Stairway to a Healthy Mindset
It’s widely acknowledged that a healthy body equals a healthy mind. To an extent, I do feel it’s true, however, healthy body is not the only thing that makes your mind healthy. A person weighing 250 pounds may have an extremely healthy mind and vice-versa, an extremely fit person may have a gloomy or cynical outlook to everything in life. So, what’s the definition of a healthy mind ?
For starters, anyone who can harness positive energy, can control their thought process and explore any information with a wide horizon. It is a state of mind that has the power to change negative thoughts and feelings into positive, rational, motivating thoughts. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you have to think positively all the time and ignore all the unpleasant situations by keeping your head in the sand! Moreover, it’s about interpreting & adapting a particular situation in the best possible way.
In the current scenario where Covid19 has grasped the entire World in its fist, healthy mindset has become more of a necessity & need of the hour in order to sustain such unprecedented and challenging times. Although, I completely understand that it’s easier said than done. To attain that state of mind, it takes years of honing and even after that you can’t be sure about it since we are talking about the most complicated invisible part of human body — MIND! However, I feel that the world could use all the positivity and vigour in times like these and hence, felt the need to write and share my perspective on this topic. Maybe, it might act as a silver lining in the scenario full of paranoia, fear & negativity to a few of them!
To be honest, I have a long way to go in order to achieve that idealistic healthy state of mind, however, can definitely tell a thing or two about certain nitty-gritty based on my hands on experiences. People who know me closely always tell me how my full of energy attitude is infectious and ask me how do I keep myself motivated or positive all the time even in the most grim situations. Let me slip you a secret! I also feel the same way like everyone else and get my spirits very low, however, as funny & creepy as it may sound, I talk to my mind and resolve the conflicts as soon as possible and get myself back in spirits in no time. This means that I can navigate my mind to an extent and control it instead of the same controlling me back. Hence, I am able to curb negative thoughts, paranoia, arrogance, ego, fear, etc to an extent. Let’s take it step by step..
One of the primary difference between a healthy and an unhealthy mindset is how they manage fear. Let me walk you through my analysis of inner obstacles that stand between you & healthy mind and how to overcome them!
1. Overcoming Fear
Everyone has fear! But having fear is not the problem. It’s how you handle fear. In the current state of things, there is no dearth in the amount of fear that can be generated. It acts like a parasite and believe me, it’s the most powerful emotion that multiplies instantly. Even a bit of fear injected in our minds can change vibrant mood into a sluggish one in a matter of seconds. The sad / unfortunate truth is that human mind attracts fear and it tends to share the same with other people, which hereby causes a chain reaction. People die more from the fear than the disease! In all honesty, the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself, so why fear?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking to cloud your thoughts and run away from what’s happening around — that’s a cowardice behaviour. It’s very important to keep yourself well informed of what’s going on and digest the fear induced information shared by your friends, relatives, media, print or anyone for that matter. Information or whatever you consume is not a problem, the problem is the fear associated with it or mounting in your mindset. Hence, the only way to break fear is to keep it from multiplying. There is a thin line between sharing your opinions and sharing your fear.
There are two things I follow! One — Whenever fear starts mounting in my mind, I consume it, don’t share it with anyone and do something that makes me happy. Once I know that fear won’t cloud my thoughts, I start perceiving about the same. From this perspective, an age-old question comes to my mind that is “Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” The answer to this question may reflect on your life, your attitude towards yourself and other situations, whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic. Second — whenever, there is a fear or negativity in discussions or conversations, I generally try to break that by expressing my positive outlook to it. There are times when people embrace it and times when they get irritated since I am trying to break the pattern. These ways have definitely helped my mindset and it’s health till now, to say the least!
There is a famous saying “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die”. See, it’s like Murphy’s law — things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance. Fear only worsens the situation, propagating the same won’t help anyone!
2. Overcoming Cynicism
All of us have doubts “I’m not smart.” “I’m not good enough.” “So-and-so is better than me.” Our doubts often paralyse us. We play the “What if?” game. “What if the economy crashes right after I invest?” “What if things don’t go as I planned?” And, cynicism anyway is increasing way too much because of uncertainties surrounding the World. Uncertainties leads to doubts and doubts often get so loud that we fail to act, creating a horrible feeling in our stomach. It often takes great courage to not let rumours and talk of doom and gloom affect your doubts and fears.
Cynicism is toxic. It robs you of happiness. You’re obsessed with the idea that the world is set to disappoint you, so you might as well turn your back to it first. And with people locked down to their respective homes, losing their jobs and what not due to Covid19— cynical mindset is more prone to depression! Hence, it’s very crucial to remove the same from roots.
To be honest, I also thought that I had it all planned until end of March when a wave of uncertainty hit me too and ruined all my planning. I went into that cynical mode for 3 hours. Well, if not for healthy mindset, it would have taken me weeks to come out of this turmoil. However, my positivity and energy helped me get back on feet, look at the problem in a different way and make a joke out of it :) My scenario is nowhere close to the problems people across the World are facing. Nevertheless, big or small, it’s never easy!
The unfortunate thing about negative thoughts is that they have a stronger impact on your mind than positive thoughts. In fact, the negative impact of a setback in your work has three times the impact on your motivation than any positive progress that you make.
It’s simply easier to ruminate on the bad things that have happened to you than the good. Become aware of the positive things happening around you instead. Whenever you find yourself having negative thoughts or comments, counter them with positive, uplifting ones.
3. Overcoming Laziness
Laziness is a state of mind! Let me explain by an example. The human spirit is very powerful and it knows it can do anything. By having a lazy mind that says “I can’t do it”, a war breaks out inside you. Lazy mind tries to manipulate the spirit in believing that it’s a lie. The spirit is screaming “Come on. Let’s wake up early, do exercises and create a schedule” And the lazy mind says “But I’m tired. I worked really hard yesterday and was up till late night”. So, it’s a state where you want to make a change, however, your mind find ways to create an excuse and feel good about it. But, at the end of the day, you are succumbed to an unhealthy thinking which includes fear, cynicism and so on!
With work from home becoming a norm across the world, laziness is bound to kick in after a point. One of the most effective ways to kill this lazy mindset is to live each day at a time and not think about how life will turn out in this pandemic or post that. With growing uncertainty, it would be foolish for one to have quarterly, six monthly or yearly goals for now. Hence, adapt as per the current situation and focus on daily and broad level monthly goals. Believe me, it works! Your daily tasks that you may jot down in trello or any task management tool, can be a combination of personal and professional tasks. Things like painting, dancing, cooking, utensil cleaning, writing, increasing your skillset through some course, workout, playing PUBG, COD or Ludo, watching a movie, etc can also be added in your list of daily things to do. You may also allocate time against it if you want. The inner satisfaction of completion of any task and crossing it out provides mental peace and a sense of purpose — which is of utmost importance for one to achieve a healthy mindset!
Human mind is very agile. Hence, to change or improve anything, you got to control and train it. I am not asking you to live like a robot, however, my emphasis is on three magical words — Focus, Concentration & Discipline! The reason I call them magical is because optimum attainment of these three can significantly improve your productivity and kill laziness! Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.
The difficult part about improving discipline, concentration and focus is remembering to improve them and keep improving them, despite the temptation to stop. It is also important not to listen to your mind, which might put some resistance, since it does not like change and does not like to be disciplined.
Healthy mindset is very crucial irrespective of the current situation and hence, this article merely reflects few of my thoughts, experiences and opinions around the same. Depression is a global condition and unhealthy mindset is the primary reason for it. As I said, world needs more positivity and high energetic people to ensure sustainability. We had, we have & we shall pass through these difficult times together 🤘
