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.
That’s because it effectively determines our life.
What we think, believe, and view life as will be how we connect to it and experience it. A poor mindset leads to seeing life the wrong way, being unhappy, and feeling unfulfilled. A brighter one leads to taking positive action, enjoying all life has to offer, and boosts health and well being.
So, mindset is all.
In this post I’m going to give you three strong reasons why your mindset might need to change. Change so that you can develop the best mindset for the best possible way to live.
Let’s dive in with reason No.1.
1. Your mindset is outdated.
Most of our body is designed to last a lifetime.
The mindset isn’t part of that. Surprised? Don’t be. Many minds are out of date. The expectation and outlook contained within them have been the same for many, many years.
Now while it may seem that that’s consistency, it’s actually a lack of progress mentally. It’s akin to being stuck in a pattern and remaining there. After all, you would never think like you did as a teenager as you do now in your late 40’s.
Somewhere between 16 and now you never amended your mindset to move with the times, your changed standards and values, and the different choices and priorities you have.
Have you asked yourself where your mindset is stuck?
I did a few years back and was shocked to honestly realise I was thinking as if it was still 1995. No wonder my life had never caught up.
Not now and yours might need the same updating too!
2. Your mindset has been over influenced.
We all like to believe that we own what we think.
No-one is holding us captive and trying to take over our mind. Which means we are free to think what we want…and we do.
That’s a beautiful theory.
In reality everyone’s mindset has been influenced.
And in this permanently open social media and 24 hour rolling news era, influence is ever present in our lives. Due to the sheer nature of a) the length of time we spend on social media/watching news and b) the easy availability of them, our minds are being convinced on a daily basis.
That’s not difficult to instigate at all. The social media groups you follow or your preference of news channels lead you to hearing and seeing a certain angle and agenda on life. Repeat being there day after day and soon their influence becomes your mindset.
It’s the 21st Century achilles heel.
We believe we are informing ourselves when actually we are being informed by someone.
That’s called influence.
3. It wasn’t yours in the first place.
Everyone starts with an inherited mindset.
Everyone. Even the very best among us.
No-one is born ready made with a mindset to go.
We accumulate one from our early years upwards. We learn and are told by parents, family, teachers, people in authority etc what to believe, what is right and wrong, and how to view life.
It’s not until our mid teens that we start to reject some of that ‘wisdom’ and begin adding some of our own.
But, we often still hold much of our initial mental training in our memory banks that still directs us in life. It’s only if (or when) we question that mindset because it’s not feeling right with the person we are, do we override it and replace it with our own.
Most people never get anywhere near that far. They keep being led by an inner thought process from childhood and early years even when it clearly isn’t valid in their older world many years later.
If you seek change in your life, that’s the place to start. What you were once told.
It’s time to change your mind.
So that’s where you may be.
At a point in life when you need to change your mind so life can begin to change behind it.
Change it because your life hasn’t been working or not reaching the promise it once had with the mindset that’s led you to here.
Take a look at the three above and be honest if some or all of them are you. And your mind. But, there’s good news. It’s your mind and you can change it.
Because a bad life often becomes a much better one when our mindset changes which changes everything for us.
Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by elsimage and geralt.
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 – Greed.
We are, in effect, one big tribe of people. The human race. We want to survive, prosper, develop ourselves, and remain secure. Both as a group and individually. That has been at the heart of our genetic make up since our ancient caveman ancestor days. But as we have advanced and improved our standards of living many no longer serve the many. They only serve themselves and get as much as they can. We are now plagued by greed everywhere and that means SMS has to get involved.
1 The Social Symptom.
Greed isn’t anything new. Mankind has always had a propensity to act in selfish ways. But this was decidedly the minority. Socially it was frowned on. Roll on to the 21st Century society. Fuelled by social media and every image, story, post, and video showing the trappings of success (although it’s usually faked), the mindset of ‘go get everything and be a winner’ has spread. It’s a mental symptom. Now becoming a someone and having anything you want it cool. It’s not greedy, it’s making the best of who you are.
