How to be the boss of your brain, rather than letting it master you!!!!

Emotional balance is the ability of the mind and body to maintain equilibrium and flexibility in the face of challenge and change. Emotional balance promotes physical health, and is a prerequisite for personal well being and growth.

Be prepared to let go of your attachments to any particular outcome so that you can be open to something bigger than you have ever imagined. Let life lead you down unexpected turns and you will discover magic in the most ordinary places.

Work, tasks, errands and chores accumulate so much so it feels like you need to work 25 hours, seven days a week just to keep up. Yet another email marked as urgent arrives in your inbox. There is no end to the onslaught of modern life.

I wonder if our current fascination with zombie movies has to do with the endless amount of meaningless information that we have to sort through just to get through the average workday. In the midst of our own personal crisis of the walking dead, it is sometimes easier to take care of other people than it is to take care of ourselves. When one of our closest friends or family members shares openly that they are suffering, we jump into rescue mode so swiftly that it is easy to forget that we need to save ourselves, too.

I am certainly guilty of trying to please others, molding myself according to their wishes, and placing my own emotional balance at risk, especially when it is the request of someone very close to me. Through my yoga practice, I've learned some skills that help me take care of myself even when demands from the outside world apply intense pressure. How can you be a good zombie killer if you're not calm, centered and relaxed yourself? With these nine easy rituals of self-care that you can integrate throughout the day, you will keep the zombies at bay and have time for yourself and the things you value most.

1. Breathing

Watch your breath throughout the day for signals about your stress level. If you notice yourself holding your breath, breathing erratically or sighing often, then consciously take 10 deep breaths, counting backwards with each inhalation and exhalation. Label each breath to keep your mind focused on a single point of attention. Say to yourself, "Ten in, 10 out. Nine in, nine out." If possible, lie down and close your eyes, or if no quiet space exists for you to retreat into, then simply find a quiet space inside your own mind.

2. Practice Gratitude 

Pause at regular integrals throughout the day and consciously find something that you are truly grateful for. Do not act or pretend. In every stressful situation search for one thing that you can say an honest thanks about. In order for this to work, it has to be a real and grounded thing that you can connect with. If it is too much fantasy then you will know that you are fooling yourself. Only the real attitude of gratitude has the power to change your emotional state. If there is nothing in your current situation that you can be grateful for think of anything in your life at any moment that you were grateful for. No matter how small that may seem, consciously thinking of that experience in a positive manner will help bring your emotional state into balance.

3. Change Your Viewpoint 

If you're stuck in the middle of intense emotions, you won't see clearly and you will be reacting from past patterns. Act don't react. Consciously choose your actions from a place of clarity, rather than just reacting to pain or running toward pleasure. As soon as you notice yourself losing your emotional center, excuse yourself and change your view, literally. Go to the bathroom, splash cold water on your face and recast the situation as though you are viewing it from 10,0000 feet, so you get some emotional distance and can remain objective.

4. Feel 

So much tension and wasted energy is spent repressing or denying how we feel, both emotionally and in our bodies. Instead of pretending to be something that you are not, feel honestly what you are feeling and allow the simple truth of your emotions to set you free. Don't divorce yourself from your emotional body or be too intellectual. Don't let your feelings drown you either. Acknowledge what you feel when you feel it, and use that clarity as the basis for your decisions and interactions with others. Every emotion surfaces to teach you something or tell you something. Your job is to be clear enough to recognize the emotion for the messenger that it is. Communicate your emotions to others when appropriate, but remember to do so in a balanced way that respects the person with whom you are sharing.

5. Use Your Senses 

Pleasant thoughts through the organs of your five senses orient your field of awareness toward the present moment, through what you see, what you touch, what you smell and taste. Direct your awareness to what you like about your current experience. Get fresh air and see the sunlight as much as possible. Notice and appreciate your surroundings.

6. Generate Energy 

You have to generate energy if you want to have it. Especially if you have a job that requires you to stay seated for long hours, remember to take every chance you get to walk, stretch and move around. Little bursts of physical movement help the body feel better and the mind focus more intently. You don't have to run a marathon to be energized, sometimes all it takes is a walk around the block or to go up and down a few flights of stairs. If you don't have time to get outside of your office, stand up in front of your desk for a few minutes every hour and either stretch or continue what you're doing while standing. Even the added physical effort of standing for a few minutes helps.

7. Reflect 

Take the last moments of your day to reflect on the good things about your day, seeing the negative experiences as learning and evaluate rom the perspective of what you can learn, not how you failed. Take stock of the positive and negative emotions you experienced throughout the day. Validate yourself for progress made towards your emotional, physical or career goals.

