useful way to improve yourself in psychological terms is to change the relationship you have with your mind. This has direct immediate and tangible benefits, and it’s easy to do if you use your imagination. At Mind Management Psychology we say once you have done this for the first time, you need to practise this daily, or, if you forget then simply press the refresh button to re-mind yourself about your own mind.

When your mind is not behaving or, when you want things different from the way they are and you’re feeling stressed or depressed just thank your mind. Things always can be better and worse, they will always change, things can always improve. The mind has this amazing capacity for criticism and complaining, seeing negatives before positives. If you don’t believe this, just  try watching it.

We said in the post MMP & Not Holding on as Tightly that the mind usually feels losses more readily than gains, sees obstacles before possibilities and bad luck before good luck. This in combination is psychological suffering at work. 

The good thing about the suffering is that it can lead us to a different way of thinking about the mind. Instead of thinking about the mind as the brain or a computer that does its own thing try imagining that the mind is like a river, subject to  weather conditions. You cannot control the weather but you can prepare for inclement weather…………..

THE MIND BEING LIKE A RIVER:

1. Sometimes rivers flood and burst their banks, sometimes they are calm, sometimes they have rapids carrying all manner of debris in them, leaving them very dangerous and sometimes during a drought they can seem to dry up. At these difficult times just imagine you’re actually in the river. That’s why life seems so difficult. So get out of the river and watch! 
2.  Because rivers are natural products of our environment distributing fresh water and maintaining essential biodiversity for life they therefore respond to changing weather conditions. This is completely natural.
3. We rarely in these days of ‘climate change’ say let’s control the weather but more let’s control ourselves and our behaviour (reducing carbon emissions).
4. The mind is similiar sometimes the mind can be calm, content and relaxed, sometimes excited, agitated, angry and scattered.

At MMP we say that practise IS ALL ABOUT GETTING OUT OF THE RIVER, sitting on the bank AND WATCHING FOR A FEW MINUTES EACH DAY! YOU WILL BEGIN TO REALISE THE MIND IS JUST LIKE A RIVER! TRY IT! THERE’S NOTHING TO FEAR IF YOU GET OUT and DON’T SWIM IN IT so much, remember IT’S JUST A RIVER!

here’s a close association between our minds and our universe which we tend to both not be aware of and when we are conveniently forget, because minds are usually too busy, caught up in the practical and seemingly the trivial. Unless we think big!  This relationship is strong and robust though only when it’s cultivated. There’s some amazing scientific facts today that we all can be privy to. So let’s think big for a minute.

Earth is 8000 miles in diameter and orbits the sun at 66,000 miles per hour (Bloom, 2001). It spins (rotates) 25,142.9 miles (its circumference) every 24 hours. This planet (at the equator) is consequently spinning at over a 1000 miles per hour! Although it is estimated that for every grain of sand on earth there are more stars in the galaxies, it’s also been estimated there are “more connections within the human brain than there are particles in the known universe” (McGilchrist, 2009, p9) and the brain has “a hundred billion nerve cells called neurons and many more support cells” (Arden, 2010, p3). According to Damasio (1994) “every neuron forms about 1,000 synapses, although some can have as many as 5,000 or 6,000 … there are more than 10 trillion synapses” p29. A hundred billion nerve cells is equivalent to the stars in our galaxy yet in our heads we are into the trillions of connections. We all then could be carrying a massively expanded version of this connectivity within our galaxy in our heads. Try and stay with that for a moment.

But more stars than grains of sand, and more connections within the human brain than particles in the known universe? Perhaps instead of saying I can’t comprehend this, try not thinking about it, but try and ‘feel’ the enormity of that. We all carry this capacity around. How insignificant are we really in the scheme of things and yet at the same time how enormously potentially powerful could each of us be? What an absolutely amazing organ is the brain?

 Sagan (2003) even calculated the number of probable planets in the universe at ten billion trillion, the chances of randomly being on one as less than one in a billion, trillion trillion, that is 1 in 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 1033 which immediately places gambling odds in staggeringly more favourable contexts. He states “if we were randomly inserted into the universe, the chances you would be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion” p26.

To give some understanding to these way ‘out there’ probabilities Davies (1990) proposed that if  the ‘big bang’ was out by just one part in 1060 then the universe as we know it would not have formed. He suggested “suppose you wanted to fire a bullet at a one inch target on the other side of the observable universe twenty billion light years away, you would need to be accurate to one part in 1060 ” p179.  Being mindful of some of these calculations can be only a very humble beginning in our quest to gain some perspective on the reality of being here; how unlikely the universe really is to have formed the way it has; how important yet insignificant we are; how precious life perhaps really is yet how little we appreciate any of this. 

At Mind Management Psychology having a time to deliberately reflect and appreciate some of this each day is an opportunity to cultivate something special, a relationship with something that is completely self-managing, amazingly unlikely to have formed with a complexity not disimiliar to each of our brains. A kind of  relationship with yourself.  With practise there is a something very special going on. And very big; that’s our amazing universe! It manages itself, and yes, your mind can to as long as it’s trained.

ne of the most difficult facts about the mind is it’s ability to sift and troll through the wreckage of past events, what did happen, what didn’t happen, who did what to whom, who’s fault it was etc. gathering together evidence that life can be unsatisfactory, undesirable things happen and injustices occur. Too much of this however can leave you drained, tired and feeling you’re not going well. The mind seems to remember the unpleasant events though quickly forgets the joyful times. It feels losses more readily than gains, sees obstacles before possibilities and bad luck before good luck. This in combination is psychological suffering at work. 

Unfortuneately today much of  this suffering appears normal! For the mind it can be holding on to negative events, and those resulting worries and feelings that remain ‘unresolved’. But the fact is a lot of negativity can be quite attractive keeping the mind ‘in check.’ So the psychology of ‘Not letting Go’ of  ‘HOLDING ON’ , is again, quite normal. When we think of humanity in ancient times the physical act of NOT LETTING GO was essential for our survival, it could have been literally a life or death outcome when confronted by wild animals, an aggressive waring tribe or saving a child who had slipped on a precarious mountain ledge. If it was a matter of life or death, the mind had to hold on to the thought, memory of an event etc. and react. This constructed essential imprints for the mind in dealing with life. Today however it’s all changed, but the mind hasn’t, the imprints remain.

The secret at MMP is to learn a way to let go by initially accepting the mind’s nature and not trying to let go as much but also by NOT HOLDING ON AS TIGHTLY! Through watching more and reacting less, by observing, by being mindful your mind becomes more aware and you become more awake.

LETTING GO BEGINS NATURALLY AS NOT HOLDING ON AS TIGHTLY GAINS MOMENTUM, TRY IT YOU’LL BE SURPRISED! So don’t try to let go just don’t hold on with all your strength! Be Patient. And Practise.

e are all so BUSY! It just doesn’t stop, always on the go, planning the next THING to do. We’re living  in the future, AND THAT’S WHERE WE’LL SLOW DOWN AND NOT DO, but not now because we’re rarely present. Working, travelling, exercising, walking the dog, shopping, socialising, looking after children and family, paying bills, eating, cooking, cleaning, manageing finances and holidaying rarely does ‘doing’ show us how or allow us to SLOW DOWN  right now.  We think we always have to do to be something  but the good news is we don’t. BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT JUST YOUR MIND! YOU HAVE TO PRACTISE THOUGH! Practise BEING more and DOING less for a small part of each day, it’s about being present for that part of each day.

But why am I not JUST my mind? It’s based on the notion that we all have different qualities of mind, displaying different moods and emotions at different ‘times’. Expressions such as ‘an ‘open’ or ‘closed’ mind’, or a ‘sharp’ or ‘dull’ mind or ‘flexible’ or ‘rigid’ mind are not uncommon. Even ‘angry’ or ‘peaceful’ mind, we could go on; the ‘private’ mind is aware of these qualities of mind but perhaps not the ‘public’. These qualities of mind are essentially a product of the everyday mental activity we all live with. If the mental activity is not us, not the sum total of who we really then it must be but one ‘changeable’ aspect of self. You cannot wrap it up, touch it, throw it away, that’s part of the problem, but you can allow it to recede, you can with practice, ‘let it go’ or, as we’ll see  learn to ‘hold on not as tightly’. We know when our ‘mind’ is relatively content; it feels as if things are going on ‘according to plan’. We also know when it’s not, when we may be ‘reacting’ to a succession of unplanned events or dealing with ‘new’ circumstances, such as accommodating continual ‘change’, wishing things were different from the way they are, which for many becomes the most  familiar daily pattern. And then dealing with the associated stress this causes.

