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More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, the untrained mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good. The Buddha 
As a martial artist, or simply as a human being, an understanding of how the mind works can be a considerable advantage in this life. The mind is, of course, an amazing instrument and when you are in the driving seat and know how to use it, rather than leaving it to its own devices and letting it use you, the effect can be truly life transforming.
As an example, let’s have a good look at the subject of depression, which you may find useful, since we all have our off-days and it’s estimated that around eighty percent of people visit their GPs due to this unhelpful state of mind and the diverse physical symptoms it can give rise to. Whether you read this for information only or as a practical self-help guide, we hope you will find it interesting.
It has been known for a long time that people suffering from depression tend to dream more than people who are not depressed. During a typical night’s sleep, researchers found rapid eye movements, indicating dreaming, for a period of about twenty percent of that time in most people, whereas people who were depressed tended to dream for about eighty percent of their sleep time: a four–fold increase. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that depression causes excessive dreaming, but what if it’s the other way around, and depression is actually a result of excessive dreaming?
First of all, we need to ask the question, why do we dream? Recent research* indicates that dreaming is a way of dealing with the stresses and strains of our daily life. If we have experienced some stressful event during the day and dealt with it at the time, (eg by stepping out of the way of an oncoming lorry), our mental state rapidly returns to normal, but if we are unable to fight or fly (eg, the boss is giving us a hard time and we have had to bite our tongue) the stress of the situation may continue to niggle at us and prey on our mind.
When we sleep, however, it appears that our dreaming brain, (which is like a kind of personal reality simulator), turns the situation into some kind of similar story that we can live through in our imagination and deal with on some level, so that when we wake up we feel better and can get on with our life. This may be one reason why it’s a good idea to “sleep on it” before you write an angry letter. Somehow we feel calmer, more rational and in control after a good night's sleep.
The Cycle of Depression
So far so good, so how can dreaming cause depression? Well supposing we have a setback or a prolonged source of worry and we begin to ruminate excessively about our problems. These thoughts can generate a lot of stress, continually turning on the fight or flight response. This is particularly likely if we also have a natural tendency to think in terms of worst case scenarios and also likely if our emotional needs are not currently being met.
The more emotionally aroused we become, the less we are able to use our rational brain and the more illogical and negative our thoughts tend to be, so that when we do eventually fall asleep, our dreaming brain really has its work cut out to try to deal with all that stress.
The reality simulator therefore goes into overdrive, often “burning itself out” by dreaming too much and, perhaps as a safety mechanism, it may then wake us up in the small hours. So we lay awake and worry some more, falling asleep just before the alarm goes off to tell us it’s time to get up. We wake up shattered, perhaps more exhausted than we were before we went to bed. Know the feeling?
A natural response would be to phone in sick, pull the covers over our head, shut out the world and go back to sleep, in the belief that more sleep will make us feel better. And of course we then dream some more and wake up with a bad head, disturbed sleep patterns and the firm conviction that life is a pile of pants and inherently unfair.
And so the cycle continues, driving us down until we end up very depressed or until something happens to get us out of that rut, whether that’s someone making us get out of bed or our own decision to take back control, perhaps by going on the internet and doing a search that leads us to a web page like this one that helps us get it all back into perspective.
The good news is that the cycle can be broken in the space of about twenty four hours if we know how to put a spanner in its works and send it into reverse mode.
It may come as a bit of a surprise to know that we are not innocent victims of our moods. In fact we can actively do a heck of a lot to change them. The popular myth that depression is a result of a chemical imbalance in the brain is another of those back-to-front notions that tend to perpetuate the problem. What if the chemical imbalance is actually triggered by the kind of thoughts we allow to go on in our heads and the way we choose to behave?
Now that’s an empowering idea! If you want to change your life, change your mind.
Anyone can change their mood for better or for worse. For example you can see how the following procedure is almost guaranteed to do the latter:
Ten top tips for working up a really good depression
1. Close the curtains to shut out any danger of exposure to natural light.
2. Go to bed and stay there for as long as possible.
3. Avoid any contact with people. Lock the door, take the phone off the hook and don’t open any mail other than bills.
4. Avoid any kind of exercise.
5. Eat only chips, chocolate and ice cream.
6. Avoid any kind of work or meaningful activity.
7. If you must read, read only sad stories about people who are depressed. If you must listen to music, only listen to sad songs.
