MIND CONTROL

How many of us were tremendously excited for 2020? The beginning of a new decade, a new fun year, our year, the year to achieve it all? For how many is it turning out the way we hoped or expected?

It goes to show that we can't plan our lives perfectly with everything sticking to plan. Life has a way of throwing us curveballs and surprises along almost every step of the way. When it seems to easy or predictable, there's something that you didn't anticipate that gets placed in front of you. Perhaps 2019 was fantastic and 2020, you hoped, wished and expected, would be even better. What if 2019 was a super high year and in 2020 you've hit a slump. You don't know what's happening but you don't like it. 

Life has a way of throwing us curveballs and surprises along almost every step of the way.

Life may seem unfair. A lot of people care about their own self interest and you may not care about that, saying, "well let them do what they want", but what if it directly impacts you and you feel like you're out of control, even powerless? Wasn't this supposed to be your year? What's happening?

Wasn't this supposed to be your year? What's happening?

It's to be expected because when it gets too predictable and too cushy, surprises arise. Now it's not about what you do about the way others act or what you can do to control the uncontrollable. Rather it's about how do you control your mind? The integral piece of this puzzle which will slowly bring you down to misery if you let it go its merry way being frustrated, ruminating or thinking any sorts of ideas that could and most likely would not end well for you. 

That's where it's essential to talk about mind control. The focus in psychology, counseling and just plain common sense if you've learned through enough experiences, we can never control or change someone else, we can only change ourselves. We can't change other people's reactions because those are way outside of our control; what is in our control is our thoughts and reactions towards ourselves and others. So how does or could this help you? It's about awareness which we've talked about in previous articles. Awareness the moment you go into negative self-defeating thoughts and catching yourself before you go down a very dark spiraling descend into an ugly place. Awareness when you let other people's unethical or unprofessional behavior cause you frustration because that doesn't harm them but definitely can harm you. If the people around us, near and far, behave badly, us behaving badly by self-defeating thoughts, imaging even worse things, attempting to rationalize, not figuring out the rationalization and basically shoving ourselves into a corner of anger and negativity, usually doesn't help us. Why do we do this? Well it goes back to control. We can control our mind, our thoughts, even if they seem like they're free flowing, you can control tapping into a negative or positive place. 

When what's happening around you makes you feel like you've lost control, focus on what you do have control of in your life. When someone puts you down through their actions, either directly or indirectly towards you, control what you can and decide if you can approach them to diffuse the situation, or control how you react because perhaps the conversation with them won't make things better. Always way out the cost benefit analysis. Is it more costly or more beneficial to attempt to have a conversation and see if you can change the behavior of others by helping them see that it truly harms you, or is it better to change your behavior and accept what you can't ever change. It's not about throwing in the towel because the defeat that will occur in your mind when you go into battle is much more costly because you're entering into a war of the unknown and if you can't control your mind, your thoughts, the rumination, the twisted imagination, it may not be a battle worth fighting for. 

I like to see many people and strong warriors in life, and encourage us all to stand in our truth, stand up for ourself and to feel powerful. What I've observed through many difficult moments and various courses of action is that we can be strong through mind control when what's happening around us is and always will be outside of our control. To not lower yourself to the low level of the perpetrator of horrible acts that make you feel terrible. To instead rise above, focusing on the positives, the lessons learned, and to find pride and joy that you're not eating yourself alive through the negative inner conversation reel. 

Through my entire career of helping, counseling and coaching others, as well as observed my own life and mind, I've uncovered that our mind really has it's own dialogue which is starkly different from the one we let the world see and that silent conversation we have with ourselves is never ending. At work, at the desk, in meeting, at the dinner table, at a movie, relaxing on the couch, with friends, with clients, enjoying yourself, the mind has an interesting way of speaking up and saying something that makes you think, like "Why did I say that?" or "Why didn't I say something?" or "Why am I so stupid?" or "Why can't I ever achieve success?". Yes you may read this and say why would anyone who loves him or herself say that to themselves? Well it creeps up, it's human nature, it happens to us all and we can't control it coming up but we can control the reaction, to stop it every time, by not indulging in it, or addressing these negative questions, which will hopefully quiet them down soon enough. 

That's how we can perform mind control. It's not an illusion or a magic trick. It's a necessity to live through this unpredictable life that isn't always pretty and most often isn't fair for us all. It's essential when it's a fact that we can't control all aspects of our lives since we can't control others, and in this life most often we have to interact with others. It is a beautiful gift though that we can control our minds, control the thoughts and inner dialogue we allow to occur in our minds which can inform our reactions and actions. It will make for a much better and more beautiful sound up there in that lovely head of yours and hopefully that could make any difficult times a little easier to handle as well as help you feel more powerful and in control when it feels like chaos around. 

Help me spread the #ThoughtfulThursday idea by commenting, starting a conversation with your thoughts, sharing this article with a friend and making improvements in your life by taking the most important aspects of what you read and applying them. 

My hope is that these ideas help you in the way you desire them to. 

Thank you,

Tamara

Fitness and Wellness Coach, Personal Trainer, Instructor

EdM, MA Psychological Counseling, NASM Personal Trainer, AFAA Group Fitness, Precision Nutrition Level 1

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