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!!
Have you ever had a date with someone gorgeous but somehow you are not into them?
Or gone for a job at the in-thing company with superb pay but it just didn’t work for you?
Or maybe when your friends go to the hippest joint in town you don’t go as it’s not your thing?
In these situations, and other similar ones you may have experienced, other people didn’t understand why you reacted the way you did. And perhaps you even told them that you agree as you couldn’t explain either.
In some cases many are still scratching their heads years later attempting to figure out why.
Well, scratch no more because it’s not some weird mind you’ve got. Or that you are a weirdo yourself who turned up his or her nose at a good thing. Nor sir or maam.
It was that deep down underneath it all subtly was another voice that was influencing your mind. A deeply personal voice.
The voice of your own standards and values.
When it feels wrong.
Everybody gets chances to do things, go places, and meet people.
Probably over a lifetime that will add up to many thousands of opportunities. But which ones we accept are less about the event or who is going, and more about our inner viewpoint of it. Going to one concert ‘feels right;, while another is ‘not for me’.
Now it must be said that the vast majority we end up doing and going. We may not quite think we’ll enjoy it or aren’t really interested, but we go along anyway because it’s neither something awesome or awful inside. That’s the same for you, for me, for your best mates, and even your boss or barista guy at the coffee shop.
It’s the certain few that feels wrong emotionally we never show up at even if everyone else believes we will.
Where to them it’s cool, to us it’s kinda sleazy or overpriced or immature. Or any other inner reason that objects to attending. A wrong feeling that we can’t fight, so we don’t in the end. It may take us a few years to say ‘No’, but sooner or later we won’t fight what’s not right within us.
Now this can leave us confused, never mind others. Until we know why we refuse to go somewhere that looks the same on paper as somewhere else we loved last month, we can remain puzzled. Have you been like that? Have no idea why you seem to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at random?
Well read on for the good news.
You aren’t going mad, you are honouring your standards and values.
They know you, but do you know them?
Sounds silly doesn’t it?
Yet it’s most likely true. The very standards and values that guide our decisions are more subconscious if anything. They know and power us, but we don’t actively know them.
Only because we’ve never thought about what they actually are. They have accumulated over our years of life and they act as a kind of ‘right behaviour manual’ in our ethical emotional and mental centre. We put them there but don’t know what we put.
They kick in when situations show up that flag one of our ‘don’t do’s or ‘right ways’ to live. In an instant they try to block what we will do next, or encourage it if fits well within the inner S & V catalog. We are not aware of this, we just respond even if we aren’t sure why we did so.
On one level it’s easy and we ‘get it’ – smoking isn’t cool to us; it’s an unhealthy and unsociable habit. Or that eating fast food and takeaways is bad for our weight and not good for us. They are noticeable.
It’s the ‘other’ ones that are less obvious.
Why did we turn down the hot girl/guy? – it was because we knew their reputation and we didn’t approve of such activities.
Not sure why a lucrative career in a certain industry did not appeal – money isn’t your priority and that’s all they were focused on.
Maybe you are now spotting other scenarios where the ‘other you’ made the ruling of ‘I will’, or, ‘I won’t’. Looking back and working out the something else that drove your responses.
Let’s see EXACTLY what they are!
Write what’s right.
Ok, time to find out what matters.
Time to bring your standards and values into the light of day. They already exist in you but you can’t see them. To do that it’s the old fashioned piece of paper and a pen (in this case it’s the perfect tool!).
You are going to keep it simple. Take the chief areas that are important to you – relationships, family, money, career, whatever are your main factors.
On the paper list each one separately on the left hand side. Next, a few minutes to reflect about each zone. When you’ve considered them enough (no, 10 seconds is NOT enough), write words by each area that reflect how you feel they should be lived.
For example – Relationships – loyalty, intimacy, trust, connection, respect.
Carry on for the other ones you have listed such as – career – dedication, fulfillment, progress, peer respect.
Finally you will have a list of your standards and values where they impact you most. A list that you have always applied to them in your life. Standards and values that have ruled because they are your rules.
Now. take these and look at anywhere in your life where something/most things are badly missing. See the standards and values you have to honour for yourself in what you have to do or say or act in improving them.
Once you know the ‘real you’ they represent, the real life for you can begin to develop.
Because standards and values say everything about you to a life that needs to match them.
That your whole life has been a series of labels you have applied to yourself?
Applied by your mind!!
Labels are part of our lives even if we don’t ever notice them. After all aren’t you a parent, wife, son or daughter, colleague, boss and so on. They may just seem unavoidable society titles but they can stick. Get glued in when descriptions are added before them – supportive husband, good son, hard working colleague.
And then we begin living that label as it also attaches to our mind.
The trouble is some labels come with life, but others are fostered on us whether we want them or not. And it’s these that are often the ones hardest to remove from our own minds and the minds of others.
As one famous singer found out.
Tagged as a troublemaker.
We all had one great friend at school our parents didn’t approve of.
They didn’t know them but labelled them as a trouble maker. From that point they could never see them as anything else. It’s far worse when you are someone famous and the media tags you as someone you are not.
That is what happened to Paul McCartney in 1972.
That year an infamous and shocking event occurred in the British controlled Northern Ireland. At a civil rights march in Derry in January 72, British troops opened fire on unarmed civilians killing 13 of them. It’s a horror that is still argued over to this day. Paul McCartney also felt that horror due to his Irish heritage through his mother.
