10 Tips for Managing your Mind and Living Brilliantly – Simon Ekin

Abraham Lincoln said, “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

I think this is a simple maxim that we could all live by. What does this mean?

Another way of saying this is, “what you put your attention on grows.” How we see the world and our experience, becomes our personal reality.

For example, do you know wealthy people who appear to be consistently miserable, and you know poor people who seem to be consistently happy?

How then do we manage our minds and be more expansive, open-hearted and positive, despite, not because of our circumstances?

In my talks and workshops, I talk about this a lot because I think that managing, or rather, observing our minds, is about the most important work we can do as human beings.

Here are 10 ideas and tips that you may like to consider:

1. Watch your thoughts.

Context: It is said that we have around 60,000 thoughts a day, and that 75% are negative and 90% are repetitive. This is not helpful! But they do just-keep-coming, don’t they?

Try this: When a negative thought comes up, observe it, like waves in the ocean or leaves blowing by on an autumn day. Notice how, a matter of seconds later, another thought, perhaps a ‘a better feeling thought’ comes through. And then, transmute them into…

2. The mostly negative bias of our thoughts.

Context: With so many thoughts and each one having the potential to send us to our grave, start a war, feel anxiety or experience ecstasy, or bring us peace and bliss, why not cultivate positive thoughts? Our thoughts dictate the future, as the famous saying goes:

You see, we have thoughts, but they are not us. We are strongly biased towards negativity. It’s not YOU, or your fault, it’s our wiring. We are geared and made for one thing: survival, so it stands to reason that if we are more negative, careful, and watchful, we won’t end up as someone’s lunch! This was fine in the days of the cave, but not now!

Those survival thoughts have given rise to ‘the ego’ which we develop as a means of making sense of the world and building our ‘survival mechanism’. The trouble is, it’s a massively outdated guidance system! Bring awareness to this for what it is, gives us the opportunity of going beyond that, and the fear that often seems to rule us.  

Try this: Next time you have a negative thought, notice it, and create a ‘positive, opposite interpretation,’ and see what happens. E.g. “I promised myself I would go for a run. I don’t feel like it anymore,” could become, “why don’t I just put on my shoes and walk out the door and see what happens?” My experience is that the ‘body takes control,’ and before long, I am running up the hill, or not, which is also fine!

3. Choose and manage your environment.

Our environment has a significant impact on us.

Try these:

• Imagine you live in a slum, filled with violence and squalor? Now, imagine you live in a leafy suburb, with good wi-fi and shops nearby?
• The same goes for people around you. Do you have negative people around you? Why not talk to them and ask them why they are so negative and make requests of them to perk up, or move on?
• Your home environment: the media is not exactly a lush environment for feel-good positivity! Why not settle into a book, listen to some great music, or get some friends over for a hearty meal?

4. Use tools to help manage your mind.

Our thoughts can change in a moment, from chaos to peace. Why not get all the help you can with some of these ideas?

Try this:

• The WakingUp App. You can get a generous 30-day free trial here. It’s packed with great guided meditation, daily 1-minute audio ‘Moments’ and incredible podcasts and teachings.
• Meditation: Try the 4-7-8 breathing technique: breathe in for 4 ‘short’ seconds, hold for a further 8, then a long, slow release for a final 8. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as ‘rest and digest.’ It’s impossible to do this and be stressed at the same time!
• Why not listen to some great music, have a dance, or sing along to your favourite song. Just press play!

5. Practice Gratitude.

This is very powerful! Unless we are content and grateful for what we HAVE, nothing in the future is going to fill that void! Think, “when I get the job/ relationship/ money, I will be happy,” and then remember what happened to all those great things you wanted, or got, before moving onto the next thing our insatiable minds wants and desires! Did it really make you that happy?

Try this: Each day write down at least three things you are grateful for. Yes, I know, you may well have heard this before;) But do it and see what happens for 30 days. Listen to your ‘inner critic/ monkey mind/ ego’ saying nonsense like, “I tried it before and it didn’t work then!” That voice is complete BS.

