continuing theme in psychology is this notion of ownership. It can cause a lot of heartache and suffering. For example if you have a strong indentity there can be an assumption that you must always have it on display. Commonly strong identities also have a strong sense of what drives them, usually ego, associated with self-worth, self-confidence and importance. And these are yours and non-negotiable, you may in fact feel you OWN them. However there is balance, situations for this to be culled and therefore not displayed.

How does this relate to ownership? Ownersip and too much focus on ownership can cause you to get into trouble by all experiences having to be dealt with, assessed, evaluated and filed. And for the multi-tasking busy mind that can be a headache. It wants everything! But how to slow down and focus on one thing at a time is the antidote. This is the thread of unsatisfactoriness that we all deal with, deliberate focusing. It’s hard but gets easier with practise.

Going fast balanced with being slow, achieving outcomes balanced with respecting process, watching the detail (micro) balanced with the big picture (macro), where we’re heading.

And what depicts legal ownership clearly for the physical world are these notions of I, me and mine. Just listen next time you’re in conversation: the I’s, the me’s and the mine’s. They rarely stop. For the balanced psychological mind there is not too heavier a focus on physical ownership. Physical ownership is fleeting. Psychological ownership is sometimes pointless, so hanging onto it also makes no sense.

Yet because we can be so obsessed with ownership the same physical ownership formula is often applied to the psychological material. This is the problem and because the psychological material although you can’t touch feels so real it has an enormous impact on the way the mind operates. Study ownership carefully, we don’t really own that much, perhaps more accurately we’re all really LEASING. And managing, just MIND MANAGING!

es it’s like going back to school again, or more accurately it’s like you never left. At school you learnt stuff, you probably were force fed a whole lot of information that you think is of little use now. But it was when you learnt that you laid down priceless imprinting.

So these foundations that school taught you were then and remain now critical, you use them every day; probably without even knowing…… so MMP seeks to change this.

At school the interactions with students and teachers taught you a valuable social repertoire which you no doubt still use, the differences and nuances around making friends, co-operation, likes and dislikes. On a practical level learning the alphabet and counting numbers were probably the first structured things you learnt ‘off by heart’. With practice reading followed. These imprints are strong, very strong, so at MMP that’s what we build on.

Mind Management Psychology embraces and nurtures these foundations, which are in fact literally and figuratively the building blocks for a successful life. You go no-where without them. For example there is probably not a day that goes by when you do not access numerical skills, or language skills including the alphabet. Yet these can go largely undervalued. So we revisit these foundations, in a calm and totally relaxed manner.

At MMP we have designed exercises for you to practise ‘concentrating’ the mind for a short time each day. It includes counting, reciting the alphabet a special way and combining letters with numbers. It’s challenging, doable and CONCENTRATES THE MIND! With time, patience and practice you can actually accelerate the rewiring of your brain.

As a result you re-learn to re-appreciate!

es, your most valuable asset is of course the person you most likely at times take for complete granted, YOURSELF! RECOGNIZE THAT FIRST. For example, you can go for many years thinking that your physical health is out of your control until something goes wrong with it, that’s what disease and illness teach us. But today there’s also an increasing focus on the ‘mind’ and its impact on mental health. At MMP we take this very seriously and ask you to respect this most valuable asset by ironically paying a special sort of attention to it.

Also recognise that you may need to be a little selfish (each day) to cultivate this most valuable asset for optimum health. But being selfish in this society generally has negative connotations so we view selfishness in a poor light, to be avoided, it’s bad……. but not so at MMP it’s important to get it right, the right type of selfishness is absolutely ESSENTIAL! So we utterly ask you to revisit this word. We promote a certain sort of selfishness, it’s a non distracting selfishness for a few minutes each day. And it’s non-negotiable for your contentment, happiness and well being. Why?

Let’s remind ourselves, the Dalai Lama speaks about 2 sorts of selfishness: 1. Wise Selfishness and 2. Foolish Selfishness

Today 2 gets all the attention and publicity but delivers very little satisfaction. In fact the more it’s practised the worse it gets. Foolish selfishness can never ever be satisfied as it just wants more, of everything, a better car, a newer house, a longer holiday, more travel, newer appliances, a better job, more money and is usually very adept at complaining. Foolish selfishness promotes a singular emphasis on I, me and mine. Foolish selfishness therefore knows no boundaries so you place no limitations on what it can deliver which adds to the pointlessness and disappointment often experienced.

Foolish selfishness is not giving to others your time, not assisting them when you can and is totally self-absorbed. Foolish selfishness promises a lot but delivers little.

Wise selfishness on the other hand is knowing that unless you get yourself ‘right’ it’s all fairly pointless, you’ll get nothing right. And yes, there is of course a balance.

