Mental Alchemy: How to Transform Your Experience of Reality

How much have you changed over the past year?

Are you the same person you were last year? Have you changed or upgraded your thinking patterns and processes over the past five years?

Modern psychology is founded on the concept of the unconscious mind. This is the idea that our rational mind, the part of our brain that thinks, analyzes, and makes sense of the world, can’t always be trusted.

In other words, the unconscious mind, which is the part of our brain that drives our instincts and automatic behaviours, can sometimes have illogical behaviours.

If we’re rational and aware, then the unconscious mind should be a completely logical and rational part of our brain.

But, there’s something more to this. Psychology is also founded on the concept of mental analysis, the idea that we can analyze our own minds and work to systematically improve the thoughts and behaviours that drive our instincts and automatic behaviours.

The unconscious mind is just one aspect of how our minds work, and thus there are many other aspects of mental analysis that are just as important.

One of these is called mental alchemy.

Mental alchemy is the art of upgrading your base or fundamental mindset. You can do this by forging it through a process of mental transformation.

The base metal is your current life, and the process is called mental alchemy.

“Thoughts are things,” Napoleon Hill said.

Mental alchemists think of the mind as an instrument or tool that can be modified to make it serve us better.

It’s a life philosophy that can improve your mental and emotional well-being. There are several benefits of practicing mental alchemy, including improving your thinking skills, memory, self-confidence, and emotional stability.

In his book, The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho said, “the real alchemy in the world is the ability to manifest personal change — an ability that everyone possesses.

True alchemists in our contemporary world are those who can evolve or change their minds to become better versions of themselves.

In the traditional or medieval definition, alchemy is the process of changing ordinary metals to gold.

Today, many people think of alchemy as a metaphor for renewing our minds, overcoming life’s many challenges, or turning our trials into triumphs.

It’s a slow process of transforming your mental models, habits, and behaviours to upgrade your life.

Mental alchemy is a two-step transformation

The first step involves introspection to understand your present assumptions, beliefs, and thought patterns and how they hinder your life and career growth.

The second step is finding and replacing old behaviours with new mental models and beliefs.

Everything in life is an opportunity for growth and self-improvement.

The practice of mental alchemy can help us become more self-aware and more in tune with our inner voice. It can also help us make better decisions, overcome our fears and let go of negative emotions.

Life is a treasure hunt.

Whether you like it or not, you’re constantly at a new stage of the hunt. The trick is to stay alert and unwilling to settle for the first shiny object that catches your eye.

The way you think is the biggest clue you’re in the right stage of the hunt.

Most people liken mental alchemy to the metamorphoses of a caterpillar into a butterfly; it’s one of the most breathtaking transfigurations in the natural world. It’s truly magnificent.

Renewing, upgrading, or changing your mind is a slow and deliberate process. It’s more challenging as we age because our belief systems are hardwired into our subconscious.

We rarely notice our decision-making processes because we are primarily on auto-pilot; our existing beliefs and assumptions take over any logical mental models we may have come across recently.

“Our conscious mind tries hard to preserve the illusion that it deliberately chose every action you have ever taken; in reality, in many of these decisions it was a bystander at best, and much of the time it did not even notice the decision being made,” writes Rory Sutherland, in his book, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

When you embrace the liquid mindset, you can overcome the many elements of irrationality, illogicality, inefficiency, and difficulty in the human thinking process. The capacity to change your mind when presented with better facts is liberating.

Mental alchemy can help you build a new set of thinking skills that can gradually become your new and improved subconscious mind.

The whole world of human experience, at least the part of it that is worthy of attention, can be understood in terms of the principles of mental alchemy.

By that, I mean the art of transforming ordinary mental and emotional states into the purest form, the highest meaning, and the smartest subconscious mind.

Self-knowledge is the cornerstone of mental alchemy

The more we know about ourselves and the more we appreciate the extraordinary powers of our minds, the greater our capacity for transforming our normal mental states into extraordinary ones.

We can achieve this by using the tools of mental alchemy; rational thinking, creative visualization, and positive thinking.

These self-help techniques are all perfectly natural. However, not everyone is equally adept at them. Some people are more sensitive and perceptive than others, and they use their natural gifts and talents more effectively.

The human mind can solve almost any problem if given the proper tools and environment. You can upgrade your mind to (both conscious and unconscious states) think clearly, improve your circumstances, or solve problems efficiently.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere,” Albert Einstein once said.

Mental alchemy is simply a more advanced form of self-reflection and introspection to understand your present state of mind and learning to override bias, beliefs that are not serving you, and mental models that are sabotaging your progress.

It’s the capacity to embrace the growth mindset to consistently renew your mind to think clearly. It’s also an opportunity to explore one’s own mind and discover nooks and crannies that are often forgotten or ignored.

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This post was previously published on Personal Growth.

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