Take control of your mental processes

To be able to take control of your mental processes requires that you can notice them. Rita Mae Brown, once said: "To do the same thing over and over again and expect a new result, is equal to the madness."

Sure you know that the result is wrong after a while, of course, you can see it. But it is difficult to understand what you're doing wrong. You are trying just to take what you think seem to be the fastest way to get the best results.

How does it work?

You experience the reality by your five senses and make an interpretation of it. Your interpretation is not the same as reality itself, but your own picture of it. It is what YOU imagine is reality.

The problem occurs when your own "subjective" reality does not match so well with the "objective" reality. You try to do something you feel as good or right, but it does not work. You may then choose to try to change the objective reality to suit your thoughts, or to change your own reality to suit the objective reality. What do you think is easiest? Moving the mountain to Mohammed, or moving Mohammed to the mountain?

We go a little deeper

To be able to be happy, sad, angry, irritable, calm, etc.., the body must mix the right chemicals. In this way, you are actually your own bartender. The only question is what do you mix of drink. What do you feel?

If you are going out and play the game, race or mush on the green when 100 people stand and watch, you can feel stressed out, pressured or nervous. What will you do?

Stress, pressure and nervousness, and all other permits are not real. Have you ever seen a high level of stress lying on the ground in front of your feet when you're out and play or compete?

Stress, pressure and nervousness are mental processes that you create and they are usually unconscious. But if you become aware of them, you can also detect when they are on the way and stop them.
Easy? Yes and now we do it!

Create your own experiences

We all always have an internal dialogue with ourselves. The dialogue may contain positive or negative things. If the negative outweighs it may sound like:
I'm not smart enough to cope with this
I am not as good as the others
I can not succeed and will not do it
I always give up
It does not matter what I do, it is still not going to be better
They will discover how stupid I am
I am woman, and they will not listen to a woman
I am too young and they will not believe me
I am too young to do this
I am too old to do this

At the same time as you think the thought, you have already chosen the consequence - I will not do this, therefore there is no idea that I even try, which in turn leads to you actually will never know if you had passed it.
Brain function is so amazing that the brain actually does not see the difference between what happens in real life and what you think. So while you're thinking, 'I can not do this, your brain thinks that you KNOW that because you have already tried.
Of course this also works with positive thoughts: if you think 'I can do this and see it happening in your imagination, the image of how you do it, the brain think that you have already passed it.

If the internal dialogue, positive thoughts sounds like:
I am very clever
I am at least as good as the others
I will succeed in whatever I do
I will not give up
If it does not work in the beginning, it will be better
I am a woman but it does not matter
I am young but it does not matter
I am old but it does not matter
The age at all does not matter

Now you have already given the brain a picture where it thinks you ARE you like you describe yourself in your thoughts.

Now it's YOUR choice: to think positive thoughts or to think negative thoughts.

THAT MAKES THE WHOLE DIFFERENCE!

It is just a thought, nothing to be afraid of

When you have an experience of difficult emotions they always are accompanied by sensations and feelings in the body. Then we tend to automatically react negatively, instead of friendly attention right into the areas of the body where we feel pain or discomfort. If we do so, note them immediately, the long-term effects start immediately. By doing this we are shorting the reaction patterns in the brain that trigger avoidance. We also disrupt the automatic neural connections between body, emotion and thought that consolidate vicious circles and depressive spiral. In the long term we are going to develop more constructive and sensible way of dealing with these experiences that have been considered negative. We no longer see them as evil and scary, because if we see them that way we trigger avoidance. This in turn means that we get stuck there. But if we begin to see the unpleasant experiences as they are, take them for what they are; transient mental phenomena or events, feelings and thoughts, showing interested to examine them, being curious, rather than to be afraid of those things we regard as abhorrent events and that we have learned to hate.We might as well invite them because they are already there.
Although anxiety is actually just a feeling, a creation of your own brain, nothing to be afraid of ...

Begin today

Beginner´s mind means to see everything as you were looking at it the first time.

The richness of the present moment is the greatest gift of your life. Our thoughts on what we already know, often obscuring the view to see things as they actually ARE. Without any bias. We use to take everything for granted and thus fail to see much of reality. The unique is the everyday life. If you see everything as if you saw it for the first time, you can suddenly see things that you have not seen before, even if they've been there. Every moment is a unique opportunity to experience something new or experience present in a new way. Do you see things and people around you as they really are or you see them only as reflections of your thoughts? If we do not trouble us, we see everything like we have always seen and then we do not see the reality. If I get angry so probably it's about something in the person’s behavior that has made me angry at some point. But if I see all these things in new ways, see the man as he is, maybe I no longer have any reason get upset because of his / her behavior, people are just like they are and it's not for me to change this . What I can change is my own way of seeing it.

About leadership

The authoritarian nature is not devoiding to want to be active, to have courage and faith. But these features of meaning for them is something else than the meaning for a person no longing after submission. In the authoritarian nature the desire of activities is based on a profound sense of powerlessness, as that is what it strives to overcome. Activities in this sense means to act in the name of something that is higher than their own self. It can be done in God´s name, in the past´s name, the nature´s or the duty´s name, but never in the name of the future of the unborn, right of them whot have a non power, or of life itself.

For the authoritarian character a lack of power always is a sign of guilt or inferiority, and the authority on which the person believes is showing signs of weakness, has released the love and the charity for resentment. This character lacks the aggressive spirit that can attack recognized powers without first having to enter into service in the second and stronger powers.

The courage of the authoritarian character is essentially courage to suffer the fate or something the personal representative or "leader" has decided. To suffer without complaint is the highest virtue - not the courage to try to end the suffering, or at least reduce it. They don´t like to change fate, but submit to it, it is the heroism of the authoritative character.

Read more: Erich Fromm: Escape from freedom

Meditation is good for you

Mindfulness is a form of meditation adopted to reduce the number of different clinical and non-clinical problems, including stress. Randomized controlled trials until the spring of 2006 have been made in fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions, various cancer forms, cardiovascular diseases, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain damage and depression.
Mindfulness training has in these studies resulted in significantly better results than methods used of controlgrroups. Studies where healthy people participated have shown that mindfullnes training and other
forms of meditation has a positive psychological impact and reduces stress.

This is what you can read in Swedish Läkartidningen 20061018.

Mindfulness is good for everyone, increasing your daily well-being!
Try it!

Nourishing steps

Walking meditation is like eating. With each step, we nourish our body and our spirit. When we walk with anxiety and sorrow, it is a kind of junk food. The food of walking meditation should be of a higher quality. Just walk slowly and enjoy a banquet of peace.


-Thich Nhat Hahn