Even though there are billions of us of all racial groups and beliefs and languages, as one big tribe of people we share one trait. To fit in. We may have varying styles of life but we tend to follow the norm of behaving and living as most others do and don’t seek to be too different.
Deep down this supplies a sense of safety and security as everyone is doing it so it must be ok.
Our minds join in with this copycatying by also thinking and viewing everything along well accepted lines. We are almost like soldiers following orders. Orders that have existed over time since the first dawning of mankind.
It feels less risky and more manageable. But…it hinders individualism and full expression of our own unique selves beyond a very narrow set of activities and mindsets.
But. there is another way to live that frees from the mass mentality. A way that reshapes your mindset and the whole reality you experience.
To use your mind to be different. And here’s how!
Star Wars Thinking.
I’m fairly sure almost all adults in the world have heard of or seen Star Wars.
The 1977 blockbuster movie Star Wars was ahead of its time. It was DIFFERENT. Not so now, but then, most definitely.
Coming up to Christmas that year no-one had predicted the unprecedented storm around the world following the film’s screening. A limited range of toy figures were planned but not a large run due to the view they would not sell that many. In fact major manufacturers were not interested in the line as a result and it was a small Ohio company, Kenner Toys, who secured the licensing rights.
But, the massive response and demand for anything Star Wars sent them into a spin as they were the 11th hour option who only won the contract that April. This was barely a month before the film’s release. Toy lines normally took 12 – 18 months to develop and manufacture. They were swamped.
They needed a way to meet demand and not disappoint customers due to the delay. Plus they had to fund this major up scaled production. And guess what they did? They thought differently to any other manufacturer AND broke the normal processes.
They chose to get the public to PAY IN ADVANCE for an Early Bird Certificate Package around $12. This contained only a colorful cardboard display and certificate they had to mail back to be first in line when the toys were available.
Money for nothing in effect.
Did it work? After all it had never been tried before and everyone advised against it.
YOU BET! By the time they were released in 1978, sales hit $100m in that year alone.
This is the power of a different mind!
Don’t be normal in your mind.
Most minds think alike.
This is due to the fact that people follow the accepted norms of thought that the majority do. It’s kind of tribal fall back to our ancient ancestors. If the majority considered woolly mammoths as the food for health and survival, well, so did you. Plus wearing sabre tooth jewellery as the way to dress and bingo, you’re not about to go against the tribe.
It’s a survival thing.
Today that mechanism repeats how we live, behave, interact…and think. We still operate under the general idiom of society acceptance so we’re not ‘cast out’ of the social community. In neanderthal times, they were cast out to fend for themselves.
This fear of not co-operating with the gang means we think along their lines. From social media posting to having more holidays, from trying to be wealthy to owning pets, we mentally replicate the crowd.
This mass mentality is what kills living a different life. A wider, more illuminating, fulfilled one.
Constrained into a fixed mental view of what life means, vast millions of us can’t create anything meaningful because our mind can’t see it or imagine it. Let alone consider it possible or sensible. We’re stuck in the middle of group thought.
We are too normal in our minds and we have to learn not to be.
There is an art to it.
Have you ever seen any of Salvador Dali’s paintings?
Iconic compositions such as Persistence of Memory or The Burning Giraffe. A surrealist painter who painted from his own mind rather than any previous surreal styling. His mind had different ideas.
This should be your approach. To take any situation and feel free to view it your way. Forget tried and tested. Scrub the accepted thinking. Activate what your mind projects to you. Build on that.
True success arrives when regular thinking isn’t employed.
It unfolds from being brave enough to have a different mind than anyone else. To see what no-one else does and to see that through to a product, career, lifestyle, or service.
You haven’t, or a scared to even start, because you are held by the mass mindset. You need to be of the ‘one’ mindset. Yours.
Yes, you might get thought dumb or crazy. Voices might poke fun at you. Experts may degrade your considerations. All of this is good. You are moving into a different and individual mind and that’s when genius is born.
So think up a new cat food recipe. Or add a new item to bread no-one has ever considered. Or design a radical car, create a niche travel agency, or open a shop not a single soul in the world ever would.
Different is dynamic. And it’s personally liberating.
Because is you don’t do different, your life never will be!
It can achieve a huge range of things from ideas to memory, computing to storage. It’s a supercomputer housed in your head.
