How Can I Change My Mind?
Change Your Relationship With Your Thoughts
Identify Your Core Desire & Establish A Clear Point Of Focus
Can I Change My Mind?
The obvious answer to the: "Can I change my mind?" question is "Yes!"
The less obvious answer to the follow-up question: "Do you really want to change your mind?" is most probably "No!"
Your mind is either working for you or, more typically, working against you and the reason for this inner resistance is that there is a part of your mind that is very happy with how things are and doesn't want to change.
For this reason, any attempt at personal change is most likely doomed to failure because the source and nature of this inner resistance is unconscious.
So the first challenge is figuring out what exactly is going on in your unconscious mind and then secondly knowing how to deal with that resistance in such a way that your unconscious mind starts working for you rather than against you.
How Can I Change My Mind?
This whole site is about learning how to think effectively and the precursor to that is learning how to not think, because:
- A quiet mind is an insightful mind and a resourceful mind.
- A quiet mind makes visible the autonomic and repetitive cycle of your thoughts, reactions and responses
The purpose of this article is to provide you with a framework or mental model to enable you to successfully address the "can I change my mind" question.
This framework involves 4 key stages and 10 steps within these stages.
[1] How Can I Change My Mind - THE IMMEDIATE STAGE
Step 1. Becoming Aware Of Your Thoughts
Basically, there are 2 ways of doing this. You can either spend thousands of dollars/pounds/euros etc and go spend the next 7 years visiting a psychiatrist. Or, you can learn how to practice mindfulness.
"Yes but....." I hear the voice in your head saying. But unless you know your invisible enemy, and his modus-operandi, you have no chance of beating him. The practise of mindfulness is the most direct and fastest way of gaining that insight.
There are many articles on this site on all aspects of mindfulness so I would refer you to the site-index on the left column for listings.
To kick start your search please see:
Step 2. Changing Your Relationship With Your Thoughts
As a result of your mindfulness practise you will very soon begin to see:
1. The repetitive nature of these thoughts
2. The triggers that give rise to these thoughts
3. The energetic states associated with these thoughts
The key take-aways from this step are understanding that:
- What matters is not the content of your thoughts but your relationship with your thoughts.
- These repetitive negative thoughts are a certain short-cut [or as I refer to it ”the ferris wheel of suffering”] to the
underlying negative emotional states and that are repetitively creating negative results in our lives.
Step 3. Living With Your Thoughts
The key to living with your thoughts is to develop a good working relationship with your mind and to have the tools, techniques and resources that work with all levels of your mind.
The objective is to have them all levels of your mind working together and moving you in the same direction, and at the same time!
Here are a range of tools and resources for enable you to successfully live with your thoughts
[2] How Can I Change My Mind - THE CHANGING STAGE
Step 4. Identify Your Core Desire
Unless your desire to change is greater than your powerful and deep-seated desire to keep things as they are, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it isn't going to happen!
Your good intentions are going to end up in the waste bin alongside a lifetime's failed resolutions to change.
So, I ask you:
"Why do you want change your mind, your life...why do you want to change?"
So, to be clear, your core desire is that thing you want so badly that you
will do or become whatever it takes to get it, no matter how hard it
is or what the risk or expense is.
Here are 3 key steps to accurately identify your core desire.
Step 5. Establish Your Point Of Focus
Your point of focus is either helping you or hindering you.
We live in an energetic universe and it's not neutral, it is also a participative universe.
Over time, what you focus your mind on becomes your reality.
What is your point of focus? Is it aligned with your core desire?
6 Key guidelines to maintain your point of focus
[3] How Can I Change My Mind - THE REINFORCING STAGE
Step 6. Change Your Language – Understanding The Impact Of Framing
The choices of words that we use have power because of the underlying
emotional associations that they invoke and the actions that result from
those associations.
This applies as much to our inner dialogue as it does to the words we use in everyday speech.
Framing
is about how we define context, make associations, establish reference
points and emotional touch points all designed and positioned to convey
the sense and meaning that we want to convey.
There is a direct causal link between how we think about a situation,
the words we use to articulate those thoughts, the energetic state
associated with those words, and the results we create.
Change Your Language To Change Your Results
Step 7. Watch The Company You Keep
As Jack Canfield (and others) has said:
"You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with."
There are so many ways that we are affected by other people's emotions.
We are emotional/energetic beings living in an energetic universe that responds to our dominant energetic state in the experiences that we create and attract.
5 Steps you can take to protect yourself from the tidal swirl of other people's emotional turbulence.
Step 8. Understand How To Compound The Efficiency Of Your Habits
Habits are efficient and enable us to perform thought processes and behaviours without wasting time and energy figuring out what to do, and they do not require your conscious attention.
- Habits will sustain you, maintain you or undermine you.
- Good habits can give you an advantageous divergence from the herd.
- Small habits make a big difference over the long-term
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement
[4] How Can I Change My Mind - THE ONGOING STAGE
Step 9. Focusing On HOW Not WHAT To Think
Acquiring and practising effective thinking skills is especially relevant in the current age of unreason.
You are seeking to change your mind in an environment where:
- Experts are denigrated and ignorance, bias and prejudice is celebrated;
- Woke thinking takes precedence over reasoned debate;
- Virtue signally takes precedence over private philanthropy;
- Intelligent discussion and agreement to disagree and respect for other shades of opinion are denied in the current cancel culture;
- Public debate is hijacked and taken over by group think and mob rule.
I
would suggest that alongside the practise of mindfulness and learning
how to not think, a continuous commitment to developing and improving
your thinking skills is of paramount importance to counter the
prevailing cognitive distortions to which we are continually exposed.
Step 10. How To Experience The Benefits Of Transformation By Renewing Your Mind
Renewing your mind is based on practices, not beliefs, that will have a profound and positive effect on your life.
This takes work and effort. The human mind runs on deeply ingrained and habitual patterns of thought.
Neural pathways in your brain get stronger with repetition and you will be training your brain to establish new pathways through new activities, new patterns of thought, and new behaviour.
Here are a series of "How To?" articles with practises and resource to help you continue with the ongoing transformation of your mind.
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