Remember the more you practise 1 the more 2 diminishes and visa versa. Some good examples of wise selfishness are having a time each day to reflect of your life in a calm relaxed manner, practising the medtation techniques (wise selfishness) taught at MMP. This is paying a special sort of (wise) attention to your most valuable asset, YOU!

he consistent theme here at MMP is simply to keep training your mind, each day. Just for a few minutes no need to over do it. Firstly you’ll need a structure for your mind, a saying, commonly called a mantra, a mind routine or a mental exercise; something that resonates with the essential you and your core self. And it’s this that will calm you down. But yes, you will need to practise by yourself without distraction. Results over time are guaranteed, be patient though.

If you have absolutely nothing that resonates here that’s fine, don’t stress. You are still in a great position to get excellent benefit from a consistent small practise each day. A cogent way to start is with your breathing: simple breath counting, very easy, very neutral for the mind and very effective. Read the post on the 4 week meditation program at MMP because breath counting is the introductory technique taught in week 1.

Remember you don’t have to go anywhere or actively do anything to get benefit here.  It’s about naturally relaxing your body and mind will follow, detoxing yourself, reducing all the drugs including caffeine, and slowing down (not for the whole day of course) just for a couple of minutes, that is all.

The body in its natural state when not drug affected nor threatened tends to relax. This needs to be consciously and slowly cultivated so as you intuitively ‘know’ when you’re feeling more relaxed and calmer.

The emphasis here is on being as natural as possible and paying attention to what you consume (eat) and what you drink. They’re both critical. Being thoughtful therefore is required. No auto-pilot.

Read the post about NON-DOING! It’s not super easy but with practise it’s super possible and super beneficial.

uriosity, interest, a spirit of enquiry or inquisitiveness about your own life, can be like a thread, an intangible something, or a feeling that can be lying idle within us all. It lies there until we make some genuine enquiry, take the opportunity to look carefully, then and only then, something frequently happens to awaken the mind. As it can with all minds. This can put us on a different path, a path of growth, of change and discovery. But if you don’t get around to this then it simply stays idle.

And to have this thread of curiosity or interest woven into your everyday experience so deeply that you embrace even the very mundane serves to develop something special within you and promotes a refreshingly different relationship with your mind. But it does require time, patience and practice. It’s no panacea but simply validates introspection and an enduring interest in your known internal life. This inexorably leads to an investigation which then may lead to valuing and appreciating the richness of life more. If life is a precious gift (McMahon, 2006), the quest here is simply to unwrap this gift both slowly and properly. And if life is really an incredible journey, the further quest may not be just to complete the journey but also to plan it properly by reading the map that is always waiting for each of us to be read.

Maps are made because places exist; they’re like programs, sometimes it’s important to follow a map or program to get to a place, or space, especially if you haven’t been there before. But you won’t see any map unless you a) become a little curious about your life (the gift) and b) decide you want this journey to actually be the best it can be (by training your mind).

At MMP we have designed a map over 4 weeks that when followed will be the beginnning of significant change, improved contentment and understanding, less reactivity and more control. WE suggest you stay curious and continue unwrapping, great rewards can await.

uying new shoes can be immensely exciting, potentially rewarding and quite financially painful, all in one. But there’s also another discomfort or pain that commonly occurs once you start to wear them. Although they can be the best looking, made of  modern materials, maybe European design, perfect heel and hard wearing sole it’s only when they are worn for some time that other issues can arise.

These issues are familiar to us all and can include rubbing by the shoe on different parts of the foot, the skin not being use to a pressure point, could be the back of the heel, any of the toes, the arch of the the foot or similiar. It may be especially so for women that they’re difficult to walk quickly in, or to balance on uneven surfaces in and/or cause you to tire quickly. The usual driver for this is that ‘the material can be quite rigid at the beginning with little flexibility’, or the design of the shoe is ‘not quite right’.

What started off as the best looking shoes can quickly end up as the most ‘painful’ to wear so you stop wearing them. They can sit in the wardrobe with other shoes, still looking good but not worn. You may glance every now and then at them reminding yourself at how good they look, just like when you bought them. You may even try them on and wear them though inevitably the pain slowly returns so you stop. It may be for an hour, a day, perhaps two days then no more. You rationally decide to end the pain.

At MMP this shoe metaphor is very similiar to the exercises we promote for mind training. The whole concept of being in charge of your mind, having a mind that serves you well, that you can rely on is extremely attractive and appealing. So we naturally expect to have minds that do what they’re told, obey instructions and serve us well creating the right direction for us all to pursue in life. Yet this is so often not the case.

What starts off as most appealing for ’you’ and your mind always presents other issues. Just stopping and slowing down for the first time and you’ll see just how busy the mind can be. In Buddhist philosphy this is close to the ‘dhamma’ or ‘universal force of nature’ or ‘the way things really are’ therefore it’s important to recognise this as quite natural. Just like our shoe metaphor when you first stop you’ll notice the mind’s operations. That can be quite unsettling, disturbing and painful.

