Controlling your Mind and Thoughts
One of the many issues we face in today’s world is a distracted mind. As such, controlling your mind and your thoughts is an important skill that can allow you to pay more attention to the world.
Why is Controlling your Thoughts and Mind Beneficial?
Our mind can be our best friend but also our worst enemy. You may find that your mind is stuck in the past or perhaps it’s worried of the future. Alternatively, our minds can become full of absolute nonsense, getting distracted by the smallest thing and spend hours wandering around daydreams without even realizing it.
You may be wondering why learning to control your mind and thoughts is remotely beneficial. Well, for starters it allows you to experience more of life. If you spend too long on autopilot, not really paying attention to what is going on in the world around you, you’ll find yourself waking up one morning having missed your entire life. Of course there are other aspects as well. For example, as you learn to control your thoughts and your mind you’ll notice an improvement in concentration. This means you can read for longer, work for longer, drive for longer, all without your mind wandering off to random places.
Beginners Guide to Thought control
Luckily, learning to control your thoughts isn’t as difficult or as challenging as it may sound. We’ll take a look at some incredibly simple, yet effective techniques that will help you have more control over your mind thoughts. It’s not a quick fix as these steps require some time to perfect and to take effect. However, if you stick to practicing these techniques then you’ll definitely start to notice a major difference in your mind. So let’s take a look at the first step to controlling your mind.
Meditation to help you Controlling your Mind
Meditation is the act of relaxing and focusing. There is a common misconception that meditation is the practice of thinking about nothing. In truth, it’s the act of focusing intensely on a sound, thought or sensation in such a manner that your conscious mind fades into nothingness. It’s a freeing practice with many major health benefits (physically, mentally and spiritually). Of course meditation offers another obvious benefit in terms of controlling your mind. As you practice focusing on one specific thing, you’re essentially training your own concentration. If you concentration was a muscle (and in many ways it’s a similar process) then meditation would be like a gym workout for it.
However there is a more specific aspect of meditation that allows you to control your thoughts: mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is all about staying in the here and now, focusing on the present moment instead of getting bogged down by the past or future. There are many guided mindfulness meditations online so if you’re completely clueless on the matter, you’ll have no problem finding resources to walk you through it step by step.
Control your Thought
One big mistake people make when first starting out this process is trying to force thoughts down. Controlling your mind isn’t about stopping yourself thinking but rather it’s about directing it. Look at it this way: if you wanted to stop a river from flowing down a certain path, how would you stop it? If you build a dam then chances are the river will flood around it or build up so much that it overflows. Your best option is to create a new path for the river and direct it down the new path and away from the old one.
The same is true with your thoughts and this is something you can notice within yourself both during meditation and outside of it. When you notice that your mind has wandered off to some unproductive place, don’t just dismiss it. Instead, take a moment to acknowledge where you mind was trying to go. Ask yourself if it could have been a productive thought. If not, simply return to whatever it is you are supposed to be doing. It can often help to make a small note of when and where your mind wanders to. Sometimes there is a common factor such as being on the bus or when it is nearing lunch time.
Notice the Emptiness
As you begin controlling your mind with ease, you’ll start to notice something rather interesting: there is a space between your thoughts. This quietness intimidates people at first but as you adjust, you’ll realize this is what you’ve been aiming for. It’s like trying to study in a library in comparison to studying at a basketball game. There will be times early on in your development where you try and force the emptiness to appear but this won’t help, you just need to be patient and wait for your mind to be ready.
You can view your mind as being similar to a galaxy: it’s full of bright, powerful objects. Many of these have their own systems developing. Yet within this galaxy there is so much space. By controlling your thoughts, you begin to navigate all the suns and planets that are the thoughts and daydreams of your mind. You can choose a path that allows you to remain in the quiet and empty part of space/your mind. This in turn allows you to better explore both your own mind and the outside world as you’re free from the distractions of your own thoughts.
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