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- Mental Mastery: How to master your mind
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Mental mastery is a set of skills
What does mental mastery mean, and how do you learn to master your mind? Mental mastery is a set of skills that you can practice in order to leverage the most value from the tool that is your mind. When mastering your mind, you are in charge of your focus, beliefs, perspectives, mental habits, and self-talk. In other words, mental mastery is your mind working for you, rather than against you.
3 steps to mental mastery
Step 1 of 3 to mental mastery:
Control your focus
Your mental focus is either run by your conscious decisions to engage with certain thoughts – or by your automated habits and thought patterns. The automated habits are made up by the type of mental focus you have been engaging with most until this point. You either decide what to think about, or your mind decides for you. When your mind chooses, it does so based on your current habitual thought patterns and learned mental behaviors.
How your mind works (and whether or not it is working in your favor and actually providing beneficial value to your experience) is very much changeable. With practice, you create new habits. The habits you decide for yourself.
Change starts with awareness
Any and all changes must always start with awareness. To control your focus, you first need to be aware of your current focus. To get started towards mastering this skill, practice noticing what type of focus you are engaging with. This way, you give yourself opportunities to control your mental focus. Do this in different kinds of situations to see how the results vary.
Every time you notice what you´re focusing on, you are teaching your mind the habit of noticing. Every time you choose what to focus on, you are strengthening the habit of controlling your focus, and getting closer to mastering your mind.
A shortcut when creating new habits is to take the action (here: noticing your mental focus) at the same time or at the same place every day (or several times a day). Preferably right before or after a strong part of your daily routine (for example each time you´re brushing your teeth, checking your e-mail, or washing your hands).
Use your mind like a search engine
For just a moment now, think of your mind as a search engine, like Google. The type of questions you ask – on Google or in your mind – fully determines what type of answers you receive. Your answers are always aligned with the type of question you ask, and how you ask the question.
Tonality and emphasis also play a huge factor in what type of answers you will get out of it. You will not get the same type of answers if you are asking yourself questions with sarcasm and bitterness versus curiosity to understand more.
Choose an empowering focus
If you would ask yourself the question:
“Why is this happening to me?”
- What type of answers would you get?
- Would those answers add value to or take value from your experience?
If you instead would ask a question like:
“What´s one step I can take now to get me forward from here?”
or a question like:
“What can I learn from this experience?”
“What´s one step I can take now to get me forward from here?”
or a question like:
“What can I learn from this experience?”
- What type of answers would you receive then?
- Would those answers provide more or less value to your experience?
One of the examples is highly valuable, while the other is taking value from you. As you practice re-phrasing questions and choosing a more constructive focus, you will notice that the process becomes more and more automated (it takes less effort for you to re-phrase or to ask new, better questions) and feel more natural to you.
With enough practice, you will no longer have to consciously think about what questions to ask yourself, simply because choosing a constructive focus has become an automated habit in your daily life.
BONUS GUIDE:
How to control your focus
Our minds are always working for us, and practicing controlling our focus means continuously getting increased value from ourselves. Here is a set of empowering questions to help you control your focus in various situations:
1. Become aware of your mental focus:
- What thoughts am I focusing on right now?
- What are some thoughts that are running through my head at this moment?
- What are some thoughts that I am engaging with now?
2. Evaluate your current focus:
- How does engaging with this type of focus make me feel?
- How would a person with this type of mental focus most likely feel?
- What actions could be natural to take for a person with these thoughts?
- What kind of results do these thoughts lead to?
- What kind of results would people generally get when acting in line with these types of thoughts?
3. Shift your focus:
- What type of thoughts could lead to more constructive emotions, actions, or results?
- What different thoughts would be more positive and empowering in this situation?
- What thoughts could I focus on instead, that would be more rewarding to me from here?
- What type of focus would I be engaging with now if I felt truly confident (/calm/happy/any other emotion that you want to experience)?
Step 2 of 3 to mental mastery:
Challenge and change your limiting beliefs
We all believe things to be true about ourselves, other people, life, and the world. We believe things to be true about our potential, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
The beliefs we hold onto will either empower us to live life on our terms and go after the dreams that are ours – or they will limit us from trying.