6. Know that life – consciousness – is unfolding in front of us.

We have no control over life, except a micro degree of control over how we can respond to this, in terms of what we do, say or how we react. Whilst small in the general scheme of things, this is the source of our power: we get to choose what we do and don’t do. How cool is that?

Try this: Some years ago, a therapist asked me how I see myself and I said, feeling quite smug, ‘like an elephant, crashing, self-determinedly through the undergrowth.” He quietly said, “consider that you are an ant on the elephants back.” It was a gift, realising how insignificant I was, and yet how much ‘power’ I had, to do what was in my control.

7. Get in your body and out of your head!

Being in our heads is a big problem! As a friend of mine once said, “my brain is messy, my soul is good!”

There’s this phrase: motion leads to emotion. If we stay stuck physically in one place and feel a particular way and want to change it, not much is likely to change.

Try this: Get up and move about. Do something, anything, to shift the energy. You might dance, skip, or jump up and down. Then, check in on how you are feeling. It simply won’t be the same and, just like that, you changed your state, mood and created a new future, if you believe Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, or force, in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

8. Don’t make things worse than they already are

I have said and done a lot of stupid things I wish I hadn’t. I fell into the trap of reacting, rather than pausing and breathing and having faith in the bigger picture.

Try this: When you feel like you are about to say or do something stupid, pause for a few seconds, breathe in slow (5-7-8 technique, above) and let the moment pass, like a train going by.

9. Have the courage to do something different, something important to you.

I heard recently, “the magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.” I am sure that fear – what we are afraid of doing – is the signpost to our transformation.

Try this: any time you feel like you want or need to do something, and you notice your inner resistance (your mind) and it feels difficult, do it and see what happens, even 1% of it. Remember, progress over perfection.

You could try some of these:

• Go dancing
• Sing a song
• Ask someone on a date
• Jump in cold water
• Reach out to an old friend
• Take up a hobby
• Make a difficult call.

10. Wake up and live this life. This is it. THIS moment. There is nothing else.

It’s the biggest cliché of them all: there is no time like the present, because it is ALL there is.

Yet the ego will convince us that we will do it tomorrow, that we have all the time in the world.

Think about this: You and I will die. It could be this week, this month, this decade, this…?

There’s a meditation called, The Last Time Meditation. Do you remember the last time you:

• Picked up your child?
• Held your father’s hand?
• Said goodbye to a friend?
• Gathered with a particular group of people?

We think we will live forever. We won’t. Some who are receiving that may not see out the day, week or month. Who knows?

We must stop pretending and justifying that we will live forever. How many people, like you and me, have said, “I will give you a ring next week,” or, “we must get together,” or, “I must start that book I want to write.”

Then, bang, it is over.

Are you afraid of death? Don’t be. The more comfortable we with death, the more comfortable we can be with living.

There is much written about those who have had near death experiences (NDE’s) and they universally report that they were a bit pissed off at returning to this life!

Turns out death is pretty marvellous, so, that’s that fear removed!

Relax!

There’s a great fine from a movie called Bridge of Spies, with Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance. Rylance is an East German spy who is captured in the US. At one stage he is looking at the possibility of a death sentence in the electric chair.

Hanks says, “aren’t you worried?” Rylance responds, “would it help?”

Try this:

You could also try this: imagine your body turning from cold, tense, hard wax, to soft warm wax. Feel the tension in your shoulders ease. Breathe. How do you feel? This is available to you at any time. Try it when you are in a conflict or having negative thoughts. What do you think? How is that?

Tap into Courage.

For me, this is the most powerful piece: courage.

Courage literally means to take movement from the heart, rather than being in our head and in our worries.

Fear is the big lie. It is an illusion. It all about us, or rather our survivalist ego, and courage pulls us out of that, and gets us into reality, into the world.

Try this: take small steps and give yourself a pat on the back.

Why not book me in for a talk at your place of work or community? Click on the image and drop me an email.

Don’t take care – take a risk!

Si.

P.S. Find out your Mojo score by completing the anonymous 2-minute Mojo-Meter here: