Tune the mind for the growth

In general, conditioned mind is trained to pull you in the comfort zone. Here, you live and do things which are familiar to you. This way your safety is ensured. Security is of primarily significant for the survival. It is pretty much etched in our DNAs.

Monotony is established when we start to live in the comfort zone for a prolonged period of time. This is because, we perform the same actions and lead the same kind of life that we lived a month/year before. We stagnate and that we don’t establish a path for our growth.

Step out: To see growth, it is important to recondition the conditioned mind. Or otherwise, it is important to come out the conditioned mind to see our own pattern of the conditioned mind. Yes!! Stepping out the conditioned mind gives us an opportunity to see our own construct of the conditioned mind. After all, the conditioned mind operates based on the already stored database that has been accumulated by you as your experiences. It cannot think and act beyond this database.

We need to have new experiences & new learning to move forward. For this, step above the conditioned mind.

Awareness: Awareness plays a key role in reconditioning the conditioned mind. Once the reconditioning has happened, the mind starts to work in your favour for your own growth. Yes, the same mind that pulled you in the comfort zone earlier ,now pushes you to the discomfort zone.

In other words, to win this game, it is important to keep the strength of your awareness far bigger than the strength of the conditioned mind. If the strength of our awareness is bigger & stronger then it gives an opportunity to mindfully step into the unknown zone. There is always a risk to move here and this is where many fail to develop the gradient in progressing through this zone. If you take a wide step then you will be thrown back to your start point because you exceed your resource capability. If you take a small step then that is not good enough to take you to your higher level. Mindful moderate steps are the key for the success and that can be achieved by heightening your awareness level.

Summary: Mind is a protective mechanism that keeps you in the comfort zone. Growth means stepping into your discomfort zone. To see growth in our life, we may need to work against our conditioned mind & mindfully step into our discomfort zone.

FOR YOUR GROWTH, STEP ABOVE THE MIND TO STEP INTO THE DISCOMFORT ZONE

Thought & its effects

Energy: Every thought is a form of energy. In fact, modern science has proved beyond doubt that thought generates electrical impulse. This energy can be utilised productively or else it may get wasted. So, what do you think right now? It does matter a lot!!

Feeling: Thought generates an associated feeling. Positive thought generates a positive feeling & negative thought generates a negative feeling. The emotion associated with a feeling creates a physical reaction in the body. One may experiences this as a bodily sensation. Also, every thought, every feeling and every associated reaction has a form of chemical reaction in the body.

Chemical reaction: A thought that generates anger has an acidic effect in the body. This chemical reaction pumps up your heart beat & increases the blood pressure. In the extreme case, it creates even ulcer, an extreme acidic nature of the body. A serene thought with an associated positive emotion changes the chemical reaction in such a way that improves the immunity system of the body.

Balance: PH is the balance of the alkalinity to the acidic nature of the body. The thought & the associated feeling changes the balance of the system. Thoughts based on fear, worries, frustration enhance the acidity of the body. Thoughts based on joy, love, compassion, happiness set your body in the alkalinity. So, it important to maintain the PH balance of the body. our body becomes the breeding ground for many diseases when it is dominated by its acidic nature.

Factors: There are obviously many other factors such the food, environment etc that determine the body chemical composition. But, the way we think about ourselves as well as our perception of our surroundings play a major role in deciding the balanced chemical composition for a healthy body.

So, remember that the body is simply and purely a chemical factory. Do not pollute with the thoughts that have negative emotions. Instead, sanitise the body by generating the positive thoughts with the positive emotions.

Mind wandering: How to stop it?

Thought & physical reality: Today, we enjoy & experience in the physical reality many such things as mobile phone, house, car etc. Earlier, these were then just in the form of thoughts or imaginations in someone mind. Our thoughts or imaginations that we have in this present time will manifest physically as things or products in near future. An intense thought or an idea in the mind will turn into an innovative product in future. Such is the power of thoughts from the mind.

