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In this blog we examine the ways in which we can build resilience and capability by paying attention to how we look after our mind.
Here we examine what it means to renew your mind daily - what it is, what it isn't and the simple steps you can take to bring such a practice into your everyday life.
We pose these important questions to you -
? Do you currently do anything to keep your mind vibrant, fresh and alive?
? How do you think renewing your mind could be useful in your life?
? How are you addressing your brain’s need for a rest, restoration and nourishment?
Included in this blog - are
Why could we consider doing Daily Renewal of the Mind?
Because your mind is:
Your ‘power-house’ – your own ‘rechargeable battery’
A very powerful and useful resource for thinking, feeling and choosing
Constantly working – learning, growing and developing
Structured in a way that you can influence – literally creating your own experience of ‘being you’
Enormously important for your overall resilience and wellness
What is Daily Renewal of the Mind?
Your mind is constantly thinking things – an average human being has about 47,000 thoughts a day. And it is often the case that about 75% of these thoughts are negative. The overall effect of negative thinking can be a very draining experience.
Daily renewal of the mind is about refreshing, renewing, restoring, re-awakening, revitalising and replenishing your mind, through repeated, conscious, intentional daily practices.
Just as the human body gets tired, needs a break and needs to rest, do something different and recover it’s strength – your brain and mind need to be restored regularly also. Your brain is an incredibly complex system composed of muscles, neural pathways like electrical circuits and chemicals. There are many different ‘zones’ in your brain that make sure you can function well both consciously and unconsciously. This complex system is working 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, year after year.
No wonder it is important to sometimes give your brain a break, a change and a boost!!!
Daily renewal of the mind is when you consciously and intentionally do daily practices and routines that are nurturing and uplifting for the mind – this enhances your mood, helps you to be present in the moment, keeps you buoyant, contributes to your overall wellness and resilience and influences you to think positively about your future.
Daily renewal of the mind helps you to connect even more positively with yourself and helps you to build your strength – supporting you to become even more resilient, acting with kindness and compassion to others, creating trusting relationships and building community – all from paying attention to your complex ‘processing system’, called your brain and mind.
The Brain/Body Connection
There is a very strong link between your mind and body, known as the ‘brain-body connection’. Your mind and your body interact and influence each other, to create your daily experience of ‘being you’. And so it follows that a healthy mind supports a healthy body. Through the mind-body connection, this in turn creates your experience of how you think, feel, choose and what actions you take.
Even when you sleep your brain is still working for you – making sense and meaning of your day’s experiences and ‘filing’ stuff away for your future reference.
Daily renewal of the mind helps you to think, feel and choose what you want to be and do, what you want to achieve and make happen in your life.
All of this is why daily renewal of the mind matters.
Do you currently do anything to keep your mind vibrant, fresh and alive?
How do you think renewing your mind could be useful in your life?
How are you addressing your brain’s need for a rest, restoration and nourishment?
Daily renewal of the mind - What it IS:
Repeated conscious, intentional daily behaviours that refresh your brain
Regular practices that engage your brain, whilst giving it a boost
Very important for healthy mind and body functioning
An important way to change negative thinking, feelings and choices
A significant way to improve your mood, wellness, resilience , happiness and satisfaction with your life
Daily renewal of the mind - What it is NOT:
Hard to do
Complicated and does not need any special skills
Boring
Benefits of Daily renewal of the Mind:
If you could enhance the functioning of your mind, through daily practices, what benefits could you get?
Here’s some of the benefits of daily renewal of the mind:
Better sense of contentment and ease
Increase your sense of your own ‘agency’ – your ability to make choices
More feeling of ‘enjoying being you’
Greater sense of achievement and accomplishment
A feeling of ‘living your life to the full’
Better sleep patterns
Overall wellness and resilience
Increased happiness and experience of ‘being you’
What other benefits can you imagine from daily renewal of your mind?
How to practise Daily renewal of your mind:
Daily renewal of the mind can happen easily, naturally and organically through doing things you love every day. Choosing to do something daily that gives you joy and lights up your life … repeating behaviours or ‘practices’ that will give your mind a break, a rest and time to recover and be restored.
In deciding what daily renewal activities could work for you, you could look into the Ikigai, the Japanese secret to living a long and happy life.
Read more about Ikigai in our bog
3 significant things you can do to renew your mind daily
- feed your mind - free your mind - focus your mind:
1. Feed your mind:
This means paying attention to what you want to pay attention to …
Ask yourself some questions - what lifts you up? What lights up your life? What gives you joy and happiness?
The human mind can only pay attention to between 5 and 7 things at a time. Your attention is a limited resource. It is your choice what you get to spend your limited attention span on. What would you like to pay attention to and notice in your life?
What you put into your mind is your choice … do you remember that phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’?
