Today we’re talking about releasing the power of your mind. I get much more detailed with this, and with many other concepts and techniques, in my online course “Mind-Strong: Mental Training for Improved Performance and Better Living”.
My foundational idea is this: a calm mind is a powerful mind.
In order to harness your mind’s power and greatest potential, and in order to produce your brain’s best thinking and performance, your mind needs to be c-a-l-m.
The opposite of a calm mind is an anxious mind. I’m using the word “anxious” a bit generally, as a catch-all word for an agitated mind.
A metaphor may be helpful. If my cup of tea is sitting on the table next to me undisturbed, we could say it’s “calm”—no ripples, no “tension”, no waves.
If, on the other hand, I put a spoon in to stir up some sugar, my tea becomes, well, stirred up.
You get the point. There’s times when our minds are all stirred up, agitated, disturbed, preoccupied—“anxious”. Perhaps for an understandable reason. There’s a lot that happens in life that’s disturbing!
Still, understandable or not, an anxious and agitated mind is a hindrance, not a help.
An anxious mind leads to irrational thinking, reactive fight-flight-freeze behavior, and short-sighted decisions.
A calm mind, on the other hand, sets us up for greater success, leading us into our best thinking—thinking that’s rational and based on reality rather than thinking that’s based on our imagined fears, our speculation, and our over-interpretation of what’s going on around us.
What about you? How good are you at calming down your mind when it gets stirred up? Or do you just let your anxious mind run its course, without intervening?
In addition, how well do you create quiet environments of stillness, silence, and solitude, so that you can regularly nurture a calm mind? Notice I said regularly.
I’m not overstating it at all when I say that your greatest ability, your greatest advantage, and your greatest ally is a calm mind, and will always be a calm mind.
Not sure how to get out of an anxious and agitated mind and into a calm mind, where your true power lies? We’ll cover some of this material in future articles (of course, I also privately coach people on this as well).
In the meantime, when you’re mind is “all stirred up”, take a step back from your situation, and take a slow, full, deep breath, releasing your tension as you do so. Take a couple/few more deep breaths if you need to.
And then think. Not react. Not going down a path of jumping to conclusions, over-interpreting, creating negative predictions without sufficient evidence, etc.
Instead, think it through. Calmly. Rationally. Don’t get ahead of the facts.
We all get “jazzed up” in our heads from time to time. Not a problem, just get on top of it and s-l-o-w it down.
We’ll talk more about building a strong mind in the future.
Until then, be well my friend.