8. Dream 

Let yourself daydream. Don't fill every moment of your day with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Just let yourself relax and your mind wander. Be careful not to let your mind harp on the negative in these little reveries. Close your eyes and let the mind free associate, even if there are no words that accompany this state. This is like a mini holiday in the middle of the day. Small refreshing daydreaming breaks help your mind integrate lessons and recuperate. You are also practicing being receptive, which is crucial to moments of wisdom and inspiration.

9. Surrender 

While it can be great to goals and visualize the future don't let yourself get too caught up in how things "should" be. Be prepared to let go of your attachments to any particular outcome so that you can be open to something bigger than you have ever imagined. Learn that to the yield does not mean that you lose and be willing to compromise. Let life lead you down unexpected turns and you will discover magic in the most ordinary places.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind.

Buddha

How to Control Your Mind and Thoughts

Want to change your inner world? Better control your mind, as well as your thoughts? Here's the only way possible.

Maybe you don't have any trouble with your thoughts, but I do. Thoughts pop into my mind without my permission faster than a mosquito bites my skin on a sweltering summer afternoon. And, equally without my permission.

Descartes, father of modern philosophy, pointed to both the distinguishing characteristic of human beings and to the biggest curse of human beings when he made his famous statement, "I think. Therefore, I am."

The fact that you and I can think, reflect on the past, imagine the future, even to be conscious of our own consciousness is what distinguishes humans from all other animals. The fact that you and I CAN think, reflect and so often regret the past, imagine and so often fear the future, even to be unconscious of our own capacity to be conscious is the biggest curse humans live with and so try to escape from almost continually.

In other words, "Thoughts," as Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, "can be our best friends and our worst enemies." I would highly recommend his book entitled Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. I heard him speak for the first time just last week and love the way he blends the best in psychology and the science of happiness with Buddhist teachings regarding the mind and its many afflictions.

Until what is on the inside - that is, your mind - is corrected, the external world, that is, how you perceive and experience the world around you will be a mere reflection of it.

In other words, if the world around you is to you an unfriendly, hateful, scary, and judgment-filled place, why is this so? Have you ever sought to know why? Is this the way the world really is? Or, is this the way you really are? Often we project onto the world, as well as onto other people, the afflictive, negative thoughts and emotions that we cannot admit. Or refuse to acknowledge.

More and more, I am convinced, you and I create the world in which we live. Pop psychologists glibly suggest, "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change." While this is true, the problem for most people is how to change their negative thinking and the afflictive emotions that are its inevitable consequence.

Want to change your inner world? Better control your mind, as well as your thoughts?

Here's the only way possible:

1. Meditate daily. If you're one of those persons who quickly excuses yourself as having tried meditation and discovering it does not work for you, that's the first thought you need to change. Why? Because it isn't so. So much of our thinking is just that - wrong. Deceitful. And, the most deceived person is one-and-the-same deceiver. You CAN learn to meditate and you must, if you wish to learn to control your thoughts and your thinking.

2. Observe your thoughts. Don't judge them, observe them. How many times has a thought popped into your mind - let's say some kind of judgmental thought about a colleague at work and, instantly, you jump into judgment mode, finding fault with yourself for even thinking something negative about someone else.

I would suggest an alternative solution to unwanted thoughts. Instead of quickly dismissing them and then judging yourself harshly for having such thoughts, start from the premise that thoughts are neither right nor wrong. They just are. It's what you do with your thoughts that introduce the "rightness" or "wrongness" of them. In other words, in the purported words of Martin Luther, "You cannot keep a bird from flying over your head; what you can do is prevent it from building a nest in your hair."

How? By observing your thoughts. In the east, this is called acting as the "witnessing presence." Like witnessing an accident and then reporting on it to the authorities. Be the observer of your own thoughts, even the ones that frighten you.

3. Cultivate the space between thoughts. In other words, as you train yourself to be the observer of your mind...you thoughts, you are actually cultivating what easterners call "the primary consciousness" that underlies all thinking. It is that "space between the notes," said Claude Debussy "that makes the music." If there were no spaces between the notes on a sheet of music, the sounds you would hear would not only be unintelligible but meaningless, even annoying.

