For a large majority of people, the idea of even having a calm, clear mind, free of racing thoughts, would be a stretch. For those of us who have a tendency to constantly worry (and I include myself in this category), this exhausting experience is further magnified.
What Helps?
Firstly, it is important to realise that our mind's original state was calm.Think about it, have you ever seen a little child wracked with guilt over something they did in the distant past or anxiously biting their nails over planning for their long-term future?
Little children generally tend to live in the present. They have yet to learn our adult habit of being depressed about the past or being anxious about the future.
Secondly, little children tend to focus on what they want, not on what they don't want.
They have yet to learn our adult habit of constantly focussing on what we don't want.
So our mind's natural state is calm, present and focussed on what we truly want.
We have taught ourselves, through years of living in a stressed-out society, how to train our mind to deviate from this natural state.
Whenever we do this, we are resisting our natural state, and so the mind becomes stressed as a way to alert us.
So the question becomes, how do we train our mind to return to its original state of being present, calm and able to focus on what we truly want?
1. Asking the Right Questions, is the Answer.
Whenever I am stressed or frantic, more often than not, it is because I am asking the wrong questions. The mind is like Google, it searches for answers to whatever we request of it.
If we ask it "Why am I so unsuccessful?" it will search for as many answers as it can find to that question.
If we ask it "What can I do to help other people become successful?" it will search for all the answers it can find to that question.
It makes no judgements, merely serving based on the questions we provide.
Choose your dominant questions wisely.
2. Training the Mind
What many people do not realise is that the mind can be trained. Just as we train a muscle by exercising it, we can train the mind to be calm, or to concentrate or to be creative.
The greatest tool I have found for this is meditation.
Meditation or deliberate relaxation simply means to focus on one thing with all our energy: physical, mental and emotional. So we see it that some people meditate on money, others on their house or car, whilst some choose to focus on their relationships and their children.
Importantly, meditation is not another thing to do, it is an invitation to stop doing. The irony here is that when you learn how to train your mind through meditation, you are actually able to get more done and the quality with which you do it is far higher.
It used to take years of discipline to develop the ability to achieve the states of mind where real relaxation or meditative experiences take place and even longer to reach the lower levels where natural healing can occur. Now, thanks to the latest advanced audio technology, all you have to do is put on your headphones and press play and you can literally re-train your mind from a stressful or anxious state to a calm, peaceful and focused one, where you naturally are able to perform at your best and live life to the full.
Consistency is important here, and dedicating 20 minutes a day (preferably in the morning) can yield remarkable results. Many meditation programmes offer guided meditations, where someone shows you what to do, until you can "wing it" on your own.
3. Clearing Emotional Baggage
This is a big one if you want to see real results quickly.
Our mind constantly records our experiences and stores them in the "boot of our mind," also known as our memory bank.
If we have negative emotional experiences, these are stored in our memory bank and are the black garbage bags that stink up the place, the longer they remain there.
These negative emotional garbage bags also form blocks in our mind, consistently holding us back, halting our success and hampering our ability to have a calm, clear mind.
There are many great ways to release suppressed emotional issues. It really helps to find someone who is trained in how to do this and knows what they are doing. Emotional issues usually stem from a first cause and build up from there. For more on how this works: click here. This is the beginning of a series of articles on the mind. In the following posts we will look at how to clear out the negative emotional baggage, choose your mood at will and how to programme your mind with constructive ideas to help you
These are only three ways to help you return your mind to its original state of calm, clear focus. What are the ways that have worked for you?
Christopher Drummond lives in Cape Town, South Africa on a small holding which has it's own organic fruits and vegetables and solar power. As a certified NLP trainer and Coach, he writes for Real-Wellness.net - a site dedicated to provding simple, natural ways to live a healthy life.
For more info: http://www.real-wellness.net/how-to-have-a-calm-mind-part-1/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_A_Drummond
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