Life is hard sometimes.

But there can be ways that we knowingly or unknowingly self-inflict that “hard” into our lives…specifically, through our mind and our thinking.

So I’d like to do a series on “Mind Hacks To Healthy Living.”

I’ll first define what I mean by a “mind hack.”

For our purposes, a “mind hack” is any tool or idea that helps us understand the mind so we can have a mentally healthy life!

The first mind hack I’d like to introduce is this:

While we are living in reality, it may be more accurate to say that we’re living in our own unique subjective experience of our own mind’s thinking and feeling about that reality.

I credit this concept to Michael Neill, author of the book Inside-Out Revolution.

Let’s make this a bit more practical.

When you go through hard times, how do you process those times?

Maybe your thinking is along the lines of “Man, this is terrible!” or “I can’t believe this is happening to me!” or “Why me?” or “Ugh, I hate when stuff like this happens!”

If you can relate, you probably know those thoughts often are accompanied by feelings like frustration, anxiety, worry, anger, and self-pity.

I know what this is like! Do you?

If so, do you see how being unaware of these thought patterns could lead to you inflicting more pain onto yourself through your own thinking? (albeit subconsciously)

When I first began my own men’s coaching/mentoring, I became more aware of how my mind works and sure enough, I realized I am very prone to this type of thinking.

Question: While this type of thinking is normal to an extent, what if we can retrain our minds?

When I understood this mind hack, I became aware that I was having an experience and that that while I couldn’t control my initial reflexive, reactive thought pattern, I could begin to consider this question:

Is this the type of thought/thinking I want to have when I go through hard times?

Clearly, the answer was and is NO!

I decided I wanted to choose different thoughts like “Oh, this is tough right now, but I’ll be okay” or “What if this experience is being allowed for me to learn something?” or “This isn’t what I wanted but I can accept that this is happening right now.”

I found that framing my thoughts in this way helped me to move from having a reactive thought pattern to a more healthy, self-directed, responsive thought pattern, one based upon my own values/beliefs.

Not to mention that clinging to these kinds of thoughts has helped me stay calm, poised, and more stable when facing hard times.

Behold, the power of the mind!

In summary, I hope this encourages you to practice being more aware of how you initially think about and process things so that you can begin to ask yourself whether you’d like to frame your thoughts differently when facing hard and challenging times.

Let’s THRIVE in mind so we can THRIVE in life!