feelings and emotions.
All of this data is filtered by the survival system and compared with a list of “dangerous” items. If a match is identified, the survival system will believe that you are in danger and activate a defense protocol. The defense protocol typically consists of a shot of cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine in order to sustain a fight-or-flight response followed by a warning, such as anxiety, fear or panic. This is lifesaving in case of a real threat. If instead, this process is triggered by a mistake a thousand times a day, it can seriously affect your quality of life.
Your mind’s survival system relies on a list of threats built throughout your life. This includes the period of pre-birth and childhood – periods where your mind is not developed enough to understand what is really dangerous and what is not. Therefore, we rely on our parents’ and caretakers’ guidance. If our parents or teachers are scared or angry or abusive, or just unable to create a safe environment for us, our assessment of danger is confused, and many things that are virtually safe are going to be listed by the mind as dangerous. Some of these dangerous items may be current in our daily life, so they will be constantly engaging your survival system in a totally unnecessary and highly crippling way.
People affected by an overactive survival system use only a fraction of their prefrontal cortex thinking capacity, and daily tasks are harder to complete. This creates issues with procrastination, lack of creativity, resistance to engage in new projects or develop existing ones, poor learning ability, feeling overwhelmed or tired, and loss of energy to the extent it can lead to depression. One way of thinking about depression, is a lack of processing capability in the brain to accomplish daily tasks, since all of your brain’s resources are being used to fight or flight false threats.
How can we fix this? Most therapies give you a list of coping mechanisms to help you live with some of these ‘dangerous items’ as best you can or try to desensitize you by making you accustomed to experiencing these triggers without responding to them. However, a more effective way might be to clear the listed items from the mind that are not dangerous. This way, the brain disengages from all of the unnecessary work. You can learn over time to shift your thoughts and emotions from survival to fulfillment. You can make your life experience in the way you want. You can blame the world or love the world, you can be angry at the experience or worship the experience, you can be trapped by your ‘stories’ or transform the ‘stories’ into powerful lessons and use them as fuel for the future. Focus your entire brain power on the now and practice gratitude, forgiveness and love of self and other.
Exercise # 2: Offer to your mind an expression of love and gratitude at least 10-15 times every day. Start the day with “good morning –I so appreciate what you do for me!” and end the day with a “goodnight - thank you for being my mind, I love you with all my heart!” before you fall asleep. Remember, these are expressions of love and appreciation coming from a leader or coach, not a friend, sibling or parent.
Copyright - Courtney Hamlin - all rights reserved 2019