Understand the games your mind plays

With passage of time and growth in age, one learns that what we think influences what we feel; and what we feel influences what we express and how we behave. But it takes a lot of effort to watch your own thoughts dispassionately, and understand this. It requires a very high maturity and emotional strength to understand this.

Our own mind plays games with us by shaping our thinking, our beliefs, our values and our conduct. And then there are people, some of them toxic, who try to play games with your mind.

The humankind must have understood this very early in it’s evolution and perhaps that is the genesis of religion and spirituality. In today’s day and age, almost everything that happens around us is designed to stimulate our minds in a certain way, and make us behave in a way that the originator of the given stimulus wants us to.

This is true of politicians, spiritual gurus, healers, marketers, support groups, artists, film producers, and the list goes on to include our employers and managers and many others.

The mind also behaves in ways that it has been programmed to, since the childhood. Our affinity for certain food items, or substances, or certain types of places or people, stems from the way we were conditioned in our formative years.

If one can understand this and look at it without being affected by it, one can actually change one’s level of happiness and quality of life. It may sound intriguing and difficult but it’s possible.

These are just some top of mind thoughts that came up tonight after I heard a webinar and then read an unrelated article. Let me know your thoughts on this. Perhaps I will build on this theme in subsequent posts.