But, a supercomputer can only be asked to undertake a large range of outcomes based on instruction. While your mind runs automatically as such, it does so to keep you safe, secure, and functioning at your prime most level.
It’s output is down to you!
If you don’t direct it, your mind will wander only onto the normal range of your thinking. Think worrying, negative beliefs and outcomes, that’s the state it will remain in as it obeys your instructions which say, ‘I always think this/these’.
That’s the one life you are living through your mind.
And that’s the only only one it focuses and forms because of this.
So, now onto the Golden Mental Rule this post has been leading up to.
The Golden Mental Rule.
Here’s the Golden Rule.
Your mind cannot create a life it has not experienced.
This means that it can never begin to imagine, activate, and develop any existence you don’t ever think about. Or in short, it won’t ever work on something with no blueprint. Like a builder, it can’t erect a house there are no plans for.
If you want your mind power directed to an aim or aspiration, spend more (if not most) of your time thinking about it. Want/love to have a special partner, new home, better job etc, then get projecting how it would look, feel etc into your mind.
Show it in crystal clear fashion that THIS is what it’s got to get busy helping you construct. Your mind follows you. So show it where you want it to go so it can send back ideas, possibilities, and routes to getting there.
Turn your mind onto ONE life only, the one you want!
Photo attributes – free to use under Pixabay Content License by newarta and JuliusH.
It can calculate, arrange, remember, store information, direct, manage, and imagine to name but a few.
It is like a supercomputer programmed to run the most complex of tasks. And what more complex than keeping us safe, healthy, sane, aware, awake, and alive? A mega machine housed in our brain. One of the greatest ever created.
Now that should amaze and encourage us all in one.
But, and it’s a very big but, it’s becomes so mighty it starts to take over the whole show and actually run our lives.
An autopilot on a plane is useful until it won’t disengage and then the pilots feel out of control of where it’s going and what it’s doing. Our mind gets like that because we are leaving it on autopilot for too long. And then IT thinks it’s the one responsible for our whole lives.
That’s when you don’t realise that it’s started to take over your life.
Read on to discover how it’s been doing that in your life!
You are as young…. as your mind tells you that you are.
Most people know the phrase, you are as young as you feel you are.
How can it do that? Back to our autopilot above. Left to run automatically the mind will begin selecting information it decides relates to you. Unbeknown to you. So there you are merrily going about your business but like an Alexa devise the brain listens in to gather data. What people say does get collated, BUT it’s your own little quips and throw away joke comments it can’t read as just a laugh. It takes them as who you are, the identity it must protect.
All those little ‘I’m getting old’, or ”I’m not as young as I used to’ comments lock in that you are getting on and your identity is older person. If you say it often (and add some aches and pains sounds) this further ‘proves’ who you are.
Now that may sound funny, but it’s what your mind does next that is where the take over of your life accelerates.
It is convinced that this is who you are (the master it must look after), that it starts to convince you of the fact as well. So when you make that funny little ‘geriatric man/woman’ comment, it now adds sensations that feel like you are. It’s simply adding back ups that match your self definition. In a matter of months you feel old and move older, because your mind is turning the whole of you into that personailty.
Just like YouTube will record the videos you watch and then continue to present you with the same type because that’s what suggestions you gave it.
YouTube reads you and your mind reads you. And they both mirror you back.
Your mind though is the one that sets that as the person you areand arranges your life accordingly.
This is what YOU do.
Now you are old, or much older, as decided by the mind.
The mind has been with you a long time, a lifetime to be exact. It’s gathered billions of bits of info and data. Within that it has massive gen on what older people do. And don’t, or shouldn’t’ do. And it’s about to to inform you of that.
But not nicely. Slyly to be precise.
It produces reactions that match all those little ‘old person’ sayings you have uttered. Sudden aches flare up. You feel stiff more often. Your energy levels aren’t what they used to be. And you start swearing that your face has more wrinkles and your body looks less attractive. From muscles to eyesight, figure to vitality, you feel older by the day.
Soon you not only think you are aging fast, you also feel and see evidence everywhere.
But, it never actually existed. It is a mind made reality experience projected on to you. You kept saying you were old so it superimposed this person onto you to assist and protect you so you weren’t at risk. In effect the message to all of you is – this is what YOU do as a more senior citizen.