8. Go over and over your problems in your mind, especially at night, and make sure you’ve fully explored all the worst possible things that could happen. And generalise as much as possible. After all, if it’s bad here, it must be bad everywhere, right? And if its bad now there must surely have been similar bad stuff in the past, therefore we can’t expect the future to be much better, can we?
9. Blame as many people as possible, better still, blame yourself, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always God....
10. Ignore (or better still be mortally offended by) any advice from family, friends or others. What do they know about your issues? Offers of help only trivialise what you know to be the seriousness of the situation.
If you managed to smile at the above, then you’re already on the road to recovery. Better still, you will probably be finding all sorts of creative ideas popping into your head that are the opposite of the ten tips given above and can soon have you feeling a whole lot better. And you’ll be right about that.
For example, if you are thinking of getting out of bed and moving about a bit, (or joining a martial arts class) you might be inspired to hear that recent research has found that exercise is as good as anti-depressants for lifting your mood, and without the potentially harmful side-effects. (You have probably heard of endorphins, natural pain killers, similar to opium, which are released when we exercise, giving us a sense of well-being). And you’ll have heard of course that fruit, veg, vitamins, minerals and omega 3 oils (in fish, or seeds if you’re a vegetarian) appear to be good for the brain.
And just taking that first step of opening the curtains could be one of the most powerful things you can do. The sun may be ninety-three million miles away (thankfully) but its rays can reach right down to the ground and warm the soil, allowing a seed to germinate and fight its way out into the open air and reach up towards the sky until it achieves its full potential as a tree. If the weather is crap, buy a light box.
The best solutions to your current set of challenges will undoubtedly be those you discover for yourself, since you know yourself better than anyone else, and when you can feel calmer and more able to access your own inner wisdom you’ll be amazed at the creative solutions that you can come up with.
Meanwhile, you might find some of the following ideas, which have worked for other people, very interesting. Perhaps they will inspire you and spark off even more helpful ideas of your own.
Ideas for lifting your mood and transforming your life
1. Get some practical help if you need it. Whether this is police protection, the ability to deliver a good pre-emptive strike, financial advice, medical assistance or just a bit of help with the cleaning, we all need a hand sometimes and there is no particular merit in trying to cope with everything on our own.
2. Get clear about what you really want from life. Try the Vibrant Vision exercise below.
3. Spring clean your life. Declutter your living environment. Pass stuff on, recycle it, organise what’s left. Think Zen.
Its amazing how your internal clarity increases with the awareness of organised space around you.
4. Do something meaningful and worthwhile. If you were a hundred and ten and looking back on your life, what would you like to be remembered for? If you haven’t done it yet, how soon can you start? Now tends to be a good kind of time.
5. Be careful of any statement that begins with the words “I am”, whether you are thinking them in your head or saying them out loud to other people. These are the self-fulfilling prophecies which end up forming our sense of identity (and other people’s impressions of us). Your identity is not something you are stuck with. You create it by choosing your “I am” statements rather than leaving them to form by themselves by default or by going along with what you think others say about you. If you constantly replace “I am one of life’s victims” with “I am strong and resourceful and I make my own decisions about my life” then you will soon come to believe that that is what you are…and therefore that is what you will be. While some people may be born into more helpful circumstances than others, resourceful, successful people are not born that way, they choose to be resourceful and successful, and some of them have surmounted considerable challenges on the way (and perhaps become stronger and more resourceful because of what they have learned from them!).
6. Learn to recognise the tricks your emotional brain plays when you’re angry, upset, scared or otherwise emotionally aroused. It’s called black and white thinking. For example “They are wrong, I am right, and there’s no common ground in between”. Such thinking is often illogical: “It always happens to me because I’m a Sagittarius” and global: “Everything is terrible!” Get into the habit of eliminating the words “everything” and “always” from your vocabulary and your rational brain will thank you for it. A passing challenge is not necessarily a catastrophe. 7. Find ways to unwind. Whether it's meditation that helps you to feel peaceful, or Tai Chi, or Qigong, or Yoga, or swimming, or sitting by a stream, or playing football, the important thing is to have few strategies that work for you when you feel the need to chill out and calm down. The calmer your mind, the more easily you can start to see things in a clearer perspective. 8. Phone a friend or ask the audience. You know what they say about a problem shared. Its good to unburden ourselves and sometimes hearing some fresh thoughts on a subject can help us to get a handle on it. The more we get out and meet new people, the better chance we have of meeting a few who are on our wavelength and will be there for us when we need them. And of course we can also be there for them when they need us. It's amazing how helping other people can make us feel better very quickly by taking our mind off our own concerns for a while.