THE RULING OF THE SPIRIT OVER THE MIND

Within our whole being, the supreme part is the spirit; the spirit is the master of our whole being. Although the spirit should subject itself to the Lord’s ruling, it still stands in the chief position in the whole being. The spirit dominates the soul, and through the soul it dominates the body; thus, the mind must yield itself to the control of the spirit. One must always exercise so that the spirit may direct his mind. Of course, we admit that this is not an easy thing to do. It is not easy to focus our mind, and it is even harder for our spirit to rule our mind, for some have never learned how to exercise their spirit nor how to use their spiritual sense, the consciousness of the spirit. Not only are the unbelievers like this, but Christians are, also. All those who do not know how to exercise their spirit have a dominating mind. If your mind dominates your spirit you cannot pray. Only when you always allow the spirit to have the preeminence, ruling and controlling the mind, can the mind really be useful in spiritual things. Often we exhort people to pray, yet it is of no avail. There are numerous reasons that a person is unable to pray, but the chief reason is that the mind is not standing in the proper position. The mind has surpassed the spirit, and having upset the order, has risen from the position of a slave to become the master.

Let us give an illustration of how to practice allowing the spirit to rule the mind. Suppose someone comes to see you. While listening to his talking, use your spirit to sense before exercising your mind to think. Wait until there is the consciousness in your spirit; then allow the spirit to direct the mind to comprehend and express that consciousness. This is what is meant by letting the spirit be lord, ruling the mind. But commonly, when we talk with others, we put our spirit aside, letting it remain inoperative, and we allow our mind to go into full function. If in our daily life the mind climbs too high while the spirit descends too low, when prayer time comes it will not be easy for the spirit to rise again. Hence, in our daily living, we need to practice continually not allowing the mind to dominate the spirit, but rather allowing the spirit to rule and direct the mind. Thus, we will be able to pray well.

THE MIND OF THE SPIRIT

Romans 8:6 tells us that our mind may be of the flesh or of the spirit. The mind of the flesh refers to the mind standing on the side of the flesh and being ruled by the flesh. The mind of the spirit refers to the mind standing on the side of the spirit, cooperating with the spirit, being ruled by the spirit, and minding the spiritual things. Romans 8:5-6 says, “For those who are according to flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are according to spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” In verse 5 the word mind is used as a verb. In verse 6, concerning the same thing, it is used as a noun, that is, the mind of the spirit. When your mind is ruled by the spirit, submits to the spirit, and always minds the things of the spirit, the mind is spiritual and becomes the mind of the spirit. Only the mind set on the spirit can cause you to touch life and have peace within. A mind of prayer is one that minds the spirit, cooperates with the spirit, submits itself to the ruling of the spirit, and is set on the spirit. Only such a mind can pray competently and properly.

THE SPIRIT OF THE MIND

Ephesians 4:23 says, “And are renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The spirit of the mind denotes the presence of the spirit in the mind. The spirit has entered into the mind. Formerly the spirit was the spirit and the mind was the mind, but now the spirit and the mind have joined and are mingled as one. Not only has the spirit been renewed, and not only has the mind been renewed, but the spirit and the mind have been mingled together and are completely renewed. This is the meaning of Ephesians 4:23. In other words, there is a mind that can never be separated from the spirit. It is not only a mind of the spirit, submitting itself to the rule of the spirit, being directed by the spirit, and minding the things of the spirit, but it has the element of the spirit within and is mingled with the spirit. When it thinks, the spirit is in its thinking. The elements of the spirit are found in its every movement. When a person reaches this stage he is rather deep in the Lord. His spirit has spread to his soul, his soul is under the control of the spirit, and the mind of the soul has the elements of the spirit within. Such a one is surely able to pray.

I believe that the brothers and sisters will have a better understanding if I add a few more words. In reading the prayers in the Bible, you can sense that the spirit is there. At the same time, you can also sense that the thinking of the mind is there. You can sense the presence of the spirit in such a mind. For example, if you read Daniel’s prayer of confession in chapter nine, you can see that the words are full of clear thoughts proceeding from a sober mind. At the same time, they are full of the spirit, because the spirit and the mind are mingled together and the mind is filled with the elements of the spirit. This is the mind of the spirit. We need such a mind in order to pray. Many times when the brothers and sisters are praying they have only the thoughts but not the spirit. At other times, when they have a considerable amount of the elements of the spirit, their thinking is poor, incoherent, and inadequate. This proves that they have not been renewed in the spirit of their mind.

How to be the boss of your brain, rather than letting it master you

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind.

Buddha

You may have tried to control your thoughts at one time or another. With the aid of self-help books, perhaps you really tried to “Be Positive” and “Show Negativity the Door.” And this may have even worked for a while. But sooner or later, you probably found yourself back at the starting point. I’m here to tell you that there is another way. And that is to become the CEO of your own mind – skillfully directing it to live in harmony with the other players of self - body and spirit.