What you put into your mind may eventually come out in how you think, speak and behave. If you would like to renew your mind in a positive direction to give you a greater sense of wellbeing overall, choose different and varied ways to feed your mind. For example, if you don’t like what’s in the news today, watch less of it. If you do like listening to music, listen to more of it!
Here’s some ways to pro-actively and consciously feed your mind:
a. Reading, researching, reflecting, reviewing in a topic or area that is uplifting and fascinating to you – learning each day
b. Journaling – notice your thoughts, feelings, experiences daily by writing them down in a journal – hand-writing using a pen and paper is a creative way to do this. Or you can use your phone or devices to do your journaling – capturing thoughts, discoveries, experiences, learnings from your day
c. Engage in ‘spiritual’ activities –things that give you a sense of a ‘higher purpose’ in your life – for some people this may be experienced in the great outdoors when taking a view from a mountain top or listening to some powerfully inspiring music, dancing or going on a cycle ride, engaging in faith-based activities … whatever works for you …
d. Daily or regular practice related to what you are passionate about, things you love doing and getting in flow …
Read more about in flow activities in our blog 'Getting and being in flow'
e. Go on ‘attentional walks’ – walk and take photographs of things that inspire you
f. Spend quality time with your loved ones – friends and family who are important to you
g. Connect with nature and living things – get into the great outdoors, nurture pets, animals or grow plants/living things
2. Free your mind:
This means to get rid negative thoughts … and replace them with more uplifting thoughts… or to quieten your thoughts down so that there may be ‘no thoughts’ going on … or to clear your mind and change your thinking when you need to…literally changing your mind
There are so many ways you can do this – what could work for you do you think?
Here is a list of things you could do to ‘free’ your mind:
a. Havening Techniques®
Havening uses the body’s own natural mechanisms to make positive changes in how you think, feel and behave. It is a ‘psycho- sensory’ range of techniques and is remarkably effective in relieving negative emotions and resolving unhelpful feelings.
Read more: www.havening.org
b. Develop healthy sleep
Sleep and how to get enough of it and how to get off to sleep and to stay asleep … have become significant issues for people. It is well known that sleep deprivation has negative effects that can be very similar to having drunk too much alcohol on a regular basis …
Some useful tips to improve your sleep are:
Turn off all devices one hour before you intend to go to bed
Set a phone alarm to start your ‘bedtime routine’ one hour before you will get into bed
Learn a brilliant tapping technique and discover the incredible positive effects this has on your ability to get to sleep and to stay asleep
Learn the technique by watching this YouTube video
Make sure you get 7 or 8 hours asleep as many nights of the week as you can
Other useful ways to free your mind include:
Mindfulness activities
Meditation
Listening to music
Playing a musical instrument
Doing physical activity
Gardening
Get outdoors – sitting in the outdoors or walking or running
There is no limit to the things you could practice to free your mind up every day – and these are likely to be ‘in-flow’ activities …
Read more about in-flow activities in our blog 'Getting and being in flow'
3. Focus your mind:
Your mind is a brilliant tool for you – it is dynamic, powerful and influential in creating your sense of your own ‘agency’ - your ability to think, feel and make choices that work well for you.
We know from neuroscience that the thought processors or neural pathways in our brains are constantly being renewed and constructed according to the way we think and choose to act. This means that we can literally create our reality and our experience of life by choosing what thoughts we decide to explore – this is known as ‘neuroplasticity’. The promise of neuroplasticity theory is that we can train our brains to think positive thoughts, which influences how we feel and this in turn affects how we make choices that are useful for us in life.
How to focus your mind can be easy …
a. Choose your mindset – choose how and what to think. Here are some positive mindsets you could try:
· ‘Action brings satisfaction’ – this can help you to focus in order to get something done
· ‘There is no failure, only feedback’ – this is a very encouraging mindset
You can choose your own mindset and you can make up your own mindsets to suit yourself! What mindset could be helpful to you today?
b. Choose to do one thing at a time – to simplify things and increase your sense of contentment and satisfaction
c. Choose 3 things to do each day - if achieving things is important to you and yet you feel overwhelmed, choose 3 things to do which will increase your sense of accomplishment today
d. Meditation can be a powerful way to focus your mind
What if you are able to do Daily Renewal of your Mind?
Here’s a thought for the day:
Further recommended learning and reading:
Mind your life: How mindfulness can build resilience and reveal your extraordinary.
Meg Salter, 2017
Don’t delay – keep your mind learning, growing and developing!
To find out more about Havening Techniques® and to book a free 30 minute consultation call Joan Haines, Certified Havening Techniques® Practitioner
07813 299957
For transformational coaching, book a free introductory Session with a Shared Inspiration Coach who believes in you.
We would love to help you to renew your mind daily!
