Our mindsets are regularly under attack today.
Modern life with its ever rising living costs, horrendous news almost every day, and heavy work pressures just to name a few, challenge our mentality. With a constant incoming barrage of challenges to our head, it’s hard to stay upbeat in the mind.
This means our mind tends to get caught in a loop of negative expectation.
And that leads to anxiety, depression, fear, pessimism and all other similar types on the spectrum.
Our mind is a protective device that when life is going well, switches off in the background as it sees no suggested threats to us. But, when times are tough it clicks back into alarm mode and never stops operating on that setting.
Which is why we never seem to stop being both on edge and exhausted.
Millions feel this almost every single day. Our minds are becoming fragile and worn out. Can anything help us before we go bonkers? Is there some mental exercise that will help our hassled heads?
The answer is yes, and it’s a mental trick the mind will increasingly believe.
It’s not a magic trick, but it is a psychological one that will turn your mindset more positive.
What you love, the mind will love.
Most of the time we imagine the worst.
It’s not hard to as everywhere we go we are fed images and stories of how bad things are and how worse they can get.
What we don’t realise is that we choose to think these things. Nothing makes us bar our own habit of constantly having thoughts that distress and worry us. We’ve just got too well practised at it.
And this is the key to the trick I’m going to reveal to you.
It’s a simple mental tool that you have just been doing the wrong way round.
Your mind had been fed a picture of despair. It’s been filled with harmful imagery which, in turn, is accompanied by hurtful emotions. They go hand in hand. Or mind in mind.
So, you need to change the film show playing in your mind.
It’s a test for anyone to move from catastrophe imagining to cosmic thinking out of the top drawer. That’s why most people fail at improving their mindset.
But, if you put your mind’s attention more often on what you love, it will love working better.
How do you do that?
You are going to learn the Pleasure Principle!
Happy things means happy heads.
Ok, think of something that makes you happy.
A hobby or activity, a food or a place to visit.
Make it truly personal – how only you love homebaked chocolate cake or jumping in puddles in your wellington boots or enjoying line dancing. You can choose a few, it’s actually better that way. If you love blue stilton cheese, Kate Winslet films, wearing clogs, and riding rollercoasters, that will do just nicely.
Conjour up a few in your mind right now.
Just escape and go off seeing whatever is pure pleasure for you. Everyday things that you always enjoy or would love to enjoy far more given half the chance.
That’s the principle part in the pleasure.
You are introducing your mind to the principle of the pleasures in your life. And they will be! Once you spend a good few minutes imagining them you will begin to forget anything else. As you do those lovely images will trigger some pretty damn good feelings. Ones you tend to experience when participating in your little pleasures.
The big skill to work on is to now hold onto them.
Think more often about things that make you happy and your head will be happy. Add in the tastes and colours and the whole scene as if you were right there this instant, and your head will be even happier still.
You have to get as used to doing this as you are at the negative stuff.
What the mind believes.
There is a certain psychological fact.
That the mind doesn’t know what’s real. What thoughts and images you put in there it will accept as reality today. Convince it that you already are a famous writer and that’s how it will operate. You, now, this second are a writer.
Put every fear in there you can think of and it will be totally convinced everything in the world is out to get you.
It can’t filter out what’s actual and what’s made up if you think it enough.
Here’s where the pleasure principle kicks in.
Catch yourself drifting into poor thinking/seeing and go straight to your pleasures. Worried your factory might close, instead see yourself baking bread and sharing it with friends (plus smelling it fresh from the oven). Divert it, point it in that direction, guide it, and lead it to better places you adore.
Soon it will naturally switch to your happy fun stuff rather than the old horror show.
It can’t tell what IS real, it follows you. So…give it pleasures to feast on. Then repeat, repeat, repeat so the mind decides that is where you are in your life right now. It will flood your senses with everything x (rambling) or y (speaking Italian) etc etc that are your personal joys.
There you go. A simple trick of the mind that persuades the mind,
Try it right now, try it all the time. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to it.
Now, introduce your mindset to your best happy pleasures and enjoy being there every single day.
Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by shirish4ss and alanajordan and Ragabz and erwinbosman.
