Do You Mind?
So the other day I made the decision to go skydiving.
Published in
7 min readFeb 10, 2022
I’m terrified of heights, so I’m not sure where my mind was in this whole situation, but this is how it went down.
My friend and I arrived at the place where this whole thing was to start.
It was quite stunning, a lodge in a forest that offered all sorts of adventure sports for crazy people to partake in.
It was also early in the morning, so there was a sort of hazy dawn light hanging over the place, making it look kind of magical, and I could smell the freshness of dew on the grass.
I remember thinking “What the heck am I doing here?”, and then thinking that I was wearing a red shirt, so if something went wrong while I was in the air, at least people would see me coming.
We walked in (surprisingly confidently), and told the lady with the lime green sweater behind the counter that we were here to jump out of a plane. She directed us to the crowd of nervous looking people standing on the patio just outside the sliding door to our right.
We sauntered through the door to join them, and I felt a little better that I was not the most nervous looking one there, by a long way.
There was one dude who was actually bouncing. Hopping up and down on the spot, with his hands on his head. I felt a mixture of pity and relief.
Just a few hundred metres from where we were standing (or hopping, in Nervous Dude’s case), began the forest.
Pine trees, tall and packed close together, a shade of green that was brighter than you’d expect in the soft light.
This is memorable, because my mind went back to my red shirt, and I whispered to my friend (who was, I might add, far more confident than I) that the red would stand out nicely against the green if they had to search for my body later.
The morning stillness was soon broken by the drone of a plane. Nervous Dude’s hopping increased in tempo.
There was a really tiny runway that none of us had actually seen, and the plane landed nicely there. We filed towards it in total silence, and before I knew it we were sitting in the plane, up in the air, kitted out in parachutes and suits made of weird material. Everyone had rather robotic looks on their faces, except Nervous Dude, who had his head in his hands.
The rest is a blur.
- I remember thinking that the view was incredible.
- I can recall that weird little bounce of my heart as I stepped off the solid floor and into nothingness.
- The feeling of falling.
Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllling.
And then …
I felt a jolt, a moment of absolute panic, and then -
I woke up, sprawled on my bed like I’d just landed there.
Ha. Yep. A dream.
I wasn’t sure whether to be ecstatic or disappointed.
I mean, I was ecstatic. But also a little annoyed at myself because I was kind of proud that I was facing my fears and all that.
I thought I was going to tick that off my bucket list, and instead, it was all in my head.
(Who am I kidding though, that was never on my bucket list to begin with.)
I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m sharing the weird things in my subconscious mind with you.
As much as this dream left me (in equal parts) freaked out and disappointed, it reminded me of the immense power we hold in our own minds.
Even thinking back now, I can remember the nervousness I felt waiting on that patio. I can see the bright red of my shirt. I can picture Nervous Guy hopping up and down, I can recall the green of the pine trees, the scent of the dew.
It was like I was really there.
All of the things I was experiencing are things that I’ve experienced before. In different situations of course, but I’ve felt nervous. I’ve been to a lodge in the mountains. I’ve worn red. I have smelled the scent of dew and seen the early morning haze over pine trees.
My brain was just applying these things that it’s familiar with to the situation in my dream.
And when I woke up, I felt them all over again. Fear, anxiety, my heart pounding.
Isn’t the brain an amazing thing?
It has so much power harnessed up there, it can actually physically change your body based on what you’re thinking.
I was fast asleep. My body should have been at rest, calm. But no, because of what was going on in my brain, it was agitated and alert.
Do you realise what this means?
…
We can use our brains to change things.
Wow. That’s a serious statement.
Do you realise how much your thoughts can affect your everyday life?
There is a multitude of material out there that points to the power of your thoughts. Books like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Super Brain by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi all discuss what amazing powers are just waiting to be unleashed in your own mind.
Podcasts, TED talks, webinars, audiobooks. The realisation that you can transform your world by harnessing that power in your mind has hit us.
The problem is …
It all sound fantastic and life changing until you try it.
It’s hard.
Most of the day we actually have no idea what goes on in our own minds.
Our minds control us. Not the other way around.
Therein lies the problem with the whole mind power thing.
So how do we start getting a grip on our own minds, so that we can make full use of them and start shaping our own realities?
It’s a step by step process, and doesn’t happen overnight.
Here are some tips to help you start taking control of your own mind.
1) Give Yourself A Pep Talk
There’s this saying about you being the average of the five people you spend the most time with. It makes sense right? Spend time with lazy, nasty people, and before you know it you’re a mirror image.
The things they say, the way they say them, and the topics of discussion are all siphoning sneakily into your brain without you even realising, and rearranging your neural pathways to look like your buddies’.
Most of us can rattle off those five names without really thinking, but what about the ONE person you actually really spend the most time with?
YOU are stuck with you every single minute of every day.
There’s just no getting away from you, even if you try. You’re quite a stalker, actually.
If you’re not arranging your own neural pathways, something is backward.
Before you even look at the other five, you should be thinking about whether or not you’re the type of person you’d like to hang out with.
It sounds kinda twisted. But if you were someone else, and you were one of that person’s big five, would you be a decent influence?
You’ve got to square up to yourself in the mirror and have a heart to heart. Tell yourself how it is, what kind of person you are, and keep telling yourself that.
You should consider yourself your closest friend, and treat yourself accordingly. You’ve got to encourage yourself, man.
Fill your mind up with the things YOU choose, or risk leaving the opening for others to fill you with what they choose.
2) Watch Every Talk, Webinar, and Interview You Can Get Your Eyes And Ears On
This brain thing is juuuust like physical fitness.
If you want to get fit, but you’re eating MacDonald’s for breakfast every day and washing it down with a Coke, snacking on greasy chips and smoking yourself into a coma, do ya think you’re going to reach your optimal fitness level?
Same same when it comes to your brain. If all you’re taking in is cartoons, dirty jokes, and the latest entertainment news, what are the chances of your mind developing into a serious thinking machine?
I’m not saying the occasional mindless comedy is going to turn your brain to mush.
I’m just saying :
If you want to get quality out, you’ve got to put quality in.
There is a vast amount of absolutely free, fantastic, inspiring content out there.
TED talks, webinars, podcasts, audio books, articles, courses, and more.
Seriously — you don’t need to go to college. Everything you could ever want to learn is right there, literally at your fingertips.
Inhale it. Devour it. Make it part of you.
What you put in is what you get out.
3) Think About Your Thoughts
Sounds weird, but yep.
If your brain is capable of making physical changes to your body without you even realising, what do you think negative thoughts are going to do to your day?
Ever noticed that when you have one of ‘those’ days, you’re always feeling like poop by the time you’re done with work?
You don’t have a bad day because you’re not feeling well. You’re not feeling well because you had a bad day.
Sure, it’s not always that way around. But when you start to monitor your thoughts, it’s way easier to start seeing how they affect you.
Thinking about what you’re thinking about is not the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not as weirdly complicated as it sounds.
All you have to do when you catch yourself thinking something negative during the day is stop.
Stop and consider that particular thought.
- What led to it?
- How is it making you feel?
- Is it worth it?
- What difference will this make in your life?
