How does our mind work? Here’s four insights that can improve your life:
1. Information
Your mind consumes information from the environment and circumstance you are in and it reacts to it. So what comes in matters. If you’re around negative people, your mind wants to mirror that negativity. If you’re around something inspiring, your mind mirrors that too. So be cautious about having negative information and people in your life because they shape how you think, feel, behave – your overall psychology. And be diligent about consuming positive, intelligent, and instructive information so you strengthen a healthy, informed, positive mind.
2. Interpretation
Once your mind takes in information, it interprets it by asking, “Is this good or bad? Is this safe or dangerous? Should I approach or avoid? What does this mean to me personally?” Interpretation defines things for us and tells us how meaningful something is. And that interpretation is primarily driven by past experiences, what we call conditioning. People can interpret the same information differently because they take in different parts of the information or their mind is conditioned differently from their past. Self-mastery is really about learning to consciously interpret the information coming into our lives in an open and purposeful way. And part of mastering our relationships is learning how those we love interpret things.
3. Intention
Our intention of who to be can rewrite our history. It is our dominant intentions for who we want to be, how we want to interact with people, and what we want to create and contribute to the world that form the real power of our mind. Imagine a burning building on fire. Some people might interpret danger and run, while someone else might have the intention to be a servant and hero and their intention overrides their interpretation of danger, so they run into the building to save people. It was their intention that overrode their immediate impulses – that’s consciousness and that’s heroism.
4. Initiative
Our mind is most shaped by our actions. When we act cowardly by running away, remain silent, or refuse to take actions toward dreams that are important to us, our mind interprets this and says, “I’m weak, incapable or unworthy.” Yet, when we have initiative, our mind develops self-determination and self-regulation. Our actions of yesterday form the thrust of how we think today. The more positive actions we take the more positive our minds become.
Takeaway
Be around people and environments that inspire and activate the good parts of you, interpret things in positive ways, set powerful intentions, and take action so your mind feels stronger, more confident and capable. When you do all this, you start to experience what we call The Charged Life!
* Source: Brendon Burchard – How The Mind Works