Is greed now merely a social media driven desire to be as successful as possible?
2. Full Time Food.
Historically food typically was eaten at home. Cafes and restaurants were reserved for birthday treats, business meetings, and food on the go when travelling. In this way we stuck to three meals a day and rarely drifted from that. Then along came the 1980’s and fast food arrived, literally in its bucket loads. After that quick, hot, delicious food we craved was everywhere at all times of the day. We just couldn’t say no. Let’s be honest, today it’s merely a couple of easy buttons away on an app and is delivered right to our door. For this reason food need has become food greed.
Are we greedy because food is on tap full time for us?
3. Destructive not Constructive.
The legendary astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking warned, ‘We are in a danger of destroying ourselves by our greed’. This view was also shared by another legend, this time of music, Eartha Kitt, who also observed that, ‘Greed is so destructive’. Undoubtedly both are right because today we are seeing this effect through what banks, financiers, big companies and world leaders have done and are doing to construct their own bigger nests. I am saying that selfishness now leads to extreme greed.
Has greed already put us on the road to destruction?
4. We Want, We Have.
I have already written in other posts about Internet Attitude. A formulated expectation in the mind forged during the internet era of an expectation of what we want will come quickly. All in all this is because we have gotten used to ordering online and it being delivered in hours or the next day. But it has a counterpart. The Will Have mentality. I will write about this in a longer weekly post. Internet Attitude has given birth to it. As things turn up easily that we buy/order, we just believe we can have anything we want. The end result? We are greedy for more.
Has the easy availability of the internet made us greedy to just have anything we want?
5. We Don’t Know Enough.
The truth is, this is the most technologically filled age. Which also makes us the age with the most knowledge at our fingertips. No other age has as much open to them every day as us. Wisdom says that we can never have enough knowledge. The more we have the better our lives. I believe we have enough of the wrong things. We have too high standards of living, of modern transport, of gadgets and devices, of food and entertainment. And we can’t get enough of these. Ominously we keep demanding ever more. In summary, our greed is out of control.
With this in mind, will we ever learn when enough is enough and what will it take?
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!!
One of the greatest evolutions of mankind is the human mind.
Where once we were mere cavemen capable of basic thought. Now we are walking mega computers who can send fellow humans to the moon and create phenomenal technology.
The development of the human mind is THE greatest story of humankind’s history on planet Earth.
It’s taken us from beings that could only hunt for basic survival, to ones that can imagine and create every futuristic device and machine.
We appear to be in constant growth and expansion.
Until recently. Until this Century began and led us to now.
Because the new development of the human mind threatens to take us back many years if it’s not halted.
A development ordinary, everyday, average people now increasingly fall into.
First we survived.
The human mind began as our security system.
Imagine you are living in the dinosaur age. Little old you and a few other members of your tribe. In those days humans numbered a few thousand dotted around the globe. Hardly a fighting force. More a small band of hunters.
Knowledge of the world and the various creatures roaming the planet was scant and localised.
You just didn’t know what was around the next rock formation.
So, early mindsets were focused on one thing….survival.
Finding enough food and resources to remain alive while staying alert for any beast on the ground or the air that could gobble you up in an instant.
Basic human mental activiity.
No important marketing sales reports due in the morning, bailiffs knocking at your door, or superbug breakouts to consider. It was you v dinosaur type terrors that occupied your head. There was simply little else to consume your thinking space.
But then we humans evolved.
Culture comes along.
The term that defines the development of the mind to today is culture.
Over the centuries we advanced as a race of people. How did we do this? We became civilised. We gathered in communities, grew our own vegetables and reared animals for food rather than chase after them. Trade between other tribes and nations spawned as we explored the world.
Added to this we formed laws and rules to live by with standards and values and ruling leaders to oversee our ongoing progress and to protect us.
As the requirement of overall threat faded (other than periodical intruders after our lands), our minds turned to understanding, learning, inventing, and improving our circumstances. With that we also sought entertainment and pleasure to fill the time we were previously on watch for huge wild predators.
