MASTERY OF THE MIND, PT. 1

The psyche is a place of the metaphysical, but also very tangible. Someone who is in a joyful point in their timeline—you’ll see it on their faces, in their reflexes, their body composition, the sound of their voice, the flicker in their eyes. Someone who is distraught can sometimes be mistaken for someone on a mission… But the distraught’s face tells a story too. Their posture is weak and defeated looking. Gravity seems to pull their eyes and spine towards the earth at all times. The muscles in their face struggle to force some weird cousin of a smile. It’s truly quite obvious. We tend to notice the broken one more. To feel, is to be seen at times. Your mindset and circumstances can become a display in a glass case—the CRT TVs in the old shop windows that people always seem to stop & watch in films.

The mind should be protected above all else, then, considering our entire existence is effected by how we feel. The research continues to come out on how longterm onset depression and anxiety literally causes your body to break down. We need happy chemicals, or we die a lot faster. This happens to animals, too. But enough of the doom and gloom, here’s some of what I’ve found to shift your engine into a better gear.

This is usually where the hook goes in those self-help articles that you read on Google after your breakup. “How do I become happy again?” literally two days after ending the most important relationship you’ve ever known. The solution is always: Get moving! Start climbing mountains! Talk to your mom! Eat garlic toast! Cutaway: You’re not a fish. I’m here to share a conglomerate of what I’ve discovered through personal experience, what I’ve learned from (hundreds of) others, and how to save your soul! Or just find joy in things again.

BIG IDEA #1: Get your heart broken. Beat it into your head that blood bleeds and you’re going to fail. Egotistical people hate this one trick!

Listen to enough TED Talks and you’ll understand that heartbreak is the foundation for a metamorphosis, baby. All those big buzzword names went through it and then made a zillion dollars. I felt like I was asleep at the wheel before I got my heart ripped out and thrown down the IT Clown’s sewer drain. Took me 4 years of searching to find it again. But when I did, man it felt like my frontal cortex was doubled. The self awareness was blinding, and the desire to do the right thing always was injected into my bloodstream. But really, the point is here that you need to humanize yourself and not pretend you’re some kind of Greek god. The statistical probability that you’ll suck at a lot of things (at first) is against you in a big way—against everyone, really. “To err is to be human,” said some dude named Alexander Pope. The biggest oxymoron is that as soon as you stick with it and eventually get it, you’ll be confident in failing. And after you become confident in failing, instead of curling up into a ball, you’ll actually start failing less. It’s like the anxiety and fear of failing is the biggest issue that truly causes you to fail. Like that one episode in Bob’s Burgers where Tina hits the only car in a huge parking lot. And that fear will paralyze and it’ll keep you from even trying things. What if your calling is something you’re too scared to try?

BIG IDEA #2: Delete your social media. Any form of it where you post something for the judgment or interest of others.

You’re really going to struggle with #1 if you don’t get the absolute cancer that is social media out of your life. I’m not going to beat the horse more—you know its terrible for you and makes you feel like garbage. And if you don’t think that, delete it anyway and see how it’s actually occurring somewhere in your life. Snapchat is for children. Instagram has turned into some dystopian competition for who offers the least amount of value to the world. Facebook is for the lost. There is not a single positive thing that social media offers you. It is literally designed to mimic addiction to narcotics in its heavy users. And narcotics aren’t really even designed to be addictive, they just are addictive naturally. Imagine how evil a corporation is to design addiction. And if the people who you talk to on there are really worth your time, they’ll contact you outside of a website like real adults do. I kept mine for YEARS worrying that I’ll never hear from those people. And life is copacetic either way.

BIG IDEA #3: You’ve got to fix your sleep and diet or you’re always going to flounder and see yourself unworthy of greatness.

If you’re not aware by now, sleep is literally not an option. And I don’t mean four hours, I mean eight plus. I literally write this on four-five hours of sleep, and I hate it here. I prioritize sleep big time because it eviscerates my mental health when I’m exhausted. I always try to get a restful sleep before I try to label my life as sucking. One day at a time, or something. In fact, there’s really always some reason why your brain is telling you life it is sucking. And very rarely are those things that we cannot take action on. Clean your bathroom, dude, and you’ll feel so much better about your life. Diet is also crazy important: at the bare minimum, lets avoid diabetes. On a growth level, stop all fast food, soda, energy drinks, smoking and alcohol. Let your body burn off the bad chemicals, sugar and additives. And the size you ACTUALLY are will emerge after all the bloating subsides. Sugar causes body-wide inflammation. And if you’re really hardcore, you’ll stop dairy too. It’s hard to explain to someone whose in that matrix that your relationship with your psyche increases like crazy when it knows you’re intentionally feeding it proper whole foods and giving it what it needs to operate efficiently. I had a mind-numbing energy drink addiction that was bordering on alcoholism—I was chasing that dopamine high. Now I can’t touch them or its literally a slope back into addiction. They bloat me, cause brain fog, fatigue, and keep me up at night.

Not to mention just the problems you’re giving your body by ingesting fake food and poison—alcohol. You’re telling yourself, “This is what I deserve—garbage. I’m a sewer rat.”

BIG IDEA #4: The things you daydream about need to become your objective.

No, not material things. Nothing beyond the security that an operating car, not leaking roof, and reasonable supply of food provide. Yes living comfortable is a goal, but its not everything. A better house, car or hotter girlfriend is not going to fix your glaring issues. You’ll probably just be a dude with a lot of debt and a future ex-wife. You can earn those things. Literally anyone can. The people who have them aren’t special. Sure, some of them were handed it from their parents (and I mean a lot of them), but most of them are just people who took a look at what it takes to get there, and turned on auto-pilot to get there. That means the meal prepping, the regular gym sessions, the bike rides, the reading, the writing, the financial disciplines, the internal work so you STOP SELF-SABOTAGING. You self-sabotage because you don’t believe you’re NOT worthy of what your heart desires, man. So you need to work on letting yourself breathe and understand that everyone deserves another shot—or a thousand. Give yourself grace and peace. You can start at any time.

There’s a lot more to mastering the mind, but this is the beginning based on my perception. This is what I did to figure things out and realize what my 200-lb self is capable of. Now I can live in peace AND lay a beatdown on those who try to trip me up—kidding. Chew on this while I get something to eat, and we’ll reconvene on this at a later date…

SJ ROBERTSON

Dad, outdoorsman, washed-up author on a comeback.

https://www.reflectandreason.com
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The FUNERAL FOR THE DEAD RELATIONSHIP(S)