You have become old because the mind has taken over as you were not proving it wrong.
You have effectively, mind washed yourself!
The Mind is Listening.
Hopefully after reading this you have discovered one fact.
The mind is always listening. And watching and sensing. It even posts a sentry at night when you are asleep. It’s not some over controlling stalker. This is all done to record all it hears and picks up to look after you. It’s protecting you. And smothering you.
Whether you keep saying you are old or concerned at the world, the mind will read that as getting you to think and act and feel in ways that stop that harming you. Which results in not going running in case you have a stroke or travelling in case you are caught up in a terrorist attack.
Your mind takes over because you don’t order it to stand down. And on your side of things, start speaking better of yourself and your future. If you do your mind will switch sides and begin seeking opportunity and potential as it’s your new ‘best life’ dictat. You think it and speak it, to goes into search mode for it,
Mental operation 101.
So, get defining yourself better so your mind will positively take over to help you get there. That’s not just good advice, it’s a good way to live life.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Addictions.
Since the turn of this Century the number of people caught up in some addiction or other has been rising steeply. And not just the previous well know types such as drugs, smoking, and alcohol. This modern era has spawned fresh ones such as social media and gambling addictions have become rife. Addictions are harming millions of lives and so SMS has to look into this epidemic.
1. Pace of addiction keeping up with pace of life?
You know it, I know it. The sheer speed of life has ramped up to crazy levels in the last few decades. We work longer hours than ever before and have to travel further to that job. Even though COVID helped people work from home more, their busy domestic lives have crashed into heavy working schedules. Add to that the whole FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mindset driven by social media, we feel the need to go everywhere to drink up everything life has to offer because, well, everyone else seems to be. How on Earth do we deal with all that energy sapping, mind draining lifestyle? We drink, take drugs, smoke, and are on our mobiles every few minutes So…
Is the ridiculous pace of life the source of the new pace of addictions?
2. Addicted to something.
There is a well known idiom that says we are all addicted to something. That it’s part of our emotional structure. All it takes is for a trauma or crisis or extended intensity for a switch in that structure to flip for some and they focus on something that helps mask the pain or pressures. This dilutes their ability to deal with their issue in a manageable way. As a result any bad or stressful day sees them turn to the bottle, the pill, the slot machines, or the promiscuity. Its simply a normal genetic reaction out of control. Or is it?
Are we approaching addiction the wrong way as a natural part of us?
3. Less about the pain, more about the pleasure.
Like above, traditional thinking is that addictions originate from a painful event or unceasing difficulties, The chosen addiction offers a route or escape from the inner or outer struggle. So smoking 40 a day or taking cocaine quells the pain enough (or completely) it has to be repeated. And if that alleviates the tension/hurt enough it needs to be repeated, sometimes multiple times a day, to keep the awful emotions at bay. But, here’s the rub. Now the situation has switched…
Addiction then is more about the pleasure feeling than the pain smothering,
4. Addictions we now function with.
We have all most likely heard of the functional alcoholic. The large drinker who has a high dependency on alcohol but can still function reasonably in life. Yes they drink most days but they hold down a job, manage their money, keep their house clean, and so on. In short, they are not out of control on the stuff. What we are now seeing is the so called ‘accepted and less harmful’ addictions that also are functional ones – using mobile phones and social media all day or accessing online betting sites. Behaviours that are not abnornal but their over use has moved into the addictive scale.
Are we developing functional addictions that are almost accepted by society?
5. Looking for an instant fix.
The modern world is fast paced…and most things are available at the click of a button, In an instant you can buy a car, book an exotic vacation, get tickets for a concert, or order your weekly shop. And almost in the snap of your fingers the tickets, car delivery date, groceries have turned up. The modern mindset has become embedded like this – what I call Internet Attitude. I want it, I want it now, and I want it with me quickly. That’s why with everything available, people can become addicted so easily. They are always a click or two of a button away from what they are desperate to have.
We can get it in an instant and get addicted to it just as quickly.
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Perhaps YOURS!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo Attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by Anestiev and TFWF2020.
No matter what they face, they keep cool and focused, and deal with everything. They look oblivious to events because their mindset is so powerful it overcomes any potential threats or challenges.
