The Power of the Mind

Happy March everyone 😊

I must be honest; I literally hate this time of year.

The weather is gross. It’s the tail end of winter, and the spring weather keeps peeking her head out of the gray clouds and the snow drifts. But she’s teasing us. Like, c’mon!

It’s a time of year that I’ve always associated with stress because of school, melancholy feelings because of the weather, and anticipation for the spring and summer months, where more exciting things will be happening. I make plans and I look forward into the future.

I don’t really take a lot of time to be in the present moment. I’m sitting in a bit of a stuck place. In a bit of an emotional sludge.

The winter blues are real, and while I am grateful that I don’t suffer from seasonal depression, I know that these days of deep winter and early spring can be incredibly hard for some people.

Since the new year, though, I’ve really prioritized my routine and staying on top of my budget, my skincare, my health, and my inner peace. Like everything I set out to do and commit to, it’s had its ebbs and flows. But in essence, one thing that has helped me immensely to get in the right mindset everyday has been reading.

Even if it’s just a small passage.

Recently, I’ve picked up the book called Living a Life of Awareness: Daily Meditations on the Toltec Path.  It’s written by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., who is the son of the man that wrote the wildly successful book, The Four Agreements. Each page contains a “meditation” passage about a certain topic, and then concludes with a two-sentence practice to take into your day.

I’ve been reading a passage a day to help lead my days with awareness and to be more awakened to my effect on the people around me, but more so how I affect those in my environment as well.

A couple of days ago, this passage below had me reeling a little bit. It’s hard to understand at first, but bear with me:

“The human mind is a wonderful tool, a literal manufacturing plant of thought, and it has enabled us to create wonderful structures and develop amazing technologies over millennia.

But without awareness, our minds can take on more power than we might want by completely absorbing our attention. If we let it, the mind will constantly narrate, or commentate on, everything we do, say, see, touch, taste, smell, and hear. It is like taking a sip of wine and saying, “It’s a bit dry; it has definitely aged well, but I can taste the bark. I’ve had better.” Instead of simply experiencing the joy and flavors of the wine, we are analyzing the flavor, trying to break it down and fit it into a context and language we already know. In doing this, we miss out on much of the actual experience.

This is a simple example of how our mind can narrate life—by explanation, comparison, and judgement. Instead of taking an experience for what it is, we create a story to make it fit our beliefs.

Your mind is a wonderful tool, but balance is key in making sure you use the tool, instead of the tool using you. As you move through your day, be conscious and try to experience each moment anew, letting go of the impulse to narrate your experience on the spot and pass judgement.”

So, there are two big standout moments in this passage that spoke to me.

The first, is the idea of commenting or thinking about an experience as it is happening, such as the wine tasting, and relating it to the past. The wine drinker related what he was tasting to what he has tasted in the past, therefore letting the comparison of a better tasting wine (in his humble opinion) overtake the value of the wine right in front of him. Later, he may not even be able to truly taste and experience the rest of the wine tasting as he starts to stress about an event coming up, or even simply what he’s going to eat for dinner in the future.

He may have been present for a few moments, but his mind is blinded to the full experience due to his own perception of how he wanted it to go anyway.

Seems innocent enough, right? We always have something to say about everything and we rarely think that no one wants or cares to hear our opinion. We’ve been conditioned to stand up for ourselves and speak out, but do we really have to force ourselves to form a thought about everything? I feel like if we’re more aware of what is truly in front of us, letting our thoughts flow as they go, what compels us to speak or form an opinion may just be more positive. Simply taking it in.

So that struck me in a way. No one really shuts up. Including me, haha. You’re reading a blog post about my own conditioned thought patterns. You’re probably judging them or comparing them to something you’ve read before, or maybe you’re even questioning your own opinions about this.

Which brings me to my second standout moment.

I don’t think that we truly live with awareness each day. Unless it is convenient for us.

Because of the circumstances of our upbringings and past experiences, we have developed a type of moral code which dictates how we feel about people and situations. It’s where we learned to judge others on impulse. If they don’t do something the way we would, we consider it wrong or unappealing. We even choose to relate that to a person’s character. We say they’re a bad friend because they didn’t do this one thing the way that we would have. They’re a bad mom, a bad teacher, a bad co-worker. We make up our minds about someone who just happens to look at the world differently.

We don’t give people the grace that they deserve.

We look at situations with blinders, and don’t truly let a moment be what it should because we already defined how that moment was supposed to play out in our heads. And we take the negative feelings from that moment personally, when, it had nothing to do with us. We tried to control something that wasn’t ours to control, and it resulted in our bad mood. We could have just simply accepted and let that moment be what it was and carried on with our day. But we didn’t.

If a situation doesn’t benefit us or make us feel good, we disregard it and discredit it. What if we simply just let things be as they are? Appreciate them for what they are? They don’t have to be triggers or threats to our comfort. We can choose to change our perspective and remove our feelings from certain situations.

We can be aware and remove ourselves as we see fit.

It’s so cool to think about, honestly.

So, with awareness today, try it. Try to give people grace. Try to walk through your usual routine, noticing the way that a certain Teams notification may make you feel, or how stressed you get when you’re late to a meeting or an appointment due to traffic or even your coffeemaker not working that morning. Try to listen and make eye contact with loved ones today without worrying about your day tomorrow, or what you should say back to them.

How can you flip the switch in your brain and truly access its true power?

The brain is so powerful, and we neglect our ability to change our mindsets.

I would love to hear about how you all feel about this certain topic in the comments below 😊

Talk soon lovers,

Hannah <3