See that the nature of your mental state informs your whole experience

 

Once you’ve spent some time being in more mindful states of being, and perhaps you’ve got a bit of meditation under your belt, you start to become more familiar with the ebb and flow of your mental states. You may start noticing their quality, you see the sharpness when you're angry, the soft openness of happier states, the bitter sweetness of the sad or poignant ones.

 

What you may also see is that when you're irritable for example or upset with someone, your thoughts will tend towards the negative, and when you’re brighter and more optimistic, your attitude and thinking is completely different, even about exactly the same situations, people or ideas. 

 

This can reveal the fact that the state of mind you occupy colours your attitude towards what’s unfolding, and consequently your thinking, it defines how you relate to the world. I had this exact experience after work one day. I had hit a difficult mental state during work and couldn’t muster any positivity to shift it.

 

When I got home, I decided I needed to go for a walk to reflect on it and try to understand it. Even though I was still experiencing some unpleasantness, there was a subtle positive feeling related to my intention to engage with the difficulty, not indulge it. 

I kept on reflecting on the day’s difficulty, the current negative state and that while in this state, I was thinking about things that I’m usually very positive about, like striving, trying to overcome adversity and such. Yet, I only felt this flat, negative feeling and no inspiration.

 

At this point, there was a flash of understanding, a moment of clarity. I saw that this is the nature of a negative mental state, everything is negative while you're in that state of being. It’s like it imposes a filter over your entire perception, literally serving up a completely different reality. I could see that if there was more positivity and brightness present, that connection to striving and sense of inspiration would be present, as they usually are. It’s just the mental state that determines the whole flavour of the experience.

 

Seeing this frees us up because we realise that there’s no essential truth in our relationship to experiences. Whatever emotion and associated thinking we’re having about an interaction or situation, it can be completely fluid and dependent on the mental state we’re in. This means we don’t have to get attached to any of it. Our views and thinking are so underpinned by emotions and feelings, what we see is completely subjective.

 

The implications of this are that if these states frame our reality, then why don’t we do everything in our power to cultivate positive mental states and attitudes and do our best to prevent, change or eradicate the negative ones?

Our mind is what we make it, once we’ve woken up to this face, we have the power of choice. It’s easier said than done, but it is absolutely possible. We are working against long standing mental and emotional habits, but once again, it’s just training, building up momentum of positive mental, emotional and physical actions.

 

It’s like building a house, a mansion that is a symbol of our new self founded on the strength of positive mental and emotional habits and actions. Each brick we lay is a conscious positive action, a choice to take the high road. Day in day out we keep laying bricks, thousands of them, the walls start going up and the house begins to take shape. We see our new self emerging, the work we’ve put in.

 

This gives us even more determination to stick to our goals and vision. We are forming reliable positive habits that replace the old negative ones. It becomes easier to choose the new positive behaviours and attitudes because the old ways just don’t feel right anymore. We used to be inured to them, but now we see them for what they are and seek out higher ground.

 

So, our charge becomes seeking that higher ground, abiding in a more positive mindset. The power of positive thinking is no secret, how an improved attitude can literally transform our life into something completely different. Instead of letting our habitual emotional responses inform our attitude, we make clear decisions to direct our mind towards more useful and healthy perspectives and outlooks. This doesn’t mean kidding ourselves, living in a dream world of self delusion, it means taking a positive but practical spin on any situation.

 

A classic example of this is that most people see adversity as painful and to be avoided at all costs. This is our default behavior, we’re mostly preoccupied with avoiding all unpleasantness and seeking that which confirms our sense of self and removes all the hard edges. This makes us a slave to the conditions of our life, constantly trying to tweak those conditions to make life as pleasant and to our liking as possible. This takes a huge amount of energy.

 

If you decide to see adversity as a challenge, as an experience that can teach you something about yourself and help you grow, help you discover resources within yourself to overcome it, all of a sudden, there’s this whole area of your life that now doesn’t need to be avoided or resisted.

 

After you’ve done this for a while, you actually become excited by adversity, by the prospect of becoming a better and stronger person by engaging with whatever life dishes up. That’s an attitudinal change. You can apply these attitudinal changes to every aspect of your life.

 

Another such example is becoming more grateful. This is one of the most powerful and life changing practices you can undertake. We don’t often hear gratitude, mostly people complain about what’s wrong with their life, what they haven’t got. A brief and honest look at our lives will reveal the relatively luxury we live in.

 

Once you shift this awareness from what you don’t have, to what you do have, suddenly you see abundance everywhere and something happens to your heart and mind. There’s like a subtle but profound letting go. You don’t have to push yourself so hard or be anxious about pursuing your material and financial prosperity, be anxious about missing out, because in all truthfulness, you’re not!

 

Another aspect of understanding that the nature of mental states affects perception is that you can be more philosophical about the vagaries of your changeable mind set. You can feel freer and less identified with them and not be so bothered when you do have to traverse the negative ones. It is the awareness of this that gives you a perspective, a bit of space and distance from what’s happening so you are less in it, less caught by it.

 

I don’t experience a lot of anger, but when I do, I often find myself realising I’m in this state, then see the ridiculousness of it and have a quiet laugh to myself. This also applies for those ebullient states. When I experience a joyous exuberant demeanour, I can want to hold on to it or work out how I got here so I can stay here or get back here as much as possible, in other words, I get attached to it very quickly and think it’s the be all and end all. Now, I can just relax and enjoy it, and know that it too will pass by, but that’s ok.

 

In conclusion, understanding this profound aspect of mind brings great freedom. We don’t have to identify with our mental states and emotions. We can simply acknowledge that they are colouring our experience and be aware of the flow of thoughts and emotions relating to them. We can then choose where our mind goes from there, and simply being aware of all of this is in itself a positive mental action.