The mentality switched to advancement in all areas of life.
Industry came out of this and mass manufacture creating employment that supplied income. We had funds to spend. New products and services sprung up as a result and our minds developed again in new ways.
Now we focused on purchasing the best, the finest, and the special. Our minds turned inwards and onto our self image and who we were and how we looked in society.
And so it remained fairly under control.
Until technology introduced something phenomenal as this Century opened.
Becoming unsocial.
We used to be social with each other.
Real social. Social in person at actual events and places. That’s why it was called a social life.
But, just as the last century ended, a new social arrived. An internet one. Social media. And the mental developments we once progressed from took a new, less appealing twist.
Social media started off all funky and exciting. Linking to other ordinary people around the world to see and hear about their daily lives. Kuala Lumpur could learn about Kansas, Brisbane about Brussels, and so on. We could experience their world from the confines of our armchair.
Wow, this is going to be incredible.
Or so everyone thought. Or first thought. As the years wore on people deviated into groups of others who liked and believed what they did. They spent all their time there rather than on the open platform.
They became influenced then convinced that the beliefs or views that took them there were the correct ones.
Empowered by the group mind think their mindset got entrenched. Anyone who didn’t agree with their way of seeing things was wrong. Plain wrong and they needed to be told that in the most uncertain terms. Terms that became more aggressive, personal, and even threatening.
Worse was still to come. This new mind development also forged a sense of arrogance and power inside their head. Again buoyed on by the group chatter they felt superior to others and told them so when reading/hearing/viewing something they didn’t like. So superior that they took that with them into their normal lives and acted the same as online.
They were right, great, perfect, better than others, and looked down on people in inflated behaviours.
The new human mind development had become far from social.
Welcome to the mad mind.
And so here we are today!
The once used mind for survival and creation is now used for off the scale abuse and criticism.
Minds today are social media driven. Until it appeared the average person kept their opinions to themselves except when they were with best mates at the pub or with friends over dinner. General opinion chiefly on current affairs, their sports team’s performance, and ‘her’ next door.
Our minds simply didn’t think they were correct about every thing in the world, major or minor.
Now even a few words by someone on a social media post gets us mad. We’ve have gone from ancient warriors to keyboard warriors. And yet somehow we consider we are more civilised today.
The new mind development is this toxic mindset that drives awful behaviour.
And because social media seems here to stay without any real enforcement, this mentality is doomed to remain with it.
The irony is that many people now sound like the bellowing dinosaurs we once had to run away from. But if you are enjoying a few innocent moments on social media, you won’t see them coming any more, and you can’t run away unless you log out and never come back.
Social media was promised as a revolution of connection.
Today it’s turned out to be an abomination of the human mind.
We all like to believe we think for ourselves and just ourselves.
After all it’s our mind and our thoughts and we choose to think and act for ourselves, right?
We would definitely know if anyone was trying to take over our head…..wouldn’t we?
Well….NO.
That’s because ‘they’ are already doing it.
Where we consider as an everyday person mind control can’t happen to us, it is, in fact, in operation every single day. Its just takes the form of subtly imprinted conditioning that we barely notice and continue to repeat.
We are the most brainwashed mind era ever.
The birth of rolling misinformation.
Let’s go back to the end of last Century.
Sounds ancient when it’s only 26 years ago. Hardly very historical.
In those pre-internet days information was limited generally to newspapers, news bulletins, and books. The news media then only reported actual events. What has happened as opposed to what could happen next. Speculation and guessed prediction was rare.
But then all hell broke loose.
Welcome the world wide web connecting people from one corner of the planet to another. But many of those people didn’t just want to find out about each other. They only sought to push their personal belief messages on the populus.
News of what actually took place soon began to give way to theory and conjecture and presented suggestion of events.
People of the same ilk banded together into groups that social media promoted to us to form and began their indoctrination machine roll out. And with it the internet gave birth to agendas.
Truth was out. Conspiracy, skewed observations, and fake ‘facts’ got peddled to drive personal warped takes on the world. Misinformation had started its rise to power.
