The world experienced by us is often the creation of not just sensory experience, but also our beliefs, attitudes and expectations. Our world as we live in it, is the product of our mind. Illustrating with, happy, we perceive the rain soft and friendly, fertile and encouraging. In contrast, sad, we often sense it gray, damp, cold uninviting. Following from these, how to take care of your mind remains worthy of good attention.
Further, to take care of our minds is to nurture and heal them. As we do so, we release, in our consciousness, the healing energies of kindness, wisdom, happiness, joy, serenity. Shining our mindfulness on the beautiful flowers of kindness, wisdom, peace, and happiness, starts them blooming.
Here Unfurls How To Take Care Of Your Mind
1. Be Willing To Have Uncomfortable Thoughts And Feelings
By trying to avoid certain thoughts and feelings, we end up creating an inner battle. What is more, the more we try not to acknowledge or have them, the more they return. However, when we decide that it is okay to allow and feel difficult thoughts and feelings, we end up not thinking about about them frequently. This situation results from we no longer defining thinking about them as a problem.
Continuing with, the willingness to experience things just as they are, starts unpleasant thoughts and feelings finding a natural balance. This balance is characterised by an open free-flowing energy, moving in harmony with the ever-changing impermanent world of our experience. Away from, to avoid the discomfort of a world that is always changing and therefore always uncertain, results in blockages in our energy flow. So, it pays to be open to the truth of your actual experience.
2. Encourage Beneficial Mental States
Allowing the sunlight of our awareness to fall on our difficult emotions, haves them losing strength, and being more workable. More, encouraging beneficial mental states means seeking experiences that stimulate them, and avoiding experiences that encourage harmful ones. For instance, struck by the blueness of the sky, linger for a moment, ignite the light of your mindfulness, to savour and appreciate the wonderful blue colour. In line with, if you feel sad, avoid playing sad music, drinking too much, or rehearsing sad thoughts. Focus on the many lovely things in the world, not on the potentially destructive ones. Clearly, how to take care of your mind draws from this.
3. Avoid Identifying Or Fusing With Feelings
We identify with feelings when we say, “I’m sad,” or “l’m angry.” These statements tend to imply that all there is to us is just anger and sadness, that we are embedded in or fused with them. A better way that opens a zone of freedom, tell yourself, “there is anger here.” Beneficially, this creates some space between you and the emotion. Consequently, you have the chance to remember that you are not only anger, though anger is present as a kind of energy in your body and mind. In addition, you see the anger as neither personal or permanent. The anger may be your dominant experience at the moment, but you know that you are more than it.
Also, you can tell yourself, “I’m having a thought that this is terrible,” not “this is terrible.” With this approach, you acknowledge that this is just a thought that could be true, untrue, or in between, not an ultimate truth to follow blindly. Again, you can tell yourself that you are having a believed thought that this is unbearable. Acknowledging the fact that you believe the thought, highlights the possibility that you might choose not to believe it. This keeps you from arguing with yourself about it, and taking the risk of turning yourself into a battlefield. Peace won’t issue from such a struggle.
4. Contemplate Something That Evokes Feelings Of Calmness, Serenity, And Wisdom
As we let go of that image while contemplating the serenity it evokes, we stimulate ourselves to lovingly embrace our area of suffering, with that positive energy. Furthermore, we can turn to imagery from our spiritual or religious heritage, to evoke serenity and acceptance. This process is not about raising calmness to fight against our painful feelings, but to hold it in kind awareness. There is no battle or repression. In these, we create the causes and conditions for healing to happen by itself. Seemingly, how to take care of your mind adds up to healing. Forward, it is constructive to use this practice with minor emotional disturbances, and then progress to larger emotional disturbances. Applying patience and persistence is of good here.
5. Apply The Antidote Of Difficult Feelings
Love and compassion often feature as antidotes to feelings of hatred or anger. By strongly reminding ourselves that the person we are angry with is like us, and only trying to be happy and avoid suffering, we prime ourselves for this exercise. Though her notion of what will accomplish this appears distorted, her actions are attempts to do just that. This insight often starts our anger diminishing.
Plus, reminding ourselves of what is good in our lives, can feature as an antidote to feelings of sadness. Touch deeply and with concentration what is good in your life. Avoid fighting within yourself or resorting to self-recrimination. “Why am I feeling sad when I have all these good things in my life.” Better, note the sadness, holding it in mindfulness, and simultaneously raising a different kind of energy. You can stimulate the energy of gratitude or happiness alongside the sadness and pain. Then, you can let the happy feeling naturally take care of the unhappy feeling.
6. Use The Notion Of Impermanence To Defuse Anger
We can start this practice by envisioning the other person, as she will be a long time into the future, when both of you are long dead. To realise that, like you, the other person will then be just bones or dust, rouses you to see the situation through the lens of eternity. Seeing this clearly, deeply enough, can diminish our anger. Discernibly, this notion helps you to aim at ideas of how to take care of your mind.
7. Send Light And Kindness To Those Suffering From The Same Kind Of Difficulty As Yourself
Doing this often dispels the feeling of alienation that frequently accompanies intense sadness. For instance, a woman battling with eating disorder can radiate kindness to all the women going through that experience. This can also work when we experience sadness coming up for no apparent reason. More, this practice can start us feeling a little better, even if the sadness is still present. It is now sadness that connects us with others, not one that cuts us off from them.
8. Interrupt Repetitive Thinking By Engaging In Activities That Give You A Sense Of Mastery, Accomplishment Or Involvement
These activities interrupt our tendency to ruminate on our difficulties, and get lost in them. Mastery involves getting things done. Tackling unpaid bills, cleaning your house, tending your garden or making that important phone call, often leaves you feeling better. You can experience a direct lift from the feeling of accomplishment, of getting unstuck concerning tasks you have put off. Else, doing the tasks keeps you from rehearsing your worries. This prevents your emotions from morphing into more painful states.
Also, engaging in activities that involve you completely means that there is no time for thoughts or worries to surface. You are concentrating and responding quickly. Hence, you are alive in the present moment. Of note, it pays to have a list of mastery and involving activities beforehand. Reasoning from, it can be hard to think of what to do when you are already sad or worried. Completing your activity often starts your emotions being less overwhelming. This confirms the impermanent nature of thoughts and feelings.
Along with, as you pay attention to the effects of your activity, you also learn which activities help the most. This helps you to choose the most powerful ones when you need them.
Conclusion
As you act upon ideas of how to take care of your mind, you start yourself realising that thoughts and feelings are the results of natural processes, not the ultimate truth of who you are. The realisation rouses you to the awareness that you can survive with your feelings of happiness and well-being, in spite of the suffering.
