Rules of the Game: Warrior Mind Podcast #490
Over six years and going strong! With over 1M downloads from over 15 countries and 7 continents’…. this is the Warrior Mind Podcast.
In this episode of the Warrior Mind Podcast I’m going to go over the mental strength rules of the game and the importance of them on your personal success.
Mental Strength Rules of the Game
How do we run our own mind?
So you want to take back control of your own mind?
Good on you.
What a wonderful goal!
And in this day age so rare.
Many people talk about taking back control of their mind and taking charge of their thoughts, but just watch them when criticized or insulted. They go to pieces. Let one of their closely held beliefs be questioned, and watch out.
Sudden it becomes semantic reaction time.
They explode with rage, anger, stress, fear, shock, etc. If they truly “control their own minds,” how is it that they lack state management skills in the moments when managing one’s reactions really counts?
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:
What essentials do you need to know to take back control of your mind and thoughts?
Read them VERY carefully, they help you establish an understanding of the game of “I am in control of my mind and thoughts.”
Rules of the Game
#1: Thoughts are Things – Thoughts are things, they are real forces, and they are energy and are the ‘cause’ of all your ‘effects.’ Weak and scattered thoughts are weak and scattered real forces. Strong and concentrated thoughts are strong and concentrated real forces!
#2: Thoughts are Bidirectional – The mind is like a two-way radio, it is a sending and receiving station of thoughts. We are constantly affecting the outside environment with our thoughts, and the outside environment…those people, groups and communities we associate with…are constantly affecting our thoughts, particularly in sales.
#3: Thoughts are Like Magnets – Thoughts that are thought with emotion become magnetized and attract similar and like thoughts. Any thought that has emotion attached to it, changes the dynamic and the “energy” of the thoughts, i.e. negative thoughts attract more negative thoughts and positive thoughts attract more positive thoughts.
#4: Minds Follow Directions – They take the directions that you give them and they follow them. Provide a little description and the mind goes to work representing the information on our internal mental screen. Like a movie director, minds use the information as instructions for our mental Cinema. This explains why the following are very important questions for our states:
- What directions are you giving your mind?
- What are the default instructions that you’ve learned to give your mind?
- What instructions did your parents or teachers provide you about yourself, life, others, etc.?
- How useful, ecological, healthy, balanced, valuable, true, etc. are those instructions?
- Do those instructions create empowering states for you?
- Would you want to give those instructions to your children?
- Do they map out an exciting and loving life?
Why are these questions so important?
Because, the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of the questions asked. The quality of that information flows from the quality of its instructions and questions. The most important thing you do in life then are the instructions that you give your mind. Are the instructions those that you would use to create a world-class movie?
Minds use words, pictures, sounds, tones, volumes, smells, tastes, all kinds of things as the basis for swishing us places. Mention a word and off your mind goes.
But where?
It depends on your learning history, experiences, memories, imaginations, hopes, etc.
Minds are phenomenal at linking things. They do so very, very quickly. Actually, this is one of the chief problems we have with our minds. The problem is not that they don’t learn, but that they learn too quickly. It’s just what they learn that often times are just not true or useful.
Minds are also incredible instruments that never shut down. Even in sleep, we dream as mind wave activity continues. This becomes a problem if we don’t give the mind lots of interesting things to process. The stimulus hunger of minds will trigger them to play the old B-rated movies or hallucinate freely.
Enjoy this podcast on the rules of the game
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.3MB)
Subscribe: RSS
More Rules of the Game
#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 neurosciences 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.
For a more in-depth discussion about this topic request your Introductory Consultation.
Subscribe to the Warrior Mind Podcast HERE.