The question remains whether to stop wearing them or break them in differently, to persevere. It does take time, patience and practise. Take a look at your shoes next time you remember, were there any that were a little or very painful when you first wore them? What can start off as a most ‘painful’ pair of shoes to wear can over time end up being the most ‘comfortable’. The rigidity slowly becomes more ‘flexible’ but only if you wear them, only if you persist.

At MMP the exercises will over time become very comfortable to complete and beneficial for both body and mind. Experiment with your new shoes! They may end up being the most comfortable. Benefits are cumulative, keep practising even if difficult, reduce the time worn but keep wearing the shoes a little each day! Keep practising!

n the MMP program there is one absolute that stands out again and again and again. CHANGE! Yes there’s macro change and micro change, major change and minor change, big change and small change.

The post on ‘MMP and being a small business’ suggests that we are all really ‘in business with ourselves’ and that if we aim low we’ll invaribly succeed but if we aim high we may just GROW. Again while there are some things we can change and seem to control there is much more that we cannot change, let alone control. So don’t always try! Allow change to happen, gradually. Plant the right seeds, nurture them and wait. Watch as change happens!

And over time you’ll see inevitably it’s about the small change. The ‘untrained’ mind of course thinks otherwise, wanting and reacting to big change, major events, and earth shattering headlines. These minds want the best films to see, the most interesting people to meet, the best parties to attend, most interesting jobs to work at, the most successful investments, best assets, coolest clothes to wear etc. etc………..they’re into mega, best and grandest all in a big way!

Yet in the ten mind management principles, principle 1  states the mind is but one aspect of you and not the totally of who you are.

At MMP we say once again it’s simply about the type of mind we cultivate or train. Remember there seems to be two sorts of mind: The first one can be highly charged, critical and continually going at an extremely fast pace, always stressed and wanting things to be different from the way they are; the second sort of mind is more intuitive, calmer and circumspect, able to reflect.

At Mind Management Psychology we aim to cultivate the second sort. Once you can get a handle on the mind’s operations you tend to work out the difference between these two minds and on what you can really change and develop, and what you can’t, then you’ll begin to GROW! You’ll begin this process each day, by focusing on the ‘small change’ and slowing down again, yes, each day. That’s the daily practise, easy to do, minimal time and cumulative benefits. Change will happen, improved contentment and control await.

Ironically ‘Growth’ here is not about taking more stuff on board but simply being clear on observing things more, witnessing them. It’s being clear that change is always occurring, whether you like it or not, every second in respect to your body’s physiology and days, weeks or months and years in respect to other things, such as your own personal development and the physical environment eg. nature, human construction, organisations,  etc.

Therefore it’s important to focus on what we have some control over. If you always take things personally, every interaction, every thought, every disagreement, every situation, every idea then you carry a heavy load. Not only does your ‘untrained’ mind have to evaluate what you are experiencing but it also has to decide how to retain it it if pleasurable, reject it if not. This in psychological terms is ‘suffering’. It’s a gigantic psychological overload! Today, that’s what burdens many minds; minds being ‘untrained’.

The good news is you don’t always have to add to it! Yes you can lighten the load! Give yourself a break. You can with a litte practise “Deliberately slow down for part of each day” begin the training. Change will happen, improved contentment and control await. Try it and see. You decide!
Then you may find you don’t take everything so seriously or personally!

o-one can expect the mind to promote the things you want (contentment, happiness, peace and acceptance) unless or until you invite them in. But of course it’s not that simple. Inevitably in life things are different from the way you thought, planned or expected. Plans go wrong, a problem at work, in a relationship, within a family, finances, your health, an accident etc. In Buddhist teachings this is referred to as the Dhamma. It’s the way things really are. Both good and bad.

At MMP we take the view that it’s important to invite in REALNESS. Be real about your life and invite in this REALITY. For example if you are suffering what can make this much, much worse is to want the suffering to be over too quickly. Try if it’s not life threatening then simply to invite in the suffering and not fight it, constantly. Once you do this become a witness to the suffering lessening in its intensity. Like inviting in your enemies, befriending them. Opening the door, allowing in something you may strain to keep out. Suffering is amplified by fighting it. STOP STRUGGLING TO KEEP THINGS OUT!

This is the key. All becomes less poisonous for the mind and you may begin to feel you can as well live with them. Your mind will initially be shocked, you will be delighted! Stop the fighting in your mind! CALL A TRUCE!

Just try sitting and breathing for 1 minute. Count your breaths, slowly in slowly out, don’t force anything and watch as you calm down! Practise this and don’t react! You’re now not reacting and beginning something different. This is the first step in growing!
At MMP we have designed a 4 week program for you to begin to grow something quite different and to respond to a special sort of invitation. It costs nothing but a few minutes of your time each day. And you will be happier.

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.