If you follow the six steps below, you will be the master of YOU in no time.

STEP 1: LISTEN AND ACKNOWLEDGE

 Like all good leaders, you’re going to have to listen to your disgruntled employee, and acknowledge that you’re taking its message seriously. Minds, like people, can relax and let go when they feel heard and understood. Practice gratitude and thank your mind for its contribution. “Thank you, mind, for reminding me that if I don’t succeed in making more sales, I might get fired.” “Thank you for telling me that I may always be alone and never find love and have a family.” “These are important areas of life, and I need to pay attention to them, and do my best to take advantage of every opportunity that comes up. I also need to learn from past experiences so I don’t keep making the same mistakes.”

STEP 2: MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR MIND

 You may not like what your mind does or the way it conducts itself. In fact, all that negativity can be downright irritating sometimes. But the fact is, you’re stuck with it and you can’t (or wouldn’t want to) just lobotomize it away. In the Book, The Happiness Trap (link is external), Dr Russ Harris uses the example of the Israelis and the Palestinians to illustrate your relationship with your mind’s negative thoughts. These two old enemies may not like each other’s way of life, but they’re stuck with each other. If they wage war on each other, the other side retaliates, and more people get hurt and buildings destroyed. Now they have a whole lot less energy to focus on building the health and happiness of their societies. Just as living in peace would allow these nations to build healthier and more prosperous societies, so making peace with your mind – accepting that negative thoughts and feelings will be there -that you can’t control them, can allow you to focus on your actions in the present moment, so you can move ahead with your most important goals without getting all fouled up. You don’t necessarily have to like the thoughts or agree with them – you just have to let them be there in the background of your mind, while you go out and get things done.

 STEP 3: REALIZE YOUR THOUGHTS ARE JUST THOUGHTS

Most of the time we don’t “see” our minds. They just feel like part of us! Dr Steve Hayes (link is external), the founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (link is external), uses the concept of being “Fused with your thoughts” to illustrate this relationship. To be fused means to be stuck together, undifferentiated. You feel like your thoughts and feelings are YOU and so you accept them unconditionally as the truth without really looking at them. “I’m thinking I’m a failure and boring – gee, I must be a failure and boring. Well. Isn’t that nice? Now I feel really wonderful.” This kind of simplistic logic seems to prevail because we can’t see our own minds, so we have difficulty stepping outside ourselves and getting an objective observer’s perspective.

In actuality, our thoughts are passing, mental events, influenced by our moods, states of hunger or tiredness, physical health, hormones, sex, the weather, what we watched on TV last night, what we ate for dinner, what we learned as kids, and so on. They are like mental habits. And, like any habits, they can be healthy or unhealthy, but they take time to change. Just like a couch potato can’t get up and run a marathon right away, we can’t magically turn off our spinning negative thought/feeling cycles without repeated practice and considerable effort. And even then, our overactive amygdalas will still send us the negative stuff sometimes.

STEP 4: OBSERVE YOUR OWN MIND

The saying “Know thine enemy.” is also applicable to our relationship with our own minds. Just like a good leader spends his time walking through the offices, getting to know the employees, so we need to devote time to getting to know how our minds work day to day. Call it mindfulness, meditation, or quiet time. Time spent observing your mind is as important as time spent exercising. When you try to focus your mind on the in and out rhythm of your breath, or on the trees and flowers when you walk in nature, what does your mind do? If it’s like mine, it wanders all over the place – mostly bringing up old worries or unsolved problems from the day. And, if left unchecked, it can take you out of the peacefulness of the present moment, and into a spiral of worry, fear, and judgment.

Mindfulness involves not only noticing where your mind goes when it wanders, but also gently bringing it back to the focus on breath, eating, walking, loving, or working. When you do this repeatedly over months or years, you begin to retrain your runaway amygdala. Like a good CEO, you begin to know when your mind is checked out or spinning its wheels, and you can gently guide it to get back with the program. When it tries to take off on its own, you can gently remind it that’s it’s an interdependent and essential part of the whole enterprise of YOU.

STEP 5: RETRAIN YOUR MIND TO REWIRE YOUR BRAIN

There is an old and rather wise saying, “We are what we repeatedly do.” To this, I would add “We become what we repeatedly think.” Over long periods, our patterns of thinking become etched into the billions of neurons in our brains, connecting them together in unique, entrenched patterns. When certain brain pathways – connections between different components or ideas – are frequently repeated, the neurons begin to “fire” or transmit information together in a rapid, interconnected sequence. Once the first thought starts, the whole sequence gets activated.

