How to Stop Your Mind From Running (and Possibly Ruining) Your Life
Carl Frederick
Despite what you may have come to believe, your "mind" is not
your friend. And it is not your enemy either. In fact, your
mind can be thought of as nothing more than a machine - a
machine that serves only one purpose: To save and replay those
pictures of the past which it believes will make you survive.
And by "survive" I don't mean just to keep your heart beating.
It is much, much more than that. It includes things like
whether it's OK for you to be sitting in the room you're in;
whether it's OK for you to eat the food that's presented to you;
whether it's OK for you to go 75 mph down the freeway; and so
forth. In fact, your mind is what says it's OK for you to run
your life exactly the way you're running it.
From a "procedural" standpoint, what happens is that you find
yourself presented with a situation wherein you have a choice:
to do it or not to do it. At that point your mind enters the
game, with the old pictures, to check you out. Then it issues
a "Go" or "No Go" decision, based on those pictures from the
past. And every step of the way, as the event unfolds, your
mind maintains the vigil, constantly checking to insure that
you're OK; that you will continue to survive. That you're
right doing what you're doing.
Get this:
Your mind cannot let you be wrong. To do that would threaten
your survival.
Now, you can easily see how your mind comes into play in the
"major" incidents in your life, but I also want you to get that
it interacts with you in all situations - even down to those you
would consider minor or inconsequential to your actual survival.
The key question is whether your mind is accurate for you - that
is, does it in fact serve up those pictures, which actually have
something to do with your survival, or is it screwing you up?
The truth is that when you become conscious of the fact that
your mind is serving up survival pictures from the past - and
then you choose to take a hard look at those pictures - the
effects of them immediately diminish. And if you continue to
look them square in the eye - to "tell it like it is" - the
effects will disappear completely. Because you will then
realize that you have a choice to make: whether or not to let
your pictures of a similar situation continue to run your life.
You have the opportunity to go into your life and validate what
I've just said to you. Take a hard look at whatever you don't
really like about yourself - then sit down somewhere and tell
the truth about it. No more lying to yourself; time to get on
with it. Only after you tell the truth will you come to the
realization that you have total freedom to choose - to stop
letting your old pictures simply run automatically - and that's
where you want to be.
As you can now see, one of the biggest problems with your life
is that you're facing the wrong way. You're looking backwards,
trying to justify what you've already done. And I'm here to
tell you that if you manage to accomplish nothing more than
turning around - facing forward, looking at the present and the
future, you'll be well on your way to winning the game. You'll
see that you have control of your life, and for the first time,
you'll know where you're going. You'll be able to dodge 95% of
the flotsam and jetsam; then really be impressed knowing that
it was you who got you out of the way. Your life will become
easy - effortless - because you'll be riding with the river.
You'll discover that you get the cheese; that you get to win
the games you set up. Without trying to win them.
Carl Frederick is the author of the classic New York Times bestselling book Est : Playing the Game the New Way. He is a former advertising and marketing executive and a graduate of one of the earliest est trainings in 1973. He now pursues his own studies in human potential in the Hawaiian Islands. His website address is http://www.carlfrederick.com
Copyright © 2004 by Carl Frederick. All rights reserved.
Click here for more articles on memory.....
