Everybody has thoughts, it’s impossible not to.
Estimates say the average person has at least 6,000 per day. This equates to 6 per minute during our waking hours.
That’s a whole bunch of thoughts going round our mind.
But not just our mind as those same thoughts also affect our body.
If you feel nervous you can experience a bad stomach. If you are really stressed, headaches are common. Or if you are mentally tense your muscles and back can tighten right up.
Our mind is the key to what we think and therefore what our body also receives.
Thinking can damage our bodies but also damage our beliefs about ourselves. Double damage. They are that powerful. Powerful enough to be killing our potential and worse still…
Our thoughts could be killing us.
Crazy thoughts making us crazy too.
Having big dreams often makes others think we are crazy.
You say you want to claim Everest or be a pro tennis player and they will laugh at you. They seem a long shot but are totally plausible if phenomenally difficult to pull off. After all, others has shown it can be achieved so why can’t you achieve it?
But the true realms of the crazy are when our thoughts don’t warn us strange things are, if not dangerous, downright insane.
One famous person in history suffered from this warped mindset. And he was crazy because it was even in his name.
In 1850’s America the white settlers had begun spreading across the country looking for gold and resources as well as individuals wanting land for their own homestead. This brought them into contact and conflict with the indigenous native Americans. One tribe who we are greatly impacted were the Lakota and one young brave member who saw the white man’s brutality first hand.
When he witnessed the murder of chief Conquering Bear by troops from Fort Laramie at the age of 14, he had visions in his sleep that he was meant to lead and protect his people. He also believed that he could not be killed in battle if he didn’t wear the full tribal regalia or take any war trophies. This instilled in him a mindset of invincibility that death would not claim him until he was an aged elder.
His name was Crazy Horse.
He aligned with other tribal leaders and spearheaded many raids on settlers and soldiers for twenty years. It looked like his belief was proving to be true. Until it wasn’t. One day in 1877 after an arrest a fight ensued and Crazy Horse died from bayonet wounds to his kidneys.
Perhaps one of the most famous deaths from a wrong belief.
Historically wrong.
Humanity has a habit of bad beliefs.
There are a number of other stories of well known figures who experienced an untimely end due to their own thinking.
The 16th Century scientist and statesman Sir Francis Bacon was convinced snow could preserve meat. On one snowy day travelling through Highgate he stopped to buy a hen from a local trader which he stuffed with snow believing the cold within the snow would keep the meat fresh. He often spent time out in the snow to study the subject. But he spent so much time outside it lead to pneumonia and his death.
The great American dancer Isadora Duncan had a certain belief that ended in her unusual passing. She was a proponent of free movement and expression and believed that her fashion sense should reflect that. She took to wearing very long scarfs as her ‘look’. One day while riding in a car he scarf caught in the rear wheels pulling her from the vehicle and breaking her neck.
And of course you have read the ancient stories about Icarus and King Canute whose beliefs were as crazy as they come.
Just because some of these are rooted in the past doesn’t mean the mankind has got their mind around crazy beliefs.There are a number of competition eaters who have died during the event as well as tornado storm chasers who died for their interests.
It still goes on today from hobbies to lifestyle choices to wanting to be famous on social media.
But there is one way our minds can kill us that anyone and everyone can suffer from!
Mind related malaise.
Life today is as pressured as ever.
From the frenetic pace of things to demanding schedules. From busy workloads with lack of time to the never ending expense of bills, we are peppered with much to fret over. If it’s not the daily toil it’s the worry of everything falling apart that hangs heavy on our minds.
And that creates one big end result – Stress (which I have written about before in SuperMind Saturday).
Stress is when mental pressure gets filtered into the body. And so our ability to handle stress is also our ability to keep ourselves healthy. If we believe we can’t handle what we are about to do or have to face, stress results and the body suffers.
Typical health effects of not managing it are – bad sleep, irritability, muscle tension, depression, skin complaints, raised blood pressure, heart palpitations and worse.
So, if our beliefs aren’t positive and resilient enough, the effects can acutely harm our health, and as witnessed by many hospitals, actual death from prolonged exposure can result.
This is called ‘stress related’ but I think a more accurate term would be Mind Related Malaise.
The mind has believed something the wrong way that the body has negatively taken the full force of.
Our mind has become a killer.
A balanced brain.
So, what should you conclude from this?
To never follow big dreams and let absolutely nothing that bothers you get to you?
That would be equally crazy. We need to have higher goals that push us to get the best out of who we are. And we can’t protect ourselves from the tests life throws us. To destroy both is to almost stop living and kill life itself.
One of the greatest abilities is what we should aim for. Getting a balance between the two.
To be able to push on for better while not letting our beliefs about what we encounter to adversely touch us.
The ultimate mindset, yes, but one to, well, keep in mind.
Because what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
We just have to work on it not being our minds that do the killing.
Reference – Queens University Gazette – Discovery of ‘thought worms’.
History.co.uk – Who Was Crazy Horse?
allthatsinteresting.com – The Strange Deaths of Historic and Famous People.
qz.com – historical-figures-strange-unexpected- deaths.
Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Licence Content by zeshdo and Frank_Rietsch and Zainal354 and Yamu_Jay.
