The Power of Changing Mindsets
Feelings are just like clouds. They come, and they go.
They come, and they go.
Trapped in my room sitting in front of my computer, I desperately searched for ways to break free of depression.
It was a feeling of hopelessness, a sense of insecurity, an explosion of franticness.
I was panicking as my eyes were soaking and showing permanent despair, hoping that I could somehow strive through the darkest moment of my life. But there was nothing left to support me no matter how hard I tried.
What happened three years ago was a life-changing event for me. At that time, I didn’t know what it meant to be down and depressed. I didn’t know what it meant to others when they’re down and depressed. I didn’t know that feelings are not self-driven. And I didn’t know that mindsets are self-driven.
It turns out that feelings cannot be directly controlled by our consciousness. They are simply chemical reactions in the brain that transmit specific chemical signals with unique messages, and there is no direct way of voluntarily controlling them.
They are analogous to passengers on an airplane traveling across an ocean. The passengers do not determine where the plane flies — the pilots do. They have control of everything in the plane — its course, its current heading, its speed, its altitude, its throttle level, etc.
Passengers only choose which plane they board. Each of us should control everything in our lives — our plans, our short-term goals, our agility, our attitudes, our energy levels, and many more. It all begins with changing our mindsets.
Experiencing a certain negative emotion can be very traumatic, and staying vulnerable and submissive to our negative feelings cannot solve the problem. By intentionally changing the mindset, however, we isolate ourselves away from the problem and approach it from a brand new perspective.
This is not called “cowardly avoiding a challenge”. This is called “treating ourselves better and finding purpose in the long run”.
But how does changing one’s mindset work? The key becomes subtle in this case. There isn’t a general method that works for everyone, nor is there a specific method that guarantees to work every time. Personally, I discovered a rhythm a couple of years ago that would help me switch focus, one that helped me cross a major milestone in life.
My method is all about creating distractions.
That would mean intentionally staying busy when I feel empty, working on long-term targets when I constantly feel depressed, researching into my interests when I feel overly dutiful, starting to appreciate smaller things when everything becomes chaotic, and creating my purpose in life when it is nowhere to be found.
They may be easier said than done, but once initiated and ignited, those distractions make me even more ambitious, eventually overpowering my negative emotions and creating a positive mindset for me to stay in.
Distractions need to be positive too. They should be motivations, not excuses.
Distracting my mind is not, and will never become, a pang of guilt that would haunt me down after many years. There is no need to worry about the future if I can’t take care of myself in the present because intentionally building a good future while dismissing the present defeats the purpose of living.
In short, creating intentional but positive distractions to change mindsets would allow me to better situate myself at the moment with a different approach to remedy the problem at hand.
And with those self-initiated distractions, I gradually become more conscious of my feelings as I learn how to avoid them when the next wave hits.
Back then, trapped sitting in my room, alone and desolate, I made no moves whatsoever trying to shift my negative mindset, the one that kept pouring out negative emotions and regrettably creating a lasting aura of pain.
Had I known the power of changing mindsets, life wouldn’t have felt like an unbreakable deadlock at that moment.
Had I known that feelings come and go just like clouds, I could’ve minimized my suffering just a little.
Perhaps not all the way.
But that tiny bit of joy and freedom is all that matters, no?
