Part of becoming more conscious is being more aware of things around you and what goes on inside your mind. You become aware of the reactive thought patterns you have and the effect they have on your mental state.
When you see something you don’t like it’s normal to react negatively to it. While this is normal, it’s also problematic. The problem is that most of your negative reactions serve no real purpose, they change nothing in the physical world. The only effect they have is to sink your mood to a lower place, often dragging down the moods of those around you.
Let’s say you’re sitting on a bus and there’s some teenagers being loud and annoying. You get angry and start fantasing about about all the bad and nasty thing you could do to them and how justified you would be in doing so. So you sit there and stew in your anger until you get off the bus.
What has your anger achieved in this example? Has anything productive come from it? You have achieved nothing. All that’s happened is you gave your power away to some teenagers, essentially becoming a mental slave to the way they behaved. The teenagers owned you!
At first glance it may seem as if the teenagers are the problem, but that not the full picture. They are the stimulus, but you’re the one having the reaction. Your mind is half the equation.
Your mind is half the problem.
Fortunately, you posses the ability to control your reaction to the stimulous so that it’s less damaging. You have the power to refram your negative reaction so that it’s a positive reaction instead. This means you’re the one who’s in now control of your mental state.
How would this be achieved in this example? Instead of focusing on how rude and annoying these teenagers are, instead you focus on how much fun it would be to be in their shoes, blissfully unaware of everything else, just having fun with your friends. Or, if you’re slightly mean you could focus on the fact that everyone else on the bus is probably cringing and getting uncomfortable, yet it’s not your fault and you can just sit there and enjoy the fact no one can blame you for all of this.
The stimulus has not changed, yet your reaction to it has shifted from one that makes you angry to one that you find fun.
This isn’t to say that negative reactions don’t have their place. There are plenty of situations where it is correct to have a negative reaction, such as when somebody is behaving in a way which is destructive and you posses enough influence to change this. However, most negative reactions are simply mindless, pointless outbursts that are completely useless. Think about the behaviour of someone who’se a serial complainer. They bitch and moan about everything and give off this horrible negative vibe. Yet this sort of negative, mindless behaviour often goes unchecked within your own mind for hours at a time.
Right before I started writing this article I caught myself having a reaction over something incredibly trivial. I was having a coffee and flicking through an old community newspaper. I saw an ad for a local politician who I’d never seen before. My immediate reaction inside my head was along the lines of “shameless self-promotion, how are some people are dumb enough to fall for this idiot”. I then closed the paper and realised that I was the idiot for having such a mindless reaction to someone who I had absolutely no knowledge of.
I pondered for a minute wondering what would a better reaction for me to have would be. What about this ad for a person can I now choose to appreciate instead? I can appreciate the design of the ad, the colours used, the gracefulness of the fonts used. I can appreciate the desgin of the suit the guy is wearing. I can imagine what it’s like to be the guy in the ad. How cool would it be to have the confidence to put yourself in the public arena like that. How great would it be to thick-skinned like he must be, immune to all the negative feedback he’d get on a daily basis. How would it feel to be passionate enough to jetison your day job and commit yourself to something so out there?
I looked at the ad again and now my reaction was positive because I was looking at attributes which I could appreciate. The stimulus was exactly the same but my reaction was completely different. The problem had vanished! Clearly, the problem was only ever in my mind.
Reframe your reaction, your interpretation of your sensory input. Change your perspective of things so that you see it from point of view that makes you happy rather than upset.
When you start doing this, you’ll notice that you’re in a much nicer headspace than usual. Those small negative reactions really snowball. If you spend half of your waking hours being grumpy and focusing on negative things, you’re going to be miserable half of your life!
You don’t find long term happiness by consuming entertainment such as TV, video games and internet. You don’t find long-term happiness in front of a screen.
When I got to Masterton I bought an icecream and took a photo.
