Unlock the Power of Your Mind

Dealing with the trials and tribulations of everyday life can be challenging be it managing your diet, ensuring you get that daily workout in, getting the kids to school on time or even just keeping up with the washing!  And that is before we’ve even started on the big stuff like work, finances and planning for the future - working hours are ever expanding, the cost of living is rising and lets not even get started on the state of the environment. Yet everyone you see in the media seems to have their life sorted.

Maybe there is another way to approach things. If trying to control your life isn’t making you happy, and is actually making you more stressed, maybe you should consider what’s going on in your head.

Think of yourself as a house. Imagine your mind as the foundation for everything that goes on top to be stable. Build your house without good mind foundations and the house may fall down.

Here are just a few ways in which you can start to explore the power of the mind:

Have Gratitude 

Gratitude focuses on both recognising and appreciating what you have and reminding you of what makes you happy. There are bags of studies highlighting the benefits to working gratitude into your everyday life, such as boosting your mood, managing relationships, coping with negative situations and even improving your health. Everyone has experienced times when they feel aware of being thankful for a person or a situation and the good feeling that brings, and whilst feeling grateful just ‘happens’ sometimes, you can also make a special effort to increase how often you feel it.

It’s super easy to practice more gratitude and it can take no real extra effort or time:

• Start a daily/weekly gratitude journal and note down 1-3 things you are grateful for that day/week. 
• Simply tell people when you are grateful for something they have done or just for them being in your life.
• Take pictures of things that bring you joy and keep a photo roll of them on your phone. Review the roll regularly to remind yourself how great life is!

Meditation

Meditation is a technique to build awareness of your thoughts, emotions/feelings, and body as a whole. Focusing on calming the mind can help you to control your stresses and worries to pull your mind out of it's habitual state of constant processing and connect with the present moment. Through practice you can develop your awareness leading to improvements in many aspects of life, including focus, decision-making, patience, and stress-reduction.

There are loads of resources available to assist with meditation including group practice, one-on-one sessions, online guided meditations and free apps like Calm which can guide you through the process. 

Be Mindful

There’s a lot of focus on mindfulness at the moment largely due to the increasing accessibility via websites, apps and also through medical services. It can help you to live in and be aware of the moment - we naturally have a tendency to ‘multitask’ our thoughts; you might be at the park with your children, but in your mind you are worrying about a problem at work. Being mindful allows you to appreciate the moment. Watching the children enjoying the park, noticing the leaves changing colour, feeling the breeze on your face, rather than being at the park with a small part of your mind and worrying or stressing about something else with the rest. It allows you to focus, temporarily remove stress and potentially feel calmer, happier and more productive. 

The outcome is similar for all of these practices - they ground you in the moment and allow you to control your mind through awareness, resulting in more appreciation for life and the ability to better handle whatever it throws at you.