ExamineHealth

The Value of Mind Control

Your mind is an amazing thing, capable of both autonomous thinking and directed thinking.  Anyone who is familiar with the Law of Attraction understands the importance of having control of your mind.  It's fairly easy to understand that the things we think about are the things we are most likely to draw into our lives.  It comes down to a simple matter of focus.  When we focus on what we want, we cultivate the ability to achieve those things.  

On the contrary, negative self-talk is an epidemic in today's society.  Too many people fall victim to their minds unconscious gravitation towards thinking about the worst things that might happen.  Worrying about things is not a productive approach, especially when you have no control over them.  Berating yourself for your mistakes is also counter-productive.

You are most successful when you focus on your success; you think through your options and imagine your goals being achieved.  

Almost all of us can do this to a certain extent - or for short bursts of time.  However to really be successful, consistency is key.  If you can train your mind to follow your conscious direction, if you can choose what to think about and what not to think about, you can drive yourself forward.  This is a skill that isn't taught enough.  There are many ways to train this ability.  Today I'd like to talk about one of those techniques.

The Mechanism of Thought Progression

Your mind is always going, it's always thinking of things and bringing thoughts to the surface.  It's much like a spring bubbling up from the earth, with ideas coming and going without any effort at all.  You can seed this process by simply choosing an idea.  Take for instance the idea of a cup.  From that single term your mind will begin making associations.  You might start thinking through all of the cups that you have in your kitchen.  You may consider the different types, shapes, sizes, colors, or weights of the cups that you own.  You might drift to cups that you desire, cups you have seen in the store but didn't purchase.  You might drift to cups from different time periods, ancient cups, medieval cups, contemporary cups.  Your mind may then wander to other dishware.  You may begin thinking about plates and spoons, or bowls, or mugs.  This process is much like starting your car and leaving it in neutral.  You've begun the thinking process, but you aren't really directing it; you're just allowing it to idle.

At some point you make a decision of will.  You decide that you want to contemplate one set of ideas specifically.  This is akin to engaging the transmission and steering your vehicle as you desire.  You are now deliberately controlling your thought process.  You've decided to contemplate one thing and not another.  You're making choices about the thoughts that you are allowing to occur.

This can progress in a linear fashion.  So perhaps you choose plates from your stream of consciousness and choose to focus on it.  You immediately get an upwelling of associations.  Different colored plates, empty plates, full plates, glass plates, porcelain plates, food that would go on a plate, unconventional uses for plates.  You choose a single idea from that stream, say for instance a particular sandwich you picture being delivered on a plate.  Now you can allow the sandwich idea to percolate, and you can follow the stream of ideas that are generated from that.  Do you see how you are now controlling the stream of ideas that your mind is producing?  You're applying will to the activity of concentration to develop ideas.

Causes of Association

Now these associations are not created randomly.  There is a method to how they proceed.  Specifically four particular manners of association create the resulting stream of consciousness.  They are (1) Contiguity, (2) Class Relationship or logical inclusion, (3) Whole and Part or concrete inclusion, and (4) Object and quality or functional inclusion.  

Contiguity is created by the strength of the association of the ideas due to an extremely vivid experience of the two concepts or by the frequent repetition of the ideas.  Strong experiences can solidify relationships within your mind.  These relationships exist even if the two ideas clashed only once or a few times.  This is the strength of the vicariousness of the experience.  If that vicarious experience is lacking, the same effect can be had via simple repetition.  This is often a tactic used in studying for things - with the goal to form an association where there isn't one naturally.

Things can also be associated by type.  This is called logical inclusion and leverages our ability to classify things.  To return to our previous example, a plate is a member of the class 'dishes'.  This allows our mind to easily jump to other members of that class; glasses, bowls, silverware, saucers, etc.  Our minds are very good at classifying ideas and do so quickly and automatically.  It is literally a survival mechanism that we have adopted due to the richness of the various ideas and stimuli we come into contact with at any particular time.  If we had to evaluate each time we saw a piece of dinnerware it would be far too slow.  We need to have the ability to quickly classify, and therefore associate that object with a set of traits that we know is true of things of that class.

Another way that our mind can generate related ideas is via concrete inclusion, by identifying parts of the whole, or larger wholes.  In this way an automobile engine can illicit ideas of pistons and manifolds.  Parts of the engine can be broken down further into bolts and washers.  Likewise, the stream can flow the other direction, noticing that an engine is a part of a larger object which is a car.  The car itself can even be a part of a larger fleet of cars, in the case of a taxi cab for instance.  In almost any instance you can break down or build up to discover parts of the whole you are examining, or the greater whole that it is a part of.