9. Make a habit of looking for the best in life and people. You have probably heard the tale of the two prisoners looking through the same window. One sees the bars, the other sees the stars. What you put your attention on tends to become your reality.
10. Find ways of using your natural resources to get your emotional needs met. (See the Human Givens model). For example, if you can ruminate about your problems well enough to make yourself feel really bad, then you obviously have a brilliant imagination, which might be more usefully employed in developing a vision of the future that you would prefer to create.
Let’s look at one suggestion of how to do that.
Creating a Vibrant Vision
Visualise yourself as you would wish to be, sometime in the future when everything is going well. This could involve a miracle but a fairly realistic one (eg it wouldn’t depend on travelling to another planet) though it could involve having more money than you currently have. What would you be doing that would make you wake up feeling full of energy and confidence and eager to get out of bed and go do it? What would your surroundings be like? Would you be mostly indoors or outdoors? What sort of people would be with you? What would other people notice about you? What would you notice about yourself if you saw yourself in a video being the person you choose to be? Float into the image of yourself and experience it fully with all your senses. See it, hear it, touch it, smell it, taste it, as clearly as possible, make it big and bright and colourful, warm and exciting and appealing..
Keep it in your mind as much as possible, better still, write it down, draw it, paint it, sing it into existence if you like, or create a collage of images that are in keeping with your vision.
With this powerful vision in mind, it is likely that the universe will begin to shape itself around you in that way. Your vision might materialise in slightly unexpected ways and you can be ready to act on new opportunities that “feel right” to you.
There’s a story about a man who was sitting on the roof of his house during a flood. The water was rising above the first floor when his friends came by in a boat and asked him to climb in.
“No thanks,” said the man. “God, will save me.” So the friends went away and the water continued to rise until it was lapping about his feet. Another boat came by and his would-be rescuers pleaded with him to get in and be saved.
“No,” he said. “I have faith that God will save me. I don’t need any help from you.”
So the water rose above the roof….and above the man….and he died and went to heaven.
And he went to see God and asked him why, in spite of his devout faith, his prayers had not been answered and God had not saved him.
And God looked at him and said, “But I sent you two boats!”
If your vision seems too far away from where you are now to be achievable, and you are not convinced yet that the universe will find a way of providing whatever it is that you are asking for, you could try the following exercise in order to give it a kick start, take control and begin to feel that you are on the path towards your dream:
Life Ladder
On a piece of paper, draw yourself a simple ladder, with about ten rungs.
1. Write the words “Vibrant Vision” at the top of the ladder. If you like, put in a few words or even a picture that represents the key elements of your personal vision.
2. Briefly imagine how bad life could be if everything was absolutely terrible, the worst things could possibly get, and then write the words “worst case scenario” at the very bottom of the ladder. Keep the mental image of this fairly vague and misty. The words will suffice without any further embroidery.
We don’t need to go there.
3. If the worst is at the bottom and the best is at the top, looking at your life now, which rung of the ladder are you on at the moment?
4. What might the next step of the ladder be like? What would be different? Visualise it as clearly as possible.
To get to the next step of the ladder:
What needs to change?
What do you need to do to make it start to happen?
What inner resources do you have that will help?
(Eg an imagination to visualise how things will be when they get better, strengths that got you through difficult times in the past, natural talents / things you were good at or enjoyed as a child / good qualities that you or other people have noticed in you…etc)
What other people might be able to help you?
(Family, friends, police, Citizen’s Advice Bureau, doctor, local college, independent financial advisor……etc)
What other resources might you need?
(Eg money, if so how much and where might that come from? Time. Equipment. Skills / training. Knowledge / information, qualifications. Library, internet, bookshop. Social skills training. Advice. Job. Different job. Career break. Voluntary work……etc)
Write all this down and take at least one small step each day that will bring you
closer to your dream.
Life is an opportunity to be lived, not a problem to be faced.
We are all on this great journey together.
There are around seven billion people on this planet so the one thing we can all potentially enjoy is company! We can enjoy the journey, as well as our arrival at our chosen destination.
With all its ups and downs, life can be an exciting and inspiring process of discovery. So if you are eager to get on with the great adventure, off you go and all the best.
Who knows, you may even decide to join a Tai Chi class!
*For an explanation of the Human Givens model, and for workshops, seminars and recommended further reading on the dreaming brain and how to lift depression, go to the Mindfields College website on www.mindfields.org.uk |
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