Mental Strength Laws of the Mind and Thoughts – Part 2
Last week we looked at the first 5 Mental Strength Laws of the Mind and Thoughts.
We talked about just as there are Natural and Universal Laws there are Law’s of the Mind. Before I get in the Mind Law’s it will be helpful do go over some mind facts.
We asked the question, “How do we run our own mind?”
Taking control of our own mind, and thinking freely in independent ways apart from rehashing worn-out or spoon fed thoughts necessitates several things.
It necessitates that we develop mindfulness about our minds (or more accurately, our minds) so that we actually develop state management skills. It means we learn to play a new Game, “I am in control of my mind and thoughts” game.
So, with that in mind let’s continue with laws #5 and 6.
#5: Minds Externalize Instructions – We live in two worlds. The inner world of thoughts, feelings and emotions; and the outer world of circumstances, situations and results. We can see a person’s internal world of ideas and frames by noticing the person’s external Games. External life reflects internal frames. The behavioral, speech, and action Games that we play on the outside are expressions of our internal frames of mind. They go together.
What the thinker thinks – the ‘prover’ proves.
The old proverb put it this way: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius put this yet another way: “As thy thoughts are so will thy mind be also; for the soul takes its coloring from thought.”
“If you are pained by an external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you but your judgment about it.” (The Meditations, 160 AD).
Minds manifest internal representation into the external world so that we externalize our internal frames and representations.
What does this mean?
Mainly, that our external world will only be as exciting, vibrant, dramatic, and powerful as our internal frames (references) of mind.
So, as you decorate your internal world of mind, imagination, and memory with hopes, desires, wonders, delights, etc., you alter the quality and content of the instructions that you give to your mind.
This brings up several excellent questions for those of us who want to run our own mind to create a quality life:
- What kind of images, sounds, words, sensations, etc. do you have running on the inside of your mind?
- What kind of internal movies are you showing in the Cinema of your Mind?
- Who does your interior decorating?
- Does your internal world of frames need some better interior decorating?
#6: Minds Run on Representations – The cognitive and neuro-sciences have discovered that minds represent our external sensed experiences. It is not that we literally have an internal movie screen in our mind, yet it seems that we do.
This phenomena of consciousness is how we experience thoughts and awareness’s. It seems that we internally recall what our home, car, work, friends, parents, dogs, etc. look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, taste like.
This sensory awareness on the inside of our mind has led neuro-scientists to designate parts of the mind the visual cortex, auditory cortex, the cortex where we process smells, tastes, sensations, balance, etc.
If we picture a beautiful day with blue sky and billowy white clouds and a green grass lawn facing the white sands of a gorgeous ocean view and imagine feeling the warm ocean breeze blowing through our hair and the smell of the salt water and the sounds of children playing and enjoy our favorite drink while getting a neck and back massage from our special loved one …
Well, it doesn’t take long before our body and neurology responds to those representations as if they were instructions about how to feel. Because minds run on representations, the more expressive, vivid, dramatic, and sensory-specific, the easier it is for us to tell our minds where to go and what to feel. Then the screen play is clearer and easier to follow.
Our minds represent things as it were on a mental screen of the mind. It’s like there’s an internal movie playing and we fill in the sensory details of that movie. Of course, we do not play out everything in that Cinema. We can’t. We can’t even input all that comes in.
Our eyes only scan a very narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our ears only receive a very narrow band of sound wave frequencies. So we have to be pretty selective, as a movie director, about what we play on our internal Cinema. Choose well. It’s your mind.
We’ll continue this next week.
Start taking back control of your mind and thoughts by picking up a copy of Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior today!
