Renewing Your Mind
How To Experience The Benefits Of Transformation
What Does Renewing Your Mind Mean?
A Google search on renewing your mind will quickly show that the phrase carries distinctly Christian overtones and it comes from the Bible in Romans 12.2. where the apostle Paul says: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.
Wider searches on meanings of the word renew suggest to:
- Revitalise
- Regenerate
- Reinvigorate
- Re-establish
- Restore
- Reawaken
- Revive
- Resume
- Rebuild
The re parts of each word mean to repeat or to do again and the operative parts of each word - for example vitalise, generate, invigorate, awaken - suggests creation and bringing to life.
We can reframe renewal as to do it again but to do it better.
Renewing your mind is a process of transformation.
What Is The Context Of Renewing Your Mind?
The theme of this site is how to think effectively and in order to be able to do that you need to learn how to stop thinking. The specific focus of this site is to show you how to do this so that you can cope in tough times.
This is all about learning how to use your mind in resourceful ways that are truly transformative.
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.
The stages of this training process are represented in the conscious competence model which is
a popular and well known approach:
- "I Don't Know that I Don't Know"
- "I Know that I Don't Know"
- "I Know that I Know"
- "I Don't Know that I Know – Cos I am Functioning On 'Auto-Pilot'"
Resources For Renewing Your Mind
The start point for renewing your mind is to become aware of what is going on in your mind and particularly that which is going on outside of your conscious awareness.
Here are some initial pointers and practices for:
Freeing Yourself From Your Mind
The
best way of becoming aware of what is going on in your mind is the
practice of mindfulness. The hardest aspect of how to practice
mindfulness is just doing it!
Not only are your thoughts largely unconscious but they are also repetitive, and the practice of mindfulness will help you to see this.
However you will frequently become so caught up in your thoughts that you become identified with your thoughts and the accompanying emotional states.
Here are a 3 key steps to understanding this and helping you to realise and, more importantly, experience that:
Building on this, you need to develop a good working relationship with your mind and the various selves [or parts of you] that make up the whole.
Here are 4 sets of tools that work with one or more areas of your whole self and that will enable you to continue:
HOW TO - Continue Renewing Your Mind
Here are a series of "How To?" articles to continue with the ongoing transformation of your mind:
We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health, our wealth and our relationships are where we all get hung out to dry – sooner or later.
As we experience pain and suffering in one or more of these areas, and seek relief, our point of focus shifts away from the content of our experiences and toward our response to them.
So, how to be happy? This article defines lasting happiness as a conscious choice rather than a reaction to a piece of good news, it focuses on experiences rather than appearances.
Thankfulness can occur spontaneously but it is not the
default position of how our minds function. It requires conscious
effort over a period of time to re-program your thinking processes
and emotional responses to live a life of gratitude.
Based on my own experience I would suggest the following guidelines for developing a regular basic practice of gratitude.
This article explores the science behind the "luck factor", the power of expectation and where to find the evidence on which to base your expectations.
Affirmations that others may say to you can be powerful, and self-affirmations are also powerful, but in my experience the most powerful words of affirmation that you can receive are from your higher self.
How To Use The Power Of Words Of Affirmation
We are brought up to believe that we get what we want in life as a result of what we do, by the actions that we take. However this belief causes us to create in reverse. It is not your action that makes things happen, it is your energy state.
How to be generous? Simple really, just act to help someone else at some cost to yourself! From the perspective of your own self-interest generosity is beneficial to your mental, emotional and spiritual health.
How to build self confidence? Before we address this question, there is another question that lies behind it, namely: Why do you need to build self confidence? My honest personal answer to that question is that I spent many years of my life not living to my full potential because of fear.
There are so many good pieces on the internet offering any number of tactics for showing you how to overcome fear. I am not dismissive of all this material as much of it is useful, but in my view, very little of it addresses the critical dimension of energy.
Self esteem is based on value. Thus self esteem equates with self
worth and self respect. Your self esteem is grounded in how you value
and respect yourself. 6 key themes based on my own experiences of building self esteem plus links to further resources.
Self awareness is how you consciously know and understand your own character, feelings, motives, and desires. In practical terms self awareness means looking for patterns in our thinking as we seek to understand and interpret specifically what happens to us, and more generally what happens in the world as far as we are aware if it.
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. The power of habits is that firstly they are regular and automatic and secondly that they can: sustain you, maintain you, or undermine you.
How To Be Transformed By Renewing Your Mind
As we noted at the beginning of this article, in the bible the apostle Paul advises his followers to be: "transformed by the renewing of your mind”. He makes this statement in the context of the Christian faith tradition.
However, in my experience, there is a generic truth here that transcends any one faith tradition.
If you read, followup and apply the resources outlined in the resources above, your journey of personal development and growth starts by developing a good working relationship with your mind.
The
initial stages of this process focus on the conscious mind and working on the stages outlined in the conscious competence model to develop a more resourceful mind.
However, the further you progress on this journey and uncover the various unconscious aspects of your mind, at some point, you become aware of your spiritual or higher self.
As you start to engage with and build a relationship with your higher self your experience of life starts to change and the transformation commences.
Put simply, when you start to take this dimension seriously it takes you seriously, and that changes everything.
I mean this literally and not metaphorically.
This is what happened to me when: I Took The Red Pill
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