My favorite of all Mind
Control Techniques
You can use it anywhere, any time!
Let us continue learning some more mind control techniques, starting with an easy but most effective one. By the way, I hope you have already read the section on Mind Control, know what is awareness, and acquired the skill to stop thinking. If not, click here to return to Mind Control, and then come back here...
You also know about the three compartments of the mind – Past, Present, and Future. We will first deal with thoughts related to the past and the future. The first mind control technique described below is a quick fix for all thoughts arising from your past experiences and future visualizations which you encounter every day.
You will love this simple technique of mind management that helped me live on happily with some of my problems for a while...until I got rid of my mind altogether(more on that later...)! Read about this easy to master technique, and about my real life experience below.
Thought Substitution
I learned this very effective mind control technique from Robin Sharma, another one of my great master minds who has probably had the most profound influence on my life.
While I learned the philosophy of the mind-body-soul integration largely from reading Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”, the motivation to do something about my life and many of the practical concepts came from Robin Sharma’s well known book, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”. Without it, I would still be basking in the glory of pure knowledge, instead of actually living that knowledge!
In this book, fondly referenced by people as “The Monk” for convenience, his powerful teachings are conveyed in the form of a story about a rich trial lawyer in California.
Click to view and buy on Amazon
Following a stroke, he decides to leave everything, and start on a journey in search of true happiness. He becomes a monk, travels through India, and finds a Yogic Master in the Himalayan mountains.
The many teachings this Himalayan Yogi hands down to the monk, include this mind control technique that the Yogi calls “Opposition Thinking”. I prefer to call it “Thought Substitution”, because it is basically a substitution of one thought with another.
Thought Substitution works on the principle that your mind can hold only one thought at any one time.
As you become aware that you are lost in these depressing thoughts, just STOP THINKING for a moment (this is always the first step, and should take less than a second!). And at once start thinking of some good thing in life that you have always enjoyed. A comedy series you love watching, or the good time you are going to have tonight with friends, drinking beer. Here is one of my own:
From Gloomy Thoughts...
If you read the About Me page, you know that I am 70 plus and still working. While I am at work solving problems, hours go by happily. But as soon as I leave office and start driving home, I get inundated with thoughts… of my precarious retirement funds due to past failures and broken dreams. That brings with it an intense anxiety about the future.
While the work itself is a pleasure, the need to work, which is the need for money, haunts me. And I dive into deep feelings of sorrow and despair. This happens almost every day…
Enter Thought Substitution! I become aware of my mental spiral. I stop those drowning thoughts in less than a second. And then I start thinking of Trader Joe’s, a unique grocery stores chain on my way home, and turn the car in that direction. If you live in America you might have heard about Trader Joe’s – but it is not in every city, like Wal-Mart.
I love the store because they have hundreds of one of a kind packaged food products procured from around the world, under their own brand name. They get aromatic coffees from Peru and Costa Rica, and offer free sampling of a different coffee every day, with a free sample of some exotic food product. The best place to buy bananas, which are always 19 cents each, and real big ones too.
To Ecstasy !
Now I am lost in the world of Trader Joe’s. I am sampling a bite of that “Cheesy Polenta”, and sipping some Colombian Dark Roast coffee. Then I would pick up some bananas, and possibly a bottle of Charles Shaw, their own brand of Chardonnay at $2.99 a bottle! Real great white wine, that tastes like some of the $15 wines!!
The next thing I know is that I am already there! I finish my tryst and head home, thinking of my wife who is waiting to go to the park with me for a walk. It is a beautiful park in our neighborhood. After the walk I will get home and sit down at my computer typing away these pages… what I am doing now! See how Thought Substitution works? The sadness is over, and I am ready for another day!!
As Robin Sharma puts it, “It’s as if your mind is a giant slide projector, with every thought in your mind being a slide. Whenever a negative slide comes upon the screen, take swift action to replace it with a positive one”.
Try this mind control technique every time you get an unpleasant thought! You will love it!
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