Functional inclusion focuses on the properties of a particular idea.  Is it big or small?  Soft or hard?  Does it move quickly or slowly?  These ideas can provide additional richness to your visualization, while at the same time providing branches for your mind to progress the stream of thought.

The purpose of thinking about these various methods of association is primarily to realize that all associations are caused by a reason.  There is no chance in the way that your mind develops ideas, one after another.  There is something that triggers the next thought in the progression.  By understanding these reasons and analyzing the thought process itself, you gain control over it.

Concentration Exercises

Now that we have examined the process of thought and the generation of ideas, we are ready to begin an exercise that will train you in concentration.  First you must choose a seed idea to begin with.  It's not healthy to concentrate on things that you don't like, so choose something that you don't mind thinking about.  A good choice to start out with is "cat".  If you don't like cats, you can choose "dog" or "cow" or something else.  

Allow an association to develop to that root idea.  You might come up with 'whiskers', 'claws', 'fur', 'milk', 'Siamese', 'Lucky', '9 lives', or any other idea that might pop into your mind related to your root idea.  Once you have identified the associated idea, write it down and put a number next to it that indicates which of the four methods of association you used to generate it.  Then go back to the root idea and select another association.  This is important: do not think about the associated ideas, you simply want to identify them and then return to the root idea.  Continue writing down ideas associated with your root idea until you have 100 of them listed.  You may not get this done in one sitting.  You can use the four methods of association to help you come up with ideas when they stop coming to you automatically.  In this way you're learning the concept of focus and return.  You're not allowing yourself to travel down the stream of free association, but instead are capturing one idea and then returning to the original idea.  You are getting used to what it feels like to control your mind.

As an alternative to listing the associations in this exercise, you can use a mind map if you are familiar with them.  This will closer represent the way that your mind thinks and forms connections and will provide additional benefit.  

For your next exercise, you will be concentrating on a particular object for 5 minutes.  You will be focusing on just that object only and thinking of nothing else.  Note the time when you begin this exercise and then don't worry about it and concentrate only on the object chosen.  (You can use the same object you used in the first exercise or something else.)  Soon you will realize that you are no longer thinking about that original idea.  Note the time and try to figure out why you are no longer focused on the object.  Did something distract you?  Was it externally initiated, or internally?  Was it one of the four methods of association that drew your attention away?  Do this exercise every day for at least a week.  Each time recording the length of time that you can concentrate only on that one object without getting distracted.  Over the course of the week, you'll see your results improving as you strengthen your ability to concentrate at will.

The last exercise is the most important.  Think of your object and hold it in mind, but then also begin adding in those associated ideas.  Try to hold in mind each association that you developed in the first exercise, without letting the original object slip from your mind.  You are only traveling out one association from that root idea.  You want to hold in your mind that object and all of it's associations, while still asking "What else?".  Continue to look into the void for additional associations that you can maintain in your awareness.  Do this every day for a month.  What you are doing is training your mind in the habit of recall and developing a mood of concentration.  This is a skill that you are learning.  Once you have done this every day for a month, you will have developed the ability to concentrate at will.  Your mind will have adopted the ability to assume this state of mind as you desire.  

This is not unlike walking, or swimming, or riding a bike.  Once practiced and developed into a skill, your mind can execute that skill with autonomy.  You can then utilize this skill when you wish.

Your Newly Honed Skill

Now that you've learned some about how your mind works and how to control it, the possibilities open up from there.  Right from the beginning, you'll find that this improves your general quality of life.  You are now capable of focusing on a particular topic for as long as is needed.  You'll also be able to develop ideas at will.  You'll find your creativity blossom when you can generate associations whenever you want.

More importantly, you'll learn to keep your mind in check.  You'll be able to think about what you want to think about, instead of your mind being a runaway train.  Instead being dragged around at the whim of your idling thoughts, you will direct them where you want to go.  Think about the things you want.  Think about how you're going to get them.  Think about how to make the things happen that you want to happen.  You'll be surprised at how well this works.  How things simply start falling into your lap through seeming coincidences.  These are called synchronicities and are a whole other topic.  This is the first step however, towards the life that you want.  Now the only question is "Do you know what you want?"  Review your goals to make sure that you're heading the right direction.  You've got to have your destination set if you ever want to reach it.

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