 Autopilot is great for driving a car, but no so great for emotional functioning. For example, you may have deep-seated fears of getting close to people because you were mistreated as a child. To learn to love, you need to become aware of the whole negative sequence and how it’s biasing your perceptions, label these reactions as belonging to the past, and refocus your mind on present-moment experience. Over time, you can begin to change the wiring of your brain so your prefrontal cortex (the executive center, responsible for setting goals, planning and executing them), is more able to influence and shut off your rapidly firing, fear-based amygdala (emotion control center). And, this is exactly what brain imaging studies on effects of mindfulness therapy have shown.

STEP 6: PRACTICE SELF-COMPASSION

The pioneer of Self-Compassion research, Dr Kristin Neff (link is external), described this concept as “A healthier way of relating to yourself.” And that’s exactly what it is. While we can’t easily change the gut-level feelings and reactions that our minds and bodies produce, we can change how we respond to these feelings. Most of us were taught that vulnerabile feelings, are signs of weakness – to be hidden from others at all costs. Or "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie." These bits of common-sense philosophy were dead wrong! Authors,such as Dr. Brene Brown, provide us with a convincing, research-based argument that expressing your vulnerability can be a source of strength and confidence, if properly managed. 

When we judge our feelings –we lose touch with the benefits of those feelings. They are valuable sources of information about our reactions to events in our lives, and they can tell us what is most meaningful and important to us. Emotions are signals telling us to reach out to for comfort or to take time out to rest and replenish ourselves. Rather than criticizing ourselves, we can learn new ways of supporting ourselves in our suffering. We may deliberately seek out inner and outer experiences that bring us joy or comfort – memories of happy times with people we love, the beauty of nature, creative self-expression. Connecting with these resources can help us navigate the difficult feelings while staying grounded in the present.

Do we have control over our thoughts?

We are aware of a tiny fraction of the thinking that goes on in our minds, and we can control only a tiny part of our conscious thoughts. The vast majority of our thinking efforts goes on subconsciously. ... But when the ball comes sailing through, unconscious mental functions take over.

Can We Control Our Thoughts? Why Do Thoughts Pop into My Head as I'm Trying to Fall Asleep?

Can we control our thoughts? Why do thoughts pop into my head as I'm trying to fall asleep?

—Barry Gordon, professor of neurology and cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, replies:

We are aware of a tiny fraction of the thinking that goes on in our minds, and we can control only a tiny part of our conscious thoughts. The vast majority of our thinking efforts goes on subconsciously. Only one or two of these thoughts are likely to breach into consciousness at a time. Slips of the tongue and accidental actions offer glimpses of our unfiltered subconscious mental life.

The intrusive thoughts you may experience throughout the day or before bed illustrate the disconcerting fact that many of the functions of the mind are outside of conscious control. Whether we maintain true control over any mental functions is the central debate about free will. Perhaps this lack of autonomy is to be expected as the foundations for almost all the mind's labors were laid long before our ancestors evolved consciousness.

Even deliberate decisions are not completely under our power. Our awareness only sets the start and the end of a goal but leaves the implementation to unconscious mental processes. Thus, a batter can decide to swing at a ball that comes into the strike zone and can delineate the boundaries of that zone. But when the ball comes sailing through, unconscious mental functions take over. The actions required to send him to first base are too complex and unfold too quickly for our comparatively slow conscious control to handle.

We exert some power over our thoughts by directing our attention, like a spotlight, to focus on something specific. The consequences of doing so can be amusing, as in the famous experiments in which about one third of the people watching a basketball game failed to spot a man in a gorilla suit crossing the court. Or the consequences can be disastrous, as when a narrow focus prevents a driver from noticing a light turning red or an oncoming train.

Although thoughts appear to “pop” into awareness before bedtime, their cognitive precursors have probably been simmering for a while. Once those pre conscious thoughts gather sufficient strength, the full spotlight of consciousness beams down on them. The mind's freewheeling friskiness is only partly under our control, so shutting our mind off before we sleep is not possible.

What is the meaning of rule your mind or it will rule you?

The brain is a pattern box. If you let those patterns be created by unfortunate situations, false beliefs given to you by someone else or because you didn't have enough knowledge about the situation, or because of an element of pain from your past, you are allowing the mind to rule you simply by circumstance.

