Antara quote, “Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds.”
Mental mastery is your quality of life, your personal expansion, your enlightenment. Taking care of how and what you think about on a daily basis is important in cultivating the life you envision, and the joy and happiness that you want.
There are many different things you can do to help cultivate your mindset. The following three action steps are starting points that can help you begin to use your full potential of your mind.
- You become what you think about
How many times have you heard this statement? There are so many quotes and inspirational stories, self-help books etc. on this subject. Gautama Buddha said, “What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.”
The way you see your life is related to how you see yourself. You are the interpreter of your world. There is no objective world; it is subjective through the lens in which you view it. There can be two people with the same experience, yet have very different views on what happened and how they react to the incident.
I once heard a story about two brothers. One was in jail, and one was a successful entrepreneur. A journalist went to interview both of them to find out what happened to them, and how did they go such separate paths? The journalist asked the man in jail, how did you end up here? What did you do? His reply, “what did you expect, I had a shitty role-model”.
Then the journalist interviewed the entrepreneur. He asked him the same questions and his reply was, “I had a great role-model. I did not want to end up like him so I worked hard to become something else.” The journalist could not believe it. Here were two brothers, who both had the same father, a man who was an alcoholic, and petty crimes, who was in and out of jail. One son viewed it as his lot in life and knew he could not have any better; he ended up in jail himself. While his other son viewed it as an example of what not to do, and that there is better out there for him. – You are far more than your circumstances. They both had the same stimulus, but different responses.
What response do you want in your life?
If you become what you think about, then cultivate good thoughts.
One way to do that is to begin writing lists of what you are grateful for. Start with writing down a few things you are grateful for each day. It may be your comfortable bed, the food you ate that day, or the hug you got from a friend. Write it down and take a look at it before bed.
Make sure you do both steps. Write it down and review it before bed in the evening. The act of thinking about a few good things before bed helps set your mind for the following morning.
- You attract into your life what you think about
If you want to manage your life, start with what you think about all day long. Manage your mind! What you think about you attract into your life.
How often have you thought about someone and then that person calls you, or you see them later on that day. Or you thought about a song and then you hear it on the radio.
Think about what type of life you want. Do you want a more prosperous life? Then think more prosperous thoughts. You want more freedom, think free thinking thoughts. How about more peace? Then think more peaceful thoughts.
Journaling about your thoughts is a good way to understand what is on your mind. Ask yourself questions such as; is there a better way to see this circumstance? What is the lesson here? Is there an opportunity?
- Congruent Character
What you do must be consistent with what you say. Your character and your actions reflect what values are most important to you. The more congruent you are with your inner beliefs, the more you will learn happiness, because you are doing what is right versus what is popular.
Reflect on what values are most important to you. Some examples may include: family, integrity, success, love, community. Write down your top five values and then consider what you do on a daily basis. How congruent are you with your beliefs? Change what you do accordingly, because the more congruent you are with your values, the happier you will be. And that is because you are being yourself.
So, three practices that can help you cultivate a good mindset can include, grateful lists, journaling your thoughts and knowing your values; so you can be yourself.
“There is no better time than now.” – Thomas Monson