For them nothing is a problem because their mind can handle it all. They are calm, disciplined, and unflummoxed all in one in the head.
We believe they were born with a mighty mind that we could never have. That our weaker mindset could never be like theirs.
Well, think again because anyone can develop a stronger mindset when they know the route to take.
So let me open up that path and show you how.
Oh oh no rather than 007.
James Bond, the proverbial 007, has a mind of steel.
Nothing fazes this super spy even in dramatic moments of life or death. We are usually the opposite being fazed by anything from a traffic jam to our workload building up at the office. More oh oh no rather than 007.
Our minds have become weakened over time by life, by wrong thinking, by challenges, by us. Not in one dramatic leap, but cemented in via a gradual creep into a less lean state. And this means that we convince ourselves that we don’t control this, life and destiny are the masters. If time has destroyed that power, we won’t be able to get it back.
Well don’t be shaken nor stirred to borrow a line from Mr Bond.
You STILL have all the capabilities to regenerate your mental muscle and in a fraction of the time you lost it.
Why? Because before you didn’t know it was slipping away. You never noticed that your mindset wasn’t working at a prime level until you couldn’t get it fired up anymore. That is going to change. This time you will be fully aware and directing how it’s coming back. And what’s the way to accomplishing that?
The new simple mental path you are about to take.
Short steps with growing gains.
You’ve heard of growing pains, well you are going to experience growing gains.
Being powerful mentally looks good…in time, but not in the beginning.
This is what will arise from the mental progress you will instill as the weeks go by. So, let’s get down to your first steps on your new mental road.
If you want to run a marathon, to start you won’t be able to run very far. You have to build up to that distance so your body gets used to it. Now take the same but for your mind. You are going to need to introduce periods of mindset power exercise so that mental resilience can embed in. Any regular practice of a skill or task ensures the brain will form new pathways and connections to boost it’s development further.
So to get that going put into your phone diary – ’15 minutes power thinking’.
Put it on a schedule if possible but certainly on a repeat up to 5 times a day. Examples could be – first thing in the morning, coffee break time, lunchtime, straight after work (or as near to) and before bed. Not too close together, not long periods apart.
You can’t override your lower thinking with the odd session here and there at random.
And this is what you will do in those 15 minutes.
Progress to Power.
I’m sure you have heard of the power nap.
This is the mental power up version – the Power Snap.
Short periods of higher mental activity to snap you out of your weaker mental patterns.
In your Power Snap you need to find a quiet or much quieter place. You can lie down or sit. Anywhere where your senses are not bothered. Set an alarm and spend the 15 minutes on these three specifics –
Powerful thoughts – thinking the best and highest possible thoughts regarding your life. Ones that believe everything is unfolding in your favour. That you, your body, and your mind are at the peak and ultimate level. And that your best months and years are just about to happen. Bigger self believing.
Powerful imagery – add to this with solid, clear, exciting visions of yourself succeeding. Make them for something that matters to you and see yourself smiling, healthy, and full of energy. Back it up with the each whole scene being jammed with colour and great sounds.
Powerful feelings – link it altogether with choosing positive, vibrant feelings as it all happens. Connect yourself to feeling content, assured, masterful, dynamic, alive and such similar emotions.
Complete this exercise by fighting any old negatives that want to creep in. Reaffirm that these 3 are what your mind is only accepting FROM NOW ON.
And then you grow it!
Practice your power.
We are back to that running training again.
You complete the race because you keep repeating the training and expanding it. It’s the same here.
Firstly, you have to commit to 4 or 5 sittings per day doing the above.
Secondly, you have to lengthen the time 5 minutes per Power Snap week after week.
Finally, you have to continue and continue. Like you do every day scrolling on your phone or watching NetFlix or any other menial entertainment habit. You MUST work this into a habit in your schedule. Hook it in as a BEST habit you must never stop (like you insist you have fruit every day or an espresso at home). Just imagine what you could achieve if you could keep this up for a whole morning or weekend???
If you can complete this, your mind will become fused with very powerful new neural network patterns.
Ones that will not just feed your mind but send feel good enriching endorphins round your whole body again and again. You will, in effect, be rejuvenating every part of you.
And the final fabulous result?
No, not just a fired up mindset and spirit of life.
You will end up actually doing something WITH this new powerful mentality.
That’s when you will become most powerful of all!!
