It is one thing to have sad thoughts. It is another, different thing to have a sad mind. Sad thoughts come and go. But if you have a sad mind, you will be blue much or even all of the time. Even your happy thoughts will turn gloomy, if they are being thought by a mind whose basic coloration is blue.
As soon as they enter the room that is their mind, millions upon millions of people immediately feel sad. Maybe they were weeding the garden and smiling and humming to themselves and feeling just fine, because they weren’t thinking. Then they had a sudden, random thought—“Did I weed over there?”—and that thought sends them to their mindroom; and, just like that, they are blue. They are blue because their indwelling style is one of sadness.
In Redesign Your Mind I provide all sorts of visualizations to help with this chronic sadness, from removing your heavy winter overcoat as you enter your mindroom to repainting the walls of your mindroom a cheerful color. These are excellent tactics and I recommend them to you. But let’s try something even more fundamental and radical. Let’s set aside a good bit of time—say, ten minutes—and engage in a real mindroom spring cleaning.
Visit your mindroom. Once inside, stand just inside the door but don’t go all the way in. Slowly and thoroughly, remove every single item from the room, even those useful things that you’ve recently added like your easy chair and your speaker’s corner. Remove everything, including the cheerful wallpaper and the cozy rugs. Mentally sweep the empty space. Throw open the windows and let some air in. Leave the front door, the exit door, and the windows wide open and experience a real release and a real cleansing.
Do not begin returning items to your room until the room feels cleansed of sadness. When you begin to return items, start with the most cheerful ones: bright paint for the walls, your easy chair, the good lighting. If you introduce an item and you suddenly feel sad, stop and inquire, “What just happened?” Maybe you inadvertently added a heaviness that you do not need. Maybe you added something that you presumed was nostalgic or sacred but that actually carries bad memories. Ask yourself, “Do I need this?” If you don’t need it, don’t let it back into your mindroom.
Can you keep every sadness-inducing object out of your mindroom? That seems beyond human. But you can periodically and maybe quite regularly spring clean your mindroom and angle toward reducing your indwelling style away from sadness. You might even try to name the new indwelling style that you want: maybe you want to feel peaceful in your mindroom, or powerful, or inquisitive. You do not want your mind to be a sad place and you are not obliged to maintain it as a sad place. Take a few minutes and visualize your way out of that rut.
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“Maisel’s thorough explanation of his technique will help readers who are looking to push through their mental roadblocks and improve their emotional well-being.”―Publisher’s Weekly. Redesign Your Mind, available for purchase now.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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