One of the most impactful things I’ve ever learned is to master the control of my state of mind. I first learned this from Anthony Robbins’ books and audio courses and I’ve since reinforced and enhanced this learning by studying the mind, dreams, and other authors and teachers of the mind and psychology. The premise behind what this is about, is that your state of mind affects everything you do in life, either directly or indirectly. Your state of mind has a direct impact on many actions within the body and these are highly tied to your emotions, or how you feel. So if you are willing to learn to control those things that affect your state of mind, then you can have whatever state of mind you like which ultimately leads you to feeling however you like!

What Affects Your State

Many physical attributes affect your state of mind as well as your experiences, words, actions and even things like your diet. However, a number of physical attributes are directly under your own control and so once you learn this, you can understand ways to control your own state. Here are some important things that have a direct response in your mind and on your body.

• Body posture – Hold your head up high and your shoulders back and its an automatic response in the mind of more confidence.
• Breathing – Slow deep breathing does many things for your health and body to remove toxins, this also delivers needed oxygen to your brain which affects your state.
• Facial Expressions – The most significant here is smiling. Its physically impossible to really smile and NOT affect the mind, its subconscious and automatic.
• Energy Levels – How well you energize your self including your activity, exercise, and health affect your mind as well.
• Diet – what you eat has an impact on your state of mind as well.
• Thoughts – Directly and massively impact your state of mind.
  

So, all these things are important, yet the most critical of all is your thoughts. It affects your emotions completely and the good thing, thoughts are controlled entirely by the conscious mind, nothing else! What this means is that the way you feel and your state of mind is controlled by your thoughts.

Remembering a Specific State

The reasons this is important is that you can learn to remember a specific state of mind, and by thinking about that and visualizing everything about that state of mind, you can easily reproduce it and the response of feelings that it generated. You do this by:

1. First pick the feeling you want to reproduce. For most people this is joy or happiness or peace or satisfaction.
2. Then, think of the times that you completely feel that way. Spend some time to remember the details about those feelings and pick what has been the most intense moments of those feelings.
3. Visualize the things you saw in that moment, put yourself into that surrounding, see the colors, the lights, the objects. Spend time visualizing the major components as well as the minor details, the imperfections you can see, the textures and shading, the shadows and reflections if there are any. Remember as many details as possible. Close your eyes if it helps to really visualize it in your mind. There is an interesting article on Practice This about closing your eyes to see more which is about visualization.
4. Now remember the things you could hear in that moment. Think of all the sounds every object makes, or the actions or nature in that environment. Think of the sounds that each object makes when put into motion or moved.
5. Move on to the sense of smell next. What specific smells can you remember. What season was it, can you smell it? Can you smell and sense the air, the humidity, the people and objects in that setting?
6. What feelings or senses of touch did you have. What were you feeling in your body? What clothes are touching you skin? Can you feel anything against your skin, the wind perhaps? What are you touching and how does it feel exactly. Rough, smooth, what other textures. Spend some time and just imagine feeling all those things to put yourself into the same place that you experiences this emotion you are after.
7. Change your own body or face to match what you remember. Were you smiling? Were you moving about in motion, if you can, do those things while visualizing all these other senses to put yourself back exactly into that memory.

All of these steps will bring back memories of that same emotion and state of mind which will in turn, leave you feeling that same state of mind just from remembering it.

Activate that State

The best thing to do with the ability to follow these visualization steps to get into a state of mind is to next, associate that state of mind with something instant. This allows you to activate that state and learn to call upon it whenever you want. One technique for this is to associate that state of mind with some words and actions you can do and say. Pick something that isn’t common for you to do and use that to activate that same state of mind. You want something unique. It could be to snap your fingers, clap your hands, a funny face, a specific body stance, a weird or loud word or phrase, any of these things could be used to associate with your state of mind. To associate it, just do your action or say your words and immediately begin thinking of all those feelings and memories about that state. Do this out loud and in action a number of times over and over. Put some energy into it and be enthusiastic. Keep repeating it until you seem to be able to really feel that every time you activate your state with your words or action you can feel or sense that state of mind and memories it is generated from.

Practice Switching States

And finally practice is where this all becomes useful. To change state, you need to not only associate that state but practice switching states quickly. Pick another state of mind (ideally something quite opposite to the state you first picked) and go through this process again. Do all the steps to learn that new state and really identify with the feelings and senses for that new state. Make a new association (or action) and repeat it a number of times.

Now, you have two separate states, each with its own action. Practice switching between these states by alternating your activation. Start off by giving yourself about 15 seconds in each state. Practice to change faster and faster until you can literally change your state of mind in just an instant. You should be able to activate all those feelings, your memories, thoughts and even all the senses in just a short moment. This can take a bit of time to practice, but just 10 minute sessions for a few nights in a row can really get you quick with this.