And we were caught up in this. Why?
Because the regular media soon joined in!
Twenty four hour influence.
In the past we had to wait for our information.
The newspapers had to hit the shelves or when the news was on the TV schedule. Social media gave us access to 24 hour info. The type we wanted on tap. The gen from the groups and people who thought and saw life as we did.
Now we didn’t need to wait, we accessed it ‘as and when’. This gave us a steady stream of views from other people everywhere. Views, opinions, inside scoops, secrets etc all flooding our senses and getting into our head because now there was no other ‘always open’ sources available all the time.
Then the mainstream channels decided to get a piece of the action.
They wanted a slice of this new voice community that was online all the time. Welcome 24 hour news. Hard hitting, to the minute, latest and greatest headlines from all around the world. All day every day.
The brainwashing industry ramped up it’s activity.
The news media used their professional integrity and in power contacts together with the highest level of broadcast journalists to take on the amateur Facebook or Twitter brigade.
They presented slick shows with on the spot interviews with those at the heart of the current affairs. They went for the big game and threw those names back at us in sound byte after sound byte.
And we lapped it up in our droves.
After all, these are the trusted national and international news suppliers that have been operating for many decades.
They will tell us the truth as it is.
Except….they didn’t either.
Not enough news to go round.
Now the brainwashing reached sky high output.
The principal of constant news sounded sexy and successful. If it happens, in an instant it can be reported and shared. And the TV media battled to be the first to do this.
But there’s a problem. News, real important major news, just isn’t an everyday occurrence. Breaking news bombs such as natural disasters, international conflicts, or political fall outs are now and again stories.
Most days are mundane and you have a non-stop midnight to midnight requirement to air something newsworthy. What can you do?
Simple. You ask your reporters and experts to use their experience to forecast, second guess, and suggest what events mean and what they will lead to.
Classed as inside information it was merely one thing – opinion.
And opinion based on the editorial slant that news channel was aligned to. It represented less about truth, and more about the picture they wanted to paint. Not really gossip, far worse than that.
In short….propaganda.
And with it being on our screens on a permanent basis, it started to brainwash the viewers who also sat on the same side of the face or who tuned in because they liked how the show was produced.
Minds were ripe for hypnotising…and that’s where we come in!
The never ending story.
Our mindsets are easily influenced.
The more time you spend with certain people or environments (and less time elsewhere), the more you align with the thinking and behaving they have. Have you ever been told others are a bad influence on you?
It’s plain human nature. Be surrounded by something and it leeks into our own consciousness. It’s natural because it’s an inherited survival mechanism that we genetically hold from our ancient tribal days.
And it begins in our minds.
These minds get told things enough and they feel it’s real. Even if what we are told is a story which doesn’t match the truth.
Today the people we spend time with are news people and our environment is online. Here there is a never ending story of whatever interests and is curious to us. These stories captivate and pull us even further and we barely notice. With a constant supply in this location (TV, mobile phone, social media platforms) we never notice that the subtle art of brainwashing is taking place.
Within a few months you now believe the world is flat, we never landed on the moon, and that a special Illuminati rule the world.
We have so much coming at us now from all directions, it’s no longer difficult to fall under the spell.
One you are probably under somewhere now too!
Time to wash your own mind of control.
It’s time to wash your mind clean from where you spend too much time.
Regular habits can lead to limited mentality. Not to mention overinfluence.
If you dedicate much of your time to specific news programmes and social media groups you are narrowing your awareness. You are consuming a diet of only their outlook and direction on aspects of life. It’s like only eating one or two foods for every meal because someone you listen to told you it was best.
Brainwashing in this way is obvious.
The way you experience it may well not be. Unless you get perspective you will never know the damage of the drip drip into your head.
With a society over filled with news, opinion, advice, so called inside info, so called truth, and every angle possible, if you don’t keep your brain independent it will be flooded and washed away.
Cut back where you take it and what you expose it too.
Brainwashing isn’t just for cults.
Brainwashing minds is a skill of the media as well. Protect yours!