So to be your mind continually and to totally own it all is to have no respite, and, while that is fine for some, when things are not going well, that can promote ‘overly identifying’ with it. We can over personalise with mind taking everything far too seriously. This can place you on a merry-go-round of negative emotions, continually again wishing for things to be different from the way they are and that inevitably will leave you disappointed and drained. To be your mind continually can for some become a ‘prison sentence’.

In other words I know when I feel I’m ‘travelling OK’ my mind ostensibly isnot in turmoil and I feel relatively ‘in control’ (of my mind). This mind can be quite calm and relaxed and a presentation (judgement) something like this can appear: ‘life’s OK’, ‘this is good’, ‘I’m having a productive day’ etc. Even though all this feels OK we can often ‘not think’ nor question the role of the mind plays in this. We usually accept that whatever the mind says is fairly accurate. So we grow to value and appreciate the minds input or, we think it’s ‘our’ input, so as long as things are ‘going OK’ we are too. But we know in life things don’t always go OK. At such times having an awareness through accessing another type of mind will be helpful, because as we shall see there are really two sorts of mind.

      1. The Doing (Ordinary) Mind

      2. The Being (Original) Mind 

Cultivate no. 1 and no. 2 reduces, cultivate no. 2 and you’ll get more done mindfully and be happier!  Read the other posts to find out how.

ost if not all people know where they live, an address, a street a number and zip or post code. It’s automatic, engrained and imprinted. Rarely do people state they don’t know, as it is one of the commonest reponses when conducting daily business. It gives legitimacy, proprierty and authority. But at MMP we say that forall people, they have two addresses, an external space or location and an internal space or location. And we seem wedded to the external.

I am reminded of a dear colleague who recounted a story to me of having run a group in one of the Community Health Centers in Melbourne, Australia where I work. As it was the first of a series of groups on stress reduction he introduced himself, explained the nature of the group, and received input from each member and at the end asked one important question. He simply asked each member to say where they lived. When this was concluded two of the group members noticed he had not said anything and they asked him where he lived. He simply stated “I live in my body.” This is a vastly underestimated and unappreciated acknowledgement of where our true home actually is. And because the body is all about feelings we can tend to reject feelings and by default therefore reject the body.

Embracing our real home can slow us down promoting a different relationship with our bodies and then our minds. It’s really that simple. And as the body is really a temple, you take it with you wherever you go, it’s always there servicing you, absolutely, totally and completely moment to moment. So look after it and it may continue to serve you well, ignore it and you may quickly become homeless and eventually destitute. Slowing down can show you where you live.

 Although we actually live in our bodies, we tend to mostly live in our heads. That’s why we go so fast. Remember even though thoughts are not electrical currents, ‘electrochemical nerve impulses travel thousands of times slower than light (or electronic signals through wires). So the brain is under significant time pressure’. (Dennett, 1991, p144). It therefore tries to go as fast as possible.

KEEP ASKING THE QUESTION: WHERE DO YOU REALLY LIVE?

t MMP we see the common problems for ALL minds as difficulty CONCENTRATING, over BUSYNESS and dealing with DISTRACTION. Too much information can see the mind not focus clearly because…….for an individual mind commonly there can be so much going on, they’re so compacted with information, it can feel like  there’s no room, no free space or real estate. There is however a way to create some.

THE CENTRAL QUESTION

IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET SOME ADDITIONAL SPACE.  IT IS  POSSIBLE TO BROADEN & ENLARGE THE MIND, TO HAVE MORE FREE REAL ESTATE TO BUILD ON?

MMP is firstly about CREATING SOME INTERNAL MIND SPACE which is yours’. MMP does this by teaching you to construct a cortical or cognitive FREEWAY in order TO GAIN THIS SPACE. Through some simple exercises you begin the process of clearing the site (your mind) so you end up with more room, more control and more capacitity. Remember this is  no one else’s but your own real estate so you may as well make use of it.

SITE DEVELOPMENT: As with the devloping of any new space or the construction of anything this requires PREPARATION.  At  MMP the process of  constructing  a cortical/cognitive freeway requires that you firstly CLEAR THE SITE. This is the preparation. MMP is all about this INTERNAL SITE CLEARING, DAILY!

Over a short time you develop this extra space, and control through a deliberate daily practise, capacity increases. 

1. Deliberate daily practice, 2 minutes
2. Practice changes the brain’s structure 
3. It’s important to remember in order to develop a practice there’s a little bit of craziness that’s required
4. This allows you to operate on the edge of your ability
5. Remember there’s a 100 trillion possible connections in the brain, that’s serious real estate to be located