Imagine the thoughts are not cohesive in nature? We all have this experience in our daily life. No one is an exception to this experience. Only, the time & duration of this experience vary from person to person. When the thoughts are not cohesive and random in nature then we call that experience as “mind wandering”. If you open up the books of neuroscience, this is referred to as “Default network” of the brain.

Reason: Why we switch to this random mode? Let us understand the characteristics of the mind. Mind always revolve around a centre point which is nothing but your important, interesting and significant idea. When you don’t have this, your mind loses its centre point. You can always witness this behaviour of the mind especially in a scenario where you have nothing important to do. This is a right opportunity for the mind to roam around.

Random thoughts: Every thought is an electric impulse in the brain. Now, the technology has evolved to an extent where one can able to read this signal from the brain. So, thought is a form of energy. If we generate random thoughts then we waste our energy. In fact, brain alone consumes 20% of the total energy.

Organised thoughts: Organised thoughts occur when there is a strong presence of the centre point. If the centre point is based on negative emotions such as fear and worries then the thoughts are organised but work in a negative way. When the centre point is based on the positive emotion then the thoughts are again organised but work in a positive way.

So, it is not only important to have a centre point but make sure that it has a positive emotion attached to it. Future can be imagined and planned as it is yet to happen. So, we have the liberty.to think. It is our choice. We have the choice to imagine positively. When we set our goal knitted with the positive emotions, mind gets organised & work towards the goal.

So, here is my message!! Mind wanders in the absence of the direction. Direction can be set by the goals.

Simple strategy: Goals when knitted with the positive emotions give direction to the mind. Single stream of thoughts set by the goal is contemplation.

TO STOP THE WANDERING MIND, SET THE RIGHT LIFE GOALS KNITTED WITH THE POSITIVE EMOTIONS!!

React vs. Response : Outdate to Update

Design: If you open up the books of neuroscience, you’ll come to know at a very abstract level that we have three layers in the brain namely the brain stem, limbic & prefrontal cortex. In simple terms, these are called as the lower, mid & upper brains. Each section of the brain has a unique function. The lower brain is called the survival brain, mid brain is called as the emotional brain & the upper brain is called as the thinking brain.

Evolution: Brain has evolved in few billion years. It starts with the survival first then with the emotions followed by the thinking ability. Considering the rate of growth of the brain, the brain has evolved very rapidly in the recent few million years. The size of the brain has increased to three fold during this period. The brain was five hundred grams few million years before and now it weighs one thousand five hundred grams. Most of this rapid development has happened in the upper section of the brain i.e. the thinking brain.

Living condition: All these neurological systems in our brain are pretty much intact even in today’s living condition. We survive, we become emotional & we think and accordingly the respective brain section gets activated. Unlike other animals, Human is a weak animal by nature. We can’t fly; we can’t run fast & so on. We always live in the dangerous situations & hence, our brain is evolved to look for the potential threads.

But in today’s scenario, we live in a very safe world in comparison to the living condition few million years before. So, the survival & emotional centres are slightly out dated mechanisms. The smartness rests in the way of how we utilise the recent development of the brain i.e. the thinking section of the brain.

React: If I react to a situation or to an experience then it is a spontaneous action from my brain which uses the lower & mid sections of the brain. So, we react emotionally out of fear, worry & anxiety for the given situation & hence, we engage the survival & emotional centres of the brain. This is an out dated mechanism in today’s safe world.

Response: Response is a simply a mechanism of giving a slight PAUSE before reacting during an experience. This pause brings the thinking brain into the equation. Once thinking brain comes into the play, it changes the way how you assign a meaning to an event and hence changes the very nature of our experience itself. This is the new way of leading the life using the newly developed part of the brain i.e the thinking brain.

This habit if it developed then it changes the way one experiences the life. So, learn to “Pause” gives an opportunity to “Respond” instead of “React” during adversity.

Keep life Simple & Easy!!