MindLift: Mental Fitness for the Modern Mind

by Kasper Van Der Meulen

If we keep paying attention to all of our stimuli, for instance by checking our e-mail every five minutes, clicking on spammy Facebook ads and jumping from one interesting YouTube video to the next, we are teaching our mental spam filter that there is no distinction between important and unimportant stimuli.

Every bit of information will enter with the same priority.

Attention is your mental currency.

Where attention goes, energy flows and result shows.

Once you learn to regard paying attention as making an investment, you will soon realize its true value.

Strengthening the filter is a matter of conscious inhibition regarding things you do not want to pay attention to. If a low-priority stimulus pops up that demands attention and you are not willing to give it, you have to catch yourself in the act and stop yourself from paying valuable attention.

The logical mind is like the sailor in the crow’s nest, always on the lookout for possible dangers, always gazing out on the horizon to be sure everything is going to be okay.

There is no such thing as a negative emotion or something you are not supposed to feel.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~ Bruce Lee

But where the child can trust in adults to keep them safe while they go into this playful hyper focus, we adults have to learn to trust in our own safety nets and build systems and strategies that allow us to go into that child-like state of limitless attention.

If we can learn to combine the power of child-like enthusiasm with the strategy and planning of the developed adult mind, we can access limitless learning, development and self-expression and truly live from the heart with our mind as an helpful guide instead of a dominant master. 4.

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or to accept the responsibility for changing them. ~ Denis Waitley

Don’t be like the evangelist who worries about the Ten Commandments while having sex and fantasizes about sex in while church.

If you do something, be with it completely with focused awareness, so that you truly experience it and you can let it go whenever you want. This is not discipline or self-control. This is freedom — true personal freedom.

It’s a matter of crap in — crap out.

We have the tool of self-awareness; we do not have to satisfy all our impulses or constantly indulge in our primal instincts.

If you want to make personal change, focus on changing your behavior, because if you focus on changing your identity, the core of your being, it is impossible to accept yourself. Living from the growth mindset allows you to fully accept who you are, with all of your flaws, quirks, abilities, and talents. It allows you to change any undesired result and grow into any desired quality in your life by simply changing your behavior patterns, from a place of self-love and self-acceptance. Fixed Mindset Growth Mindset Desire Appear smart, prove yourself.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Practice develops skills, and skills have more real world value than talent or perfection. Have you ever heard anybody say, “Talent pays the bills”? Or “Perfect pays the bills”? No. “Skills pay the bills!”

The smaller the step, the larger the chance you will actually take

When I started losing weight, I treated it as a secret mission. When people would notice I was eating a salad instead of a grilled cheese and ask about it, I would resist the urge of indulging in a health-food rant and say, “Yeah, I just like this recipe.” Only after I lost about seventy pounds, I got a new wardrobe. After a short holiday, I walked into the school I worked at and people were blown away by my “transformation” that I had secretly sculpted underneath my baggy jeans. The looks on those faces are priceless.

A quest for personal and spiritual development starts from a need for personal freedom,

Focus on Curiosity Instead of Skepticism

Curiosity requires an inquisitive mind, just like skepticism, but it focuses on abundance.

The goal of discomfort is not to feel uncomfortable, but to enlarge your comfort zone.

What gets measured, gets managed. ~ Peter Drucker

If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you. ~ Proverb

Remember the Superman movie? When he was growing up, he kept accidentally destroying things because his powers were still uncontrolled and unexplored. When he started to know his powers, he could control them and start to do amazing things.

This is your only life. This is not the practice round. So many people try to find ways to live longer, but if you want to increase your life expectancy, why not just be more present at the life you actually have?

The body whispers before it screams and if you can learn to listen to the whispers, you can save yourself a lot of screams. ~ Proverb.