How To Discipline Your Mind

I think Snape said it best, “Control your emotions, discipline your mind.”

I’m a big Harry Potter fan by the way. I suggest you read the Harry Potter books and watch the movies if you haven’t already, after reading this blog.

Disciplining your mind opens a new window to what you have control over. Most people think you can’t control what goes on in your mind and how you react.

Yes, you can’t control the kind of thoughts that enter your mind or stop the flow of thoughts.

But you certainly have control over not holding on to thoughts and gently reverting your attention from thoughts that don’t serve you by using different techniques.

Disciplining your mind starts off by becoming conscious of the thoughts that come up in your mind.

I will outline the methods that I personally find the most effective.

Diary

I started writing in my diary from January 2020, (a wonderful coincidence as it was such an eventful year). I used to keep a planner and very briefly jot things down before 2020, but I found that this was a great outlet.

It felt good to put what was going on in my head, on paper and then close the diary and put it away. It kind of felt like now that the thought was on paper, I didn’t have to think about it again.

I have a structure for how I write in my diary. You don’t have to do this. It just sets the tone.

These are my steps:

Date
Affirmations
What I achieved during the day (as well as what I didn’t do) & if something new happened.
Feelings & thoughts that I held onto during the day.
Close it off with a positive note & what I’m looking forward to the next day.

Free writing is the most effective way to express. When I get to the ‘feelings & thoughts’ bit in my diary, I free write continuously until my hand starts hurting.

Maybe it’s not the best method for your hand, but it is the best technique for your mind. And your hand will not hurt forever. Trust me.

Writing like this allows your thoughts to flow.

You can go further with your diary by reflecting. To grow you need to know your behaviour patterns and more importantly your thought patterns.

I think this is really the most significant step to overcome any mental block.

I reflect on my thought and behaviour patterns, by going back on my diary at the end of the year and skimming through what I wrote.

This doesn’t have to be every single page. You can read 4 days for one week but keep doing it for every week.

Then I highlight the dates in either red, green or orange. The colours are in correlation with what days I thought were bad (red), good (green) and days that were average (nothing special happened but nothing bad happened either) in orange.

By doing this you will be able to recognise what external factors caused you to think that this was a bad or good day as well as what went on your mind.

You might even come to recognise that your reaction may have been overly dramatic. Or you could be equally, pleasantly surprised at how you handled something and came to save your day!

For this to work, you have to be honest with yourself of course. Don’t just highlight a day red and call it bad because you lost your phone for an hour or noticed a spot on your face.

I define my bad days as the ones where I haven’t really been present, that were mentally exhausting (low energy and mood), unproductive, and chaotic.

Most of the time we have bad parts in our days, but we tend to stay hung up over “that thing” that happened and call it a day.

This is a good method for pessimistic and overthinkers as well as those that have a mental health disorder such as, anxiety disorder, OCD and depression.

It will help you put things into perspective, notice what you continually think about and rationalise when reflecting.

You may believe that you’ve had a bad year due to a few bad events.

This will help you realise that actually, that day wasn’t really bad, the year consisted of more good days than bad, therefore, it was a good year and then eventually you’ll start saying “I have a great life”.

Meditation

“You are not your thoughts”. This is something that you might have heard, but not really understand.

If I am not my thoughts, then who am I? What are thoughts? Where do they come from?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions (LOL).

However, by meditating you will find that you indeed are not your thoughts because you can just sit still and observe everything.

Sounds weird but you’ll be able to truly see for yourself when you meditate.

There’s a lot of scientific evidence showing benefits for meditation including:

Reduces stress and anxiety.
Improves memory.
Enhances self-awareness.
Lengthens attention-span.
Helps with addictions.

The most interesting fact and benefit of meditating was shown through brain scans of monks. Meditation rewires and changes the structure of the brain (obviously in a good way)!

Doing this will benefit you enormously. It takes daily practise for about 20-40 mins and in 8 weeks, your brain would have rewired itself.

Meditation consists of focusing on your breath, and every time a thought comes into your head, you revert your attention back on your breath.

You can do this by sitting or lying down. Start off with maybe 5 minutes every day if you’re new to it.

I like to do this in bed because that’s where I feel the most relaxed and comfortable. It’s truly a very relaxing experience.

There are guided meditations that you can use on the internet, apps and many other mindfulness practices that you can do.

Try different things and choose whatever suits you best.

Meditation is also used to manifest everything you want!

Gratitude

Most of us like to complain and point out the things that aren’t “right”.

If you practise being thankful, you’ll eventually see that you have so much to be thankful for and that your problems are nowhere near the scope of your blessings.

An easy practise that you can do is when you catch yourself complaining, quickly say thank you for something.

It could be anything. And it won’t be hard to find something to say thank you for.

Using Mantras

When your mind is not disciplined, you can quite easily feel like your thoughts are just spiralling out of control in an endless, negative, pessimistic loop.

Most of us dwell on the past and think about the future.

Funnily enough, both the past and future only exist in your head.

Only the present moment is real. Literally right now. You, reading this blog. This is what you are doing right now and nothing else in your mind is real.

It’s either your imagination or memory.

To overcome that constant chatter in your head, breathe. Inhale through your nose, into your stomach and then let out a long exhale. Do this until you feel calm.

Observe everything around you. If you’re outdoors, look at the cars that drive past. Look at the trees, the people walking by.

If you’re indoors, notice what’s on the wall, look at all the colours.

Both these processes divert your brain and break the chatter.

There are a couple “mantras” that I use when I feel like I’m going into an anxious or overwhelming state:

This too shall pass.
Everything is fine.
Can you let this go?
So what?

Saying these repeatedly will eventually calm you down.

Planner

A planner is very helpful for obvious reasons. It gives structure to your days, keeps everything organised, allows you to be productive and meet goals.

If you have a “I’ll do it later" attitude and catch yourself saying that to yourself or others, ask yourself if you can do it now.

Why later? Are you busy right now?

Avoid saying, “I need to do this, this is work, I should do it, I have to and I must.”

These phrases cause resistance therefore, lead to procrastination, and make things impossible to do.

Tips For Overthinking:

“What if?”- Notice when you start saying “what if” & know that whatever conclusion you come to is just your imagination.
Taking thoughts as facts- imagining scenarios that aren’t real, predicting that it will happen. This is also just your imagination.

Thoughts aren’t facts and don’t mean anything until you start reasoning and placing importance to what you think.

Overthinking can lead to intrusive thoughts and they can cause a lot of distress if you start to engage with them.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted, disturbing thoughts. We all have them.

We can’t ‘avada kedavra’ (Harry Potter reference- a spell to kill) any thought we don’t like, so we have to learn how to discipline our mind.

Intrusive thoughts fit into different categories and come randomly. They are mostly revolved around speculation of one self’s character.

Most of the time we are able to let them go.

The reason why these thoughts may become stressful and overwhelming, is because it could lead to deeper questioning of what these thoughts mean.

Click the link if you would like to know more about intrusive thoughts. I highly recommend reading more about it if you suffer from a mental health disorder.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/intrusive-thoughts

It’s so strange to think that we play games with our own mind to ensure that we stay healthy and on top of everything.

But for a harmonious life it is important to use different techniques that keep your mind at peace and adopt a positive, optimistic, and goal-oriented attitude.

It’s also important to remember that these strategies take practice so don’t beat yourself up for getting stuck in a loop again.

Recognise it and try again.

Read, share, comment and let me know what you think!