Actually Using your State of Mind

So, now that you know you can change your state of mind just by activating it and changing your thoughts and since you’ve conditioned your mind to instantly change its state basically on command, you can do this whenever you want. I’m assuming most people picked a positive set of feelings to learn to associate so you can now use that to change your perception, mood and responses in more difficult or not as friendly environments. Maybe its with someone or something you don’t like but want to kill the negative emotions that go along with that? Well, this will work for that too. As long as you have a stronger associations with your activation to put you into that state of mind, than the things in that situations to put in the state you don’t want, then you can instantly change your mindset make things more like how you really want them.

The more you use this, the more you’ll look to use it and the more you will train your subconscious to recover from feelings and mind sets you don’t want to experience. You can literally get to a point where anything you consider bad or to be replaced state wise, happens automatically by your mind once you’ve become so practiced at doing this.

So, I encourage you to look for ever opportunity to use your knew state associations and practice it. Learn new associations and use them as well. You will eventually be doing this to every negative response subconsciously or automatically without even thinking about. You can experience a lot more joy and happiness in life if you change the way your mind responds to stimuli. My next article I’m going to publish is about how you can use this idea of controlling your mind to impact EVERY response you make in your life.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 8 Comments »

I love being known for someone who is always happy and I constantly look for ways to further enhance the joy and happiness I experience in my life. I have 2 specific things that really help with this, one is a great way to start a day and the other, a great way to end it.

Start Your Day Out Right

I read an article by Marshal Goldsmith suggesting an easy way to improve each day is to say hello and smile to the first five people you see no matter when or who they are. You can be in your car, walking to work, at work, at home looking out your window or your family, it doesn’t matter. If you smile and say hello to those first people you see every single day, you definitely start the day off better feeling happier and more positive. Its physically impossible to smile without affecting your mindset since the brain releases chemicals and fires neurons automatically when you smile, whether you want to or not. The brain and these chemicals are what directly affect your physiology, so that simple smile really does make you feel better and doing this everyday can easily turn it into a habit and I can tell you you’ll love doing it once you start practicing it. I’ve made a habit of it now over the past 6 months or so and I can definitely tell you its made a big difference in how I feel each day. And better than that, a couple other people have told me how they’ve noticed my smiles everyday and it also makes them feel better! WOW! So simple, yet so effective.

Finish Your Day Out Right

I’ve heard before by motivational speakers like Brian Tracy and other others tips to finish your day off positively and I was reminded of this tip by Ced on the manager-tools.com forums. Its to just take 1-2 minutes right before bed to make a point form list of 5 positive or good things you say, did, heard or experienced that day. Simple things that made you feel better or that you noticed others doing. Just jot them down and go to bed. Its a great technique to help you focus on the pleasant things you experience and helps you to realize everything to be appreciative for in life. Developing this habit by jotting them on paper is a great way to practice and you’ll soon be able to just think of many many items each day before bed. Try it out, it can definitely make a positive influence on your mood the next day. Let alone your dreams… I’ll leave that topic for other post though…

Posted by Mike King under Life | 4 Comments »

Life is a complex mess of circumstances, interactions and experiences each unique to every single person on this planet. There are countless things that seem to make a difference in people’s lives and how life is perceived. However, there seems to be just a handful of things that make a big difference on a daily basis with our relationships, career and joy in life. That item is part of one’s attitude and specifically, its about complaining in life. Most everyone does more than their share of complaining and it stems from the societal pressure of constantly wanting more, moving up the career chain, wanting to continually improve everything and simply because people are not generally content with what they have. If you take note and make a conscious effort to eliminate complaining in your own life, you will be much happier.

Why So Many Complaints?

Are you focused on constantly wishing things were different, and complaining about them instead of being focused on seeing and recognizing the things that are positive and going well for you? What about with others, do you complain to them more than thank, appreciate or praise them? Perfectionists and critical thinking people often deliver a lot of complaints and don’t see the good things happening around them every day.

People constantly complain about their jobs, there money or lack thereof, traffic and the weather. The news, its just a long series of more things to complain about and rarely anything to be excited about or thankful for. Life is unfortunately, quite a bombardment of media and people who are complaining about nearly everything!

You can change that for yourself by replacing any complaining with more positive thoughts and comments. Look for the good around you, talk about the positive things about your job, start conversations when the weather and traffic are good, see the things you value on a day to day basis and share that with others, instead of the usual set of complaints.

Change Your Focus

Its easy to change your attitude and start thinking and focusing on the positive things in your life if you look for this every day. Its takes some effort, but just a few changes everyday can make a big impact in your life and make you feel happier. Thinking positive and avoiding the complaints are your choice to make. That choice allows you to be in control of how you feel simply by choosing what you will focus on. You can make yourself happier if you choose to and by practicing consciously over and over to see the good things and to value them instead of complaining, you will train your mind to do the same subconsciously. This will eventually change your natural attitude and you won’t even have to work on this anymore, it will just happen. And you will be happier.

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 2 Comments »