The Mind: A Mechanism of Repetition
Mainstream society’s ideas about the mind are, perhaps not surprisingly, pretty far off from reality. We have been taught that most of the experiences in our life happen to us because of how our mind “is”. We were taught that we are somehow the product of the immutable nature of our minds, instead of our minds being a product of our actions and experiences. And we were taught that because our mind is fixed in a certain way, conforming to a certain and nearly unchangeable disposition, our behaviors are basically pre-determined.
Supposedly, our behaviors are just an inevitable manifestation of the thoughts, feelings, opinions, dispositions and mindsets that we naturally have, “built in” to our specific personality.
Let’s throw this idea out right now; it is absolutely false. It’s simply not the case.
Here’s the truth:
Our minds are malleable.
“Malleable” literally means “able to be changed in shape by hammering”. It comes from the Latin word “malleus”, meaning hammer. Just like the blacksmiths of old who would hammer raw iron into the form of a sword or shield, we shape our own minds with the hammer of experience. Repeated hammer hits on hot iron would bend it into the desired shape. Repeated experiences hammer our mind into the desired mindset.
Our minds can be changed, and in fact they can be changed quite readily. Different experiences shape our opinions; people we interact with persuade us. Things we read, arguments we have, the thoughts we surround ourselves with when alone in the shower all contribute to what and how we think about the world around us. The events that we experience shape our feelings and our perceptions. Our experiences change our mind, and so change our thoughts and the actions that result from them.
Once we understand that our minds are influenced by our experiences, it becomes obvious that to change our mind, we must change our experiences. And luckily, our experiences are, for the most part, under our control.
The general strategy to changing our experiences lies in shifting our attention. Our minds move towards what we have our attention on. We think in terms of football, and our mind will see things in terms of football. We put our attention on losses, and our mind will tend to think in terms of losses. Everyone has experienced this phenomenon — when we get “really into something” we tend to think of everything we experience in relation to the thing that we are “really into”.
This is even more true when we consider the effect that intentional action has on our thought processes. When you take action towards a specific idea, you train your mind to accept that idea. The more frequent and the more rigorous the action taken in the direction of the idea, the more the mind is trained to accept it. The football quarterback who drills his throws over and over is training his mind to know how to throw the ball consistently and accurately at a moving target. Not only is he training his body to physically make the throw, but he is also training his mind to track the ball, to anticipate where his fellow teammates are going to be, and how to best control his body under pressure. Drilling a technique over and over pushes the mind to accept that training pattern and so be able to repeat it more readily.
Thus we have a feedback loop here — the internal influences the external, and the external influences the internal. Our mindset affects our experiences; our experiences affect our mindset.
The mind accepts trained patterns of behavior, molds itself in their image, and then repeats them. This is why winners keep winning and losers keep losing. This is why repetitive practice works. This is why we go on “streaks” of a lot of the same thing happening in a row. It is how people fall into “habits”. It also explains things like chronic illness and chronic mental conditions.
Here is a simple analogy to help you remember this — your mind can be likened to lump of modeling clay.
Clay is mold-able, and retains the shape it was formed into. Its form can be changed easily and once its form is changed, it tends to stay in that form until something else changes it.
Repeatedly pressing an object into a lump of clay will create imprints of the object in the clay. Repeatedly pressing an image or idea in your mind will create an imprint of the idea in your mind. Just like clay, the mind itself will change based on what is impressed into it. The more you press an object into a piece clay, the more the clay will take on the shape of that object. The more you press an idea into your mind, the more your mind will take on the “shape” of that idea.
If you want to become a chess master, then keep on impressing the idea of “chess” and “chess master” into your mind. If you want to get good at social interactions, surround yourself with examples of what it means to be good at social interactions. If you want to make more money, understand the factors that create wealth and imprint them into your mind through repeated study. If you want to start your own business, continuously impress the idea of your product and your business plan into your mind. This doesn’t just mean sit there and think about it though; the strongest way to imprint something in your mind is to take action that agrees with the thought.
Repeated contact with ideas generally causes the mind to accept those ideas. And whatever ideas your mind accepts, your mind seeks to repeat.
The mind is, in essence, a mechanism of repetition. In other words, it spits back out what is put into it.
The mind is something which can be molded and shaped by its environment, and by you. But because the mind repeats whatever was fed into it, and you won’t always remember every experience that shaped what your mind has become, the mind may at times seem to be something which is capable of acting of its own accord. For example, you may have moments when the mind seems to make you feel something, or cause you to have thoughts, that you did not directly command. Like when you get nervous before taking a test, or if you get uncomfortable in social situations. Or maybe you want to make more money, but you just “feel” that you can’t. Or, perhaps you are afflicted by what is commonly known as “low self-esteem” or a “lack of self-confidence”. You probably didn’t consciously choose to create these feelings. It wasn’t a decision on your part; the mind seems to be acting on its own. These feelings seem to be there without your consent — fighting against your wishes and inhibiting your action. You can see that “your mind” feels a certain way, though you may disagree. You might feel that you are a victim of your mind — that some foreign entity is putting ideas in your head that you didn’t permit or ask for. During such times, be sure to remember this — what you are seeing are merely ghosts of the past. These uninvited thoughts and emotions are the dying reflections of previous events, and will only continue to plague you so long as you continue to entertain them. The truth is this — the mind only repeats the programming that is given to it. The mind will never influence your behavior, decisions or emotions in ways that are counter to the data and viewpoints that were repeatedly fed into it in the past. What you see as the mind “acting on its own” is actually just a reflection of past input into the mind. So what this means in practical terms is: in order to change how the mind influences you, change what you feed into the mind.
Though the programming contained in the mind may affect you, the root cause that shapes your mind is ultimately you. You are the ultimate decider of your thoughts, emotions and actions, regardless of external influences.
However, the fact that you have this control does not negate the fact that you are influenced. Your mind’s programming is going to affect you whether you like it or not. And if this influence is inevitable, why not change the influence so that it works for you, and not against you?
That is my main purpose of my writing. To show you exactly how to change your own programming so that your mind influences you in the direction that you choose. That is the rationale behind my work — to provide a fully integrated system of thought that can be used to retrain the mind to work for you.