Believing that such events would happen again and the violence would escalate as a result, his peacemaking side thought it should be better if the issue over the territory was sorted. He penned the protest song, ‘Give Ireland Back to The Irish’.
Instantly he was labelled a political activist, pro-IRA, and a trouble maker so the song was banned from radio playlists. His stance through his music added labels to him that persist to this day and many have never forgotten, or forgiven, him for the song.
And that’s what labels do…..they stick!
Long time labels.
For Paul McCartney the song was released over 50 years ago but the labels remain.
Most of these were generated, and continue to be promoted, by the media.
Our mind is like the media in this way. It accepts a label, often from long ago that was never correct or fair, and keeps running it like a story that the newspapers always dig up and re-use. One we were usually given that seeped into our consciousness.
Let’s say you were called insensitive in the past. Or a selfish lover. Maybe it was lazy worker or poor with money. Some throw away comment made by someone who normally didn’t fully know the whole story.
But, the comment stung or hurt or bothered you and so you held onto it. You didn’t let it go.
And so, like the media who likes to dig up the dirt, you kept the story on file in your mind as some definition of yourself.
You actually began to behave the way the label stated.
You got lazy in your work or spent money foolishly. Effectively you lived how the label classified you. Yes, you told yourself that this proves the label someone gave you was completely correct rather than noticing that is was simply you acting it out.
The ultimate tag before Facebook ever came along.
Labels are simply outdated self-beliefs that you never questioned that hang around you still today.
And because you don’t realise, you don’t even think about it.
What labels to lose?
So what labels you have about yourself do you need to lose to improve your life?
Labels are everywhere. They are part of life and society. All of us are defined by being single or middle class or qualified instructor and the like. We use, and need them, to help define levels of authority, relationships and connections, and understanding who’s who in relation to others.
Most of them are innocent everyday tags.
The ones you need to work out and remove from your psyche are the personal ones ‘about you’ that caused negative emotional reactions in your actions and behaviours. Past labels that made some personal observation or prediction about you that lingers still today. Examples being told you will ‘never have any money as you are too irresponsible’, or ‘no one likes you’. If it hurt then you kept hold of it in your mind and allowed it to limit you.
Life is often held back by old untrue labels.
Your job to rid yourself of them is to revisit them. Take time and think back (as you may have buried them as you felt shame or guilt after hearing them). Remind yourself of situations when an upsetting definition was made about you. It may not take that long.
Write down each label you recall – and yes it may be uncomfortable.
Then face them. Know they’re not right. Tell them they are wrong. See yourself as not that person. Then cut them up into shreds or burn them. Release them from your mind and feelings.
Unleash your unlabelling and be free.
Because the only label you ever need is the one that says, ‘This is me!!’.
References – Wikipedia – Give Ireland Back to the Irish.
Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by geralt and kinkate and Maklay62.
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 – Equality.
The world is not the place it used to be since the turn of the Century. Humanity is now looking at, questioning, and repairing how things have been in our history. This is to ensure a fairer future. Equality is at the forefront of this revolution in behaviours, standards, fairness, and society norms. But trying to right the wrongs has itself stirred up a hot bed of issues. This means SMS has to take a look and ask some questions perhaps others are not. Or won’t.
1. Where to start?
Yes, straight into the fray. Many will shout that it is obvious….but is it? The first clear equality is for human rights for everyone. Rights to be who you are and not punished or penalised for it. However there are other well voiced inequalities that also require some improvement or wide range change. There is the equality of gender, of skin colour and race, of religious faith, of sexuality as the largest areas that demand attention. All groups have a justifiable right to more fairness. But society has always struggled with mass change like this. It works best through a gradual altering of how we live.
So where do we start with mass equality? What is the starting point to ensure the equality is here to stay?
2. A Human list?
Equality seems a simple premise. In reality though, equality can be hard to define in some areas but very clear in others. Added to this is that various people and groups seeking equality themselves aren’t in agreement about how that equality should look. There’s our challenge. We believe equality to be right but how it should work in practice has not been defined in some set parameters. It would help if we had a specific list of all areas that equality should be made to exist in and applied to.
Should we have a list of human needs that all equality has to be measured by?
3. Is equality reality?
Now the controversial question. Life is not fair. What one person gets, another doesn’t. Some seem born lucky. Others less so. That’s how life works. We all attempt to make life fairer, but it’s never going to end up that way. Maybe equality reflects that. We are attempting today to make society more equal on many levels. From legislation to attitudes equality has become a vital part of everyday life. But we never be able to make life entirely equal because it, well, it is life.
At what point do we reach before we decide equality can never be full reality?
4. Are our foundations wrong?
Equality is how we should live. It helps preserve and progress life. But, we live and are ruled by another method. A method that makes creating extended uniformity more and more difficult. Money. Over the last few decades capitalism has spread across the Earth. This drives division. Those who had, have now got more. Those that had less have struggled to keep that. More people are fighting this than they are equality as it effects everyone.
Is the modern love and need for money harming the need for equality?
5. Will we DO equality?
The famous Hollywood actor Will Rogers observed, ‘We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others’. Compared to the past we now recognize more rights for each other than we have ever done. But, recognizing is only the first step. The real step is to physically DO something about this. Apologies for the past help but won’t go far at providing real rights today and the future.
What is the main step or action we need to do to ensure we live in a more equal world?
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 MrWashingt0n and Simp1e123
