Train Your Mind to Be Stronger:Unlock Mental Power
Train Your Mind to Be Stronger:Unlock Mental Power emotionally, one of my friends was crying for help. Cancelling a meetup with her was enough of a disaster for her to break down completely. What I perceived to be a simple task gave her, quite literally, a reason to throw a tantrum. Things like this would make her emotionally fragile, causing her to burst into tears.
More than this, I remember giving her a calm and rational warning. How does one expect to face challenges head-on, if even the simplest inconvenience will send them off the edge? The world does not pause for any of us, and ready or not… life is coming our way.
My friend’s reply frustrated me so much that I chose to dedicate this write-up for her. What she said is what most of us tend to perceive in a rather flawed way. According to my friend’s words, she is trying to make sense of what is for sure a very heavy burden—unhealthy habits—and is attempting to rectify them in the following way:
- Avoid all situations of high stress.
- Ensure emotions like sobbing do not occur while doing the avoidance.
You do reach a conclusion when a challenge presents itself: stress is something you need to steer clear from and *do* require shifting in the heat of the moment—and should the need arise, you shift in the moment, which ultimately leads to zero success.
These “solutions” may seem to make sense immediately. It makes sense to attempt to alleviate stress from your life and focus on building good habits instead of breaking bad ones. But trying this will ultimately end in failure.
We cannot simply change our behavior at will whenever we want. Human beings are not robots. There is always a foundation of experiences that a person is conditioned to throughout their life, and, as shown in relation to age, the older one becomes, the more set in their ways they are likely to be.
You are still able to make a change. It just means you need to shift your strategy.
The Mind’s Impact on Human Behavior
To begin with, this mode of reasoning, like all others, suffers from the philosophical mistake known as the false dilemma. The situation where one is restricted to only two choices, when in fact, other options exist and they have simply been disregarded.
In the above example, the fallacy is my friend assuming that she has to either deal with or avoid a confrontation and, should she not avoid a confrontation, then she will lose her temper or act out by changing her behavior on the spot.
Given such constraining choices, it is reasonable to say that one may want to optimize the best result from the worst scenario. However, these thought patterns in black and white shapes have been restricting her from solving the core problem.
The best and the simplest method for solving a problem is ignoring it and walking away, which does not resolve the issue at hand. Just like all things, fleeing makes the problem escalate, ultimately rendering it more frightening.
The reality my friend was grappling with was not as complicated as the circumstances she came across. As I have mentioned earlier, in more often than not, these were completely trivial happenings. The actual issue was a rather unstable emotional state, something strongly associated with her personality traits, rather than the experiences she went through.
Avoiding all such situations is not an option because there really are no single scenarios to avoid. There is no particular trigger. And even if there was, the way to foster a better mental resolve is to confront your challenges – the idea is not to evade them incessantly until you cross paths with bothersome scenarios. This is life – problems are endless.
As I noted earlier, changing any behavior that has become habitual is impossible, especially active emotional responses. Once a situation has been perceived and reasoned about emotionally, the mental state has already shifted, making logical reasoning impossible to access. Emotional reasoning and logic are mutually exclusive.
You have been conditioned to respond that way, and escaping such a bond at will is unattainable, unless you possess an ability to turn an “off” switch.
In psychology, this phenomenon is referred to as a mental association, which is correlating two different states of mind. While oftentimes this serves as the main culprit for many problems concerning our attitude and behavior, it can be just as useful when applied in the form of a solution.
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Make New Connections With Other Thoughts To Rewire Your Brain
The phenomenon of association operates based on a current mental state evoking a recollection of previous events and exclaims, “Wait a minute. This looks like that other thing I did before, and this is how I reacted back then! Let’s do that again!” The more often a reaction is repeated, the stronger the bond between them becomes.
(As I hope is obvious, this happens without any of the steps requiring conscious thought.)
So if she has a matching insight, she will reflect on the appropriate actions taken in the past and assume that the prior response was the appropriate way of dealing with the situation (hysterical and throwing tantrums).
In psychology, association serves as the foundation for numerous theories, perhaps none more infamous than Pavlov’s dog and classical conditioning.
Yet therein lies the riddle: the outcome reflects the behavior, and the problem is the solution. The contradiction is that while we do not perceive ourselves as robots equipped with an “ON/OFF” button, we can definitively claim that we have been programmed to respond in a specific, repetitive manner.
To change your mindset, the actual approach is to do the same method consciously, which in this case is actively changing one’s behavior.
What needs to be made clear is that doing this in the heat of the moment gives you almost no chance of success whatsoever. The point is to get ready and program yourself to respond to alter your response in situations where you don’t have a trigger, situation, or risk.
The same goes for physical training.
