Learning to shift your mental state is key to growth.

Our mental state can be described as

The way we think and feel about the events we are perceiving.

Reality is not homogeneous. Each individual perceives the world around them in a slightly different way.

We all hold different ideas about reality. This causes us to have our own unique perception.

Our mental state will be created based on the things we are perceiving and the ideas that we have stored.

Mindsets Decoded

There is no right or wrong in regards to mindsets. If you want to be frumpy all day long, more power to you.

The goal of this post is to help people understand how their personal experience is affected by their mental state and to offer some basic tips on shifting ones mindset.

don't be Homer

Shifting mental states can be done easily.

Find something that you feel positive about. Choose a single thing. It will make the exercise easier.

After you've chosen your "focal point", call that thing into memory.

Allow the memory to flood into your consciousness.

What things do you feel?

What things do you see?

Pay attention to everything. It can be beneficial to write these things down.

Look at the list of things you have created. Are they mostly visual representations? Are they mostly sounds? Are they feelings?

Most likely you will have one sense organ that is stronger than the others.

This will be your foundation.

Take a moment to dive deeper. Really embrace the single sense that is most powerful for you. You want to create as vivid an image as possible.

Once you have saturated that particular sense, begin paying attention to your other senses. You may notice, as you focus on them one by one, that various stimuli begin to arise.

Over time you can glean more information from each aspect.

The overall goal is to develop a vivid and comprehensive mental representation of your chosen focal point.

Once this has been accomplished and you have recorded the things you have discovered, begin to categorize your stimuli.

Maybe you perceive things very brightly. Maybe the things you hear will be in a specific tone of voice.

This subcharacteristics will be VERY important.

Next, I want you to do the same exercise with something you don't feel as positive about. Figure out exactly how you represent this negative image in your mind.

Once you have created a thorough representation of the second idea, compare the two frameworks you have created.

What are the differences that you notice?

Maybe, in your positive image, everything is brighter and more dense. Maybe the things you hear are louder and more in focus.

All of these things will be clues that you can use to shift other mental states.

The thing is the mind works on a spectrum.
It's not a 0 or 1 like we would find in binary but rather a 0.000000000 and everything in between.

When you learn which characteristics are correlated with a positive perception you can start to shift these in relation to any thought, idea or behavioral pattern.

Let me give you an example.

Say for instance I perceive things "brightly" when I think of them positively.

When I want to change my mental state I can call something up and simply, using my imagination, brighten the image that comes to mind.

This will automatically shift the way I think about this thing.

You can do this for anything, at any time. s you learn more and more about how your mind works you will gain increased control over your thought patterns.

Doing these exercises will vastly improve your ability to understand yourself and implement changes in your mental state.