“There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self-respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King.” – Orison Swett Marden
YOUR MENTAL SELF is unique to you. Nobody is your duplicate. Nobody thinks exactly like you. Before birth you were extremely special to God and that has and will not change no matter the environment in which you may have grown up.
In previous weeks I intimated how important it is to befriend your physical as well as your emotional self. Today I am turning the spotlight on befriending your mental self.
The Cambridge Dictionary describes the mind as: “the part of a person that makes it possible for him or her to think, feel emotions, and understand things”.
Your mental self is like a house given to you which is equipped with a high-tech security gate of which you have total control. Within the house there are several rooms that contain invaluable treasures not only to be protected but also with the potential to produce greater assets.
You possess the awesome responsibility to determine what is clean or corrupt, destructive or developmental, pure or putrid, wonderful or wicked, valuable or vile to enter or exit your house. You must therefore be continuously vigilant knowing that the destiny of your treasure will be determined by the kind of decisions you make.
Since your mental self is so crucial you may ask: how can I safeguard and at the same time bring what is splendid to it? Here are three concepts to consider.
Purging
Everything that helped shape your mental self from birth was not determined by you. Your parents, relatives, school, religion, culture, and other influences for the most part “walked” through the open gate of your mind, especially during your formative years.
For some of you, many of those influences may have been delightful while for others they may have been demeaning. The delightful exposure most likely produced a sense of security while the degrading exposure brought feelings of sorrow.
As you move away from childhood, there are some habits with which you grew to accept and practised that may not be useful for you on your life’s journey. Purposely deciding over time to purge your mental self of such past behaviours will give you a greater degree of autonomy over what is precious for you to embrace.
Blaming people, places and possessions or lack thereof, will get you nowhere. You must take full ownership of your mental self and cultivate a friendship with it for your future development. Purging your mental self is of paramount importance, but taking the next step of programming that mind should not be viewed lightly.
Programming
Someone once said that developing a habit does not take place overnight. It takes about three months of regular and intelligent practice for the habit to become an integral part of one’s behaviour.
Poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau agreed and put it this way: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” Well put.
In order to accomplish effective programming of your mental self, expanding your knowledge base is not optional but essential. You should cultivate an appetite to understand the times in which you live and set goals consistent with such times, ever mindful of the fact that if you do not know where you want to go, you may become easy prey for those who may take you where they think you should travel.
Keep your mental self youthful. Entrepreneur Henry Ford said: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” Great wisdom.
Read a lot, research a lot, follow current affairs, be critical in your thinking, listen carefully to what leaders are not saying by what they are saying.
Have an open mind but never be gullible. Some of you may have to seek professional help to provide you with tools with which to process past difficult issues.
The more you programme your mental self to absorb sound knowledge, the happier your mental self would become and the sharper your life’s focus will be. Although purging and programming your mental self is crucial, without protecting this valuable asset, all other efforts may fall miserably on their faces.
Protecting
In this day when foolishness is famous and wisdom is in a desperate search for followers, it is even more important to protect our mental self from opportunists, some of whose goal is to own your minds.
In order to befriend your mental self, protect it with some impenetrable core values which may include but are not limited to unconditional love, integrity, honesty, humility and truth.
Core values are those fundamentals that will govern your life and give it clear definition and direction. When these values become an integral part of your thinking and conduct, it becomes very difficult to be swayed away from what you believe to be valuable and virtuous.
Secondly, habitually foster a positive outlook on life; the kind that will engender hope in times of hopelessness, transform trials into triumphs and alter what is painful to something profitable.
Continuously feeding your mental self with positives is underscored in the Apostle Paul’s words to the Philippians in Chapter 4 and Verse 8 of the Holy Bible. He said that those things that are true, reverent, honourable, just, pure, lovely, lovable, kind, winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue, excellence, or praiseworthiness emerging from them, you should fix your mind on them.
When your mental self is constantly fed with these gems it is amazing what positive and productive individuals you will become and what tremendous optimistic impact you will have on others.
Joyce Meyer was right when she said: “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.”
• Haynesley Griffith is a marriage and family life consultant. Email: [email protected]
