HAPPY MINDS TO JOYFUL LIVING - TAMING THE BEAST

We have looked in our previous blogs, what is the apt relationship to maintain with our mind ? and why we need to maintain so?. In the current blog we look at, what is commonly referred to as the chatter of the mind.

MIND'S CHATTER TO MINDFULNESS

We talked about the constant information pounding of the mind, What does this result in ? More information being stored and memory links forming over time. One of the major consequences of this is the amplification of the existing chatter in the mind.

CHATTER or THOUGHTS

Until now we have not touched upon the subtle aspect of the mind which is the "thoughts". The seemingly unorganized and repeated thoughts and it pattern's are generally referred to as the chatter.

Everyone hears, see them for themselves and understands what is going on. The inner voice is a constant companion, never fixed ever changing, moving from one extreme to another. Like it or not constantly going on.

An everlasting bind ?

As we have seen earlier the memory links are created by the five mediums (sight, sound, touch, taste and smell). While alone, or in a midst of thousand's of people, or in any activity, we observe that the chatter goes on unceasingly.

The chatter main source is the memory links in the mind. There is a self repeating cycle going on, we pound the mind with more information, which leads to more memory links, which leads to more chatter. So with constant new memory links being added every moment the chatter box has unending supply of content to run over.

The binding which the thought has over the person is like a strong glue holding together two ends of the same piece of paper. Try separating it with force you will end up tearing the paper. These bindings are natural but improperly handled, this binding can be a source for extreme pain.

We are bound to our thoughts in a very loyal manner, and as if they are sacrosanct and we rarely question the thoughts. There is a deep significance to the pervious sentence, we can introspect why we don't pose any question or even better do question them.

Chatter and its impacts

We don't engage with all the thought which enters the mind, we engage with only a certain type of thoughts. Identifying what are these thoughts we are engaging with, helps determining the type of person we are, the needs we have. Certainly just by tracking our preferences online social media companies know what sort of behavior we exhibit !

For the chatter to not have any impact a person, the person has to be a strong hard steely rock headed person. Almost all people are impacted by the thoughts one way or the other. Everyone handles them differently. Generally to mitigate the impact we identify with some thoughts and neglect others. This picking and choosing of the thoughts is building blocks of what we call as our personality.

Our personality is in a sense a reflection of the information we have taken in from the surroundings, both the physical surrounding (location where the individual is) and the mental surroundings(the type of things we see, listen to, read, hear including social media content).

Obviously if we can see how our personalities are build, we can be more loose and flexible with it, not be too rigid about it. There are lot are personality disorders going around, certainly we could loose a few  for the better!

What to do with this constant chatter ?

For an untrained mind or a mind not attended to, the mind wanders here and there, clinging to random thoughts, lot many things can be done to handle this, it all lies with the individual's will. Always the question is not how ? But a question if there is the will ? 

We live in times in which action is the king and with people being involved in loads of activity and the sheer volume of the activities has lead to a prevailing mindset, why fix if its ain't broken  ? Unless there is distress and discomfort with the present situation the will to deal with the inner chatter is limited in scope.

Choose the best

On keen observation we see that based on our current state of mind we choose to engage with the thoughts which are similar in nature. So in a way if we change the present mindset we can have a different perspective on the past events and the future events.

All the self analysis tools and tricks are aimed at this fundamentals behavior of the mind, "that by influencing the present mindset we can influence perspective the person has on the past and future events". This barely and rarely scratches the surface, it does not go to the root cause of the issue. Ironically the behavior of the mind is consistent and same across all cultures, regions and people.

The observation of the mind is an activity to be taken up by every individual, this is not a domain exclusive to the people involved in the profession of working with the mind. It is one of the basic steps that people should take if they are serious about mental health.

Prevention is better than cure

Its a reflection of the times we live in we need external chemicals to address the depression and other mental diseases we are facing, if we look mind as a machine, without care and/or improper maintenance the machine is bound to beak down.

Taking little steps each day and creating healthy habits will go a long way to improve the mental illness. If we are hesitant for small realignment of preferred habits that we stick to, we will be intensifying the  mental issues and will be left with no choice but to ingest and collaborate with a conglomeration of chemicals into the human system (Medication) to be sane. And that is not without its side effects!

The path to a joyous living can be made simple , lets do what we can to create a happy mind and a joyful life.