You cannot lift an object that is too heavy for you all at once, so if I were to make that request right now, you wouldn’t be able to comply. You can instead condition yourself to lift heavier objects over time, allowing you to meet my request. This is a gradual form of preparation, allowing you to surpass your previous limits.
In the words of Aristotle (more or less): “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Excellence is a construct built by practicing the same thing repeatedly, while at the same time, being stuck in a certain mindset that needs to change. Life is not simply a walk in the park. If you ignore problems that come your way, you will eventually need to deal with them head-on. On the contrary, if you embrace discomfort and actively place yourself in challenging situations when you do not have to, you are far more likely to be adept at tackling related challenges down the road.
Mind Training: Solutions for Combatting Nyctophobia
While everything mentioned up until now could be classified and neatly filed away under “science”, it is not geared towards solving your individualized problem. Going as far as saying, “who cares?” when putting on a psychological label onto something doesn’t prompt any interest to you. The real concern is, how does this assist you?
Let me tell you how it aided me. You can use my narrative to witness all the principles I described in practice.
As long as I can remember, I have always had an irrational fear of the dark. The moment light goes out, I would begin to imagine terrifying scenarios playing out in the most vivid forms. This would, naturally, result in constant anxiety, dread, feelings of unsafety, and a lot of sleepless nights.
This fear has, unfortunately, traveled with me to my teenage years because of how entrenched it is. Unlike in my younger years, I wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark as I was in my childhood. However, the moderate level of anxiety still persisted. Being in a dark room, especially alone, gave me intense discomfort.
I always reminded myself, logically, that there was nothing there to begin with and I wasn’t posing any danger to myself. However, every time I found myself in dimly lit places with bad lighting, I remember my mind going into overdrive with scenes from every horror movie I’s watched, completely taking over my rationality, and fully convincing me of a world where terrible events were bound to happen. To put it simply, it was impossible to think rationally because the need to feel emotion took control instead.
Like my friend from the start, I fell victim to my programming like a moth to a flame. I put in my best efforts in avoiding dark areas. Moreover, I did my best to try to keep the darkness away from my life as much as I could. When it dawned on me that it wasn’t possible, I told myself, “Next time it gets dark, I will simply choose not to be scared.”
Surprisingly, none of that worked. However, I chose to take a step back and assess my situation and recognize the psychological pattern I had constructed over the years. More importantly, I made the decision to utilize the same strategy that I was accustomed to, but this time in order to counteract the effects.
So, I opted for a different strategy: For some reason, I decided to take up the offer of being in darkness when I did not need to be in the dark.
Thus, when going down the staircase of my building, I skipped turning on the light.
If I was able to go under the street lights while walking home, I moved to the dark section of the alley.
During the times I spent home alone, I would gaze at the darkness with light shining around me on three sides. I took one step and then two steps into the darkness. Eventually, I found myself in the middle of a dark room surrounded by nothing except complete darkness, and to my surprise, I was okay with it.
I created a blend of self-inflicted exposure therapy—exposure therapy used for treating anxiety disorders—grounded in associational psychology, which leverages how someone’s mind makes connections to beliefs, memories, and emotions, where memories and emotions can trigger different associations with each other.
Asking yourself, “Can you do it?” is inherently rhetorical. Of course you can.
No achievement of that nature ever starts effortlessly, effortless comforts don’t exist. Discovering discomfort becomes your motivator.
I don’t recall ever feeling as great as when I stood in complete darkness as a kid. I use darkness as an emotion gauge. The first time exposed to any of these exercises, I highly discomforted myself. It became a test of survival. There was no paint with rose-colored glasses. Each try shifted my paradigm bit by bit. This cycle persisted and my brain did the rest of the work. In no time, I associated darkness with nothingness—not fear.
Now, as I prepare to sleep, there is no discomfort whatsoever. I do not conjure up blood and gore, nor do I check for ghastly silhouettes in my room. My mindset has shifted along with my perception, health, personal happiness, and now, life fundamentals.
My life story does illustrate frightful tales, but in reality, focus is what highly tends to disturb peace – be it criticizing remarks, brutal reviews, yelling, panicking, or anything else. A more relevant principle involves the connection between cause (A) and consequence (B). Work towards linking cause (A) with different behavior (C).
Achieving a peaceful state of mind does not occur in an instant; this doesn’t happen overnight: cultivating or breaking safe habits, changing perception, or even shifting mental frameworks all take time.
Like addiction, this takes time. The first step involves detoxing from harmful substances to clear the system, allowing access to a fresh mindset. Once this personal reset button is hit, it becomes possible to start sculpting the desired psyche and personality.
Even if you feel like you’re unmovable and not changeable, don’t give up all hope. You’re probably just attempting it the wrong way.
Try following strategies in this article to become a better version of yourself. You absolutely deserve it.
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