When we start challenging the truth and value of those beliefs, we become free to explore new possibilities for ourselves. Just because we believe something to be true, doesn´t mean it actually is. Even if it is true; if it is not adding enough value to your life, why focus on that type of belief? There will always be another perspective and always another truth to focus on. It is massively rewarding to practice challenging and changing the beliefs that are limiting your ability to love yourself or the life you live.
My limiting beliefs made me suicidal
As a suicide survivor, I used to believe that I was broken, weak, and not cut out for this world. That something was fundamentally wrong with me. I also used to believe that I was a burden to all of my loved ones because they had to take care of me. The belief that I was a burden to those I loved the most in the world is what made it possible for me to attempt to take my own life several times. In my mind and reality, my dying would be doing them a favor. According to my beliefs, I was relieving them from the burdening responsibility of taking care of me.
The beliefs we hold as true can either be incredibly harmful or empowering.
What if you are enough?
Your whole life will transform when you learn how to challenge and change those limiting beliefs about yourself, other people, your life, and about your potential.
If you in your heart believe that you´re not worthy (of what you want), if you believe that you’re not enough, or if you believe that you cannot do it – will you even try?
All you need is to believe in your ability to take the next step toward the life you want. Learning to change what you believe – especially your limiting beliefs about yourself, will unlock your full potential, and you will finally feel able to take desired actions in your life.
Step 3 of 3 to mental mastery:
Constructive self-talk
We all communicate with ourselves within our minds. In different ways – yes, but we all do it. If our self-talk is constructive it adds value to our experience. If our self-talk is destructive it takes value from it.
No matter where you are, in life and in the world – your self-talk will always narrate your life experience. This constant narrative will provide you with a sense of meaning to your experience, making you feel certain things about it all. The power of practicing constructive self-talk will forever continue to add value to our lives whatever we are going through.
If you criticize yourself, judge yourself, push yourself down for not doing enough, or for just existing, then you will feel like… what? Will you feel great? Or will you feel like shit?
If that kind of self-talk actually motivated you, you would already be living your dream life. It clearly doesn’t work – so stop it.
What you need to do is practice talking to yourself like a person that you care about, respect, and support.
Constructive self-talk is a habit
As you start changing how you communicate with yourself, it might feel uncomfortable. You are changing an established habit, and in the beginning, it takes effort to remember to implement the changes you want. When this behavior becomes a well-practiced habit, it will feel more and more natural, as it´s now a part of the person you are. Eventually, it will become an automated habit in your thought patterns, so you’ll just automatically choose the self-talk that will give you the love and empowerment that you deserve. Keep learning about how to support yourself here.
The more you practice constructive, kind, and empowering self-talk, the quicker your brain will know to automate the habit. After a while, you will notice that this type of self-talk feels the most comfortable and easy. It will simply feel like who you are.
Start transforming your self-talk
Whenever you feel like hearing it, practice telling yourself you´ve done a great job. Tell yourself you are doing your best (even if it doesn´t feel good enough according to your expectations, it is the best you´ve got at this moment). Practice telling yourself that you are enough. That you deserve to live your dreams. Thank yourself for being there for you. Tell yourself when you feel proud. Let yourself know that you are a person to care about, and to treat with love. Of course, this is all easier said than done. But necessary to practice. Treat yourself like you treat your loved ones – and you will start feeling your love too.
Practice constructive self-talk
Phrases of kindness to include in your self-talk:
- I am proud of how far I´ve come
- I am amazing because…
- I believe in myself because…
Phrases of empowerment to include in your self-talk: - I´ve got this (because…)
- It´s time to go after my dreams now, just take one step forward from here!
- I am enough to make this happen.
Practice what you know
Now that you know what mental mastery is and how you can achieve it in your life, how will you implement what you´ve learned?
Personal coaching means getting all the resources and support you need to get where you want to be. What is it that ultimately determines the results you see in your life? Your mindset, your focus, your beliefs, your self-talk… Most of the time, we are the ones that block ourselves from progressing. From achieving. From trying.
Don´t let yourself stand in your way any longer. Connect here to schedule your free Clarity Call.
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