The idea of ruling your mind is to throw away the reality as your mind sees it today, and open it up to accept a new reality. Ruling your mind means re-examining the truth and diligently re-teaching the mind to set its patterns in-line with the truth as you (or the higher you) see it, not as your pattern box has randomly been assembled.

How to Control Your Mind

The mind consists of many different parts that can each exert influence on your behavior. "You" may want to change how influential a part of your mind is. For example, the part of your mind that cares about getting enough calories and nutrients may urge you to eat rich fatty foods, but another part of you recognizes that in the long run, excessive over eating will ruin your health and your physical image. To control your mind, exerting self-control over behaviors you want to change is key. There are a number of tricks you can employ to change your mind and ultimately your behavior.

Thinking Differently

• Avoid rumination. You may find yourself thinking about something negative, even when you really don't want to. There are a number of tricks you can use to control your mind and stop ruminating: Think about the worst-case scenario. Although this seems counter-intuitive and like it would just lead to even more ruminating, when you think about the worst-case scenario, and then think about whether you would be able to handle it; you'll likely find that you can imagine yourself handling the situation and this can help decrease your worry.
• Schedule time for yourself to worry. By setting aside time to think about your problem, you can rest assured that it will get the attention it (maybe) needs; this can help you stop thinking excessively about your problem when you don't want to.
• Go for a walk. Getting out and about can get your mind off of your worries, either simply because of the exercise itself or because you will be taking in new information (sights, sounds, smells) which can help your mind wander to other, less distressing things.
• Believe in yourself and that you can change. If you don't believe that you can change you're not going to try nearly as hard as if you believe success is possible. So, make sure that you're using positive thinking to face your problem. Try to keep in mind that you can change the way you think, that you can improve.
• Studies show that individuals adopting this "growth" mindset are more likely to make desired improvements than those who view their traits and skills as fixed and unchangeable.
• Create a plan for your life. If you have a clear path for what you want in life, you may be less likely to be swayed by temptations that will hurt you in the long run. Write down the major things you want out of life: Is it a good career? Having a family of your own one day? Becoming financially wealthy? You don't have to lay out very detailed steps for achieving these goals as part of this exercise; instead, remember to keep your overarching goals in mind so you stay on track in your life.
• To form personal goals, it is important not to set the bar too high or else you will fail and this can kill your motivation.
• Instead, set some big goals (e.g., learn how to code software), but break those bigger more distal goals into smaller more achievable goals (e.g., read 1 chapter of a software coding book every week). In this way you can see tangible amounts of progress as you work toward accomplishing your more distal goals.
• Smile, even if you don't feel like it. Negative feelings can reduce self-control and make it more difficult for you to control your mind One way to counteract negative feelings is, simply, to smile.
• Although the idea that feeling happy causes you to smile is more intuitive, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that smiling can actually cause you to feel happiness.
• Spend time or money on others. Research shows that spending on others can increase happiness and well-being. Happiness and well-being can increase your self-image and reduce negative feelings that make self-control more difficult. Exactly how you spend your time or money on others isn't that important. What matters is that you and those you are helping find it valuable.Create obstacles for yourself. One way to control your mind is to make it more difficult for it to get what it wants. This extra effort will make it so that part of your mind is less likely to win out and influence your behavior. For example, if you want to control the part of your mind that wants to watch TV when a part of you wants to cut down on your TV watching time, you could put your remote control in a difficult to reach spot. Another example is that if you keep hitting the snooze button in the morning, you could place your alarm clock far from your bed, so that you are forced to get out of bed to turn it off.
• A further example is if you are having trouble refraining from sex, and you want to change this behavior, you could avoid putting yourself in situations that lead to sex: you could stay away from bars, nightclubs, and you could delete the phone numbers of people you sometimes hook-up with.
• Reward your successful self-control efforts. When you successfully control your mind, reward yourself so that you are more likely to continue to do so in the future.
• For example, say you really didn't feel like exercising but you forced yourself to do it anyways, reward yourself with a piece of chocolate or with an episode of your favorite TV show.
• Be careful not to make the reward too excessive or you may find yourself out of control and back to square one where you started. For example, if your goal is to lose weight and you controlled your mind and exercised when you didn't feel like it, don't eat several chocolates or you will just lose the progress that you made.

SUMMARY

To be a successful CEO of your own mind, you need to listen, get to know your employee, acknowledge its contribution, realize it's nature, make peace with it, implement a retraining or employee development program, and treat it kindly. It will repay you with a lifetime of loyaly and service to the values and goals that you most cherish.