Get control of your mind
Now more than ever it is important for people to take control of their own mind, and to direct it towards whatever purpose best fits their unique personality and past experiences. It’s so easy to get caught up in what sides are battling it out on the public stage when truly, we each create our own reality, and this world, although extremely crazy right now, belongs to God. Getting caught up in the hullabaloo of the day will only prove fatal to your own dreams, and my guess is that’s one of the reasons why the theatrics are broadcast on our TVs, computers, and radios. In order for it to have an effect, however, we must be complicit.
Getting control of your own mind is the biggest form of self-love that one could have. Doing so requires an immense amount of discipline and mental fortitude. What is mental fortitude? According to Inverse, mental fortitude is compromised of the 4C’s, those being: control, commitment, confidence, and challenge. You must also have that balance of resilience and positivity, as well as inner strength and outer orientation. For more on this, I suggest that you read the full article.
All that being said, it takes work to get control of your mind, and are most people willing to do that? No. Be different from the majority. The majority don’t love their lives and wake up with a passion inside them that’s undeniable to both themselves and the people they interact with, nor do the majority have surplus funds to contribute to whatever projects fancy them. The last group that you want to be a part of, in fact, is the majority. Be a part of that small group of people who decide to take the narrow road and create the life that they want, not the life that others are comfortable with them having.
In the Bible, the scriptures talk about the narrow and the wide gates:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” -Matthew 7:13–14 NIV
And if you need some more encouragement to take the narrow path, look to The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Dare to follow your dreams, and to take the narrow path. Many might look at this and think that I’m talking about religion-given that I used verses from the Bible-but look deeper. Heaven and hell are created within the mind. If you choose to give in to all the negativity that you see before you and to hyper-focus on it, you are already experiencing your own personal hell! Choose to focus on the positive aspects of yourself, of others, of your situation, and you will be among the few that are able to overcome tremendous obstacles that were set before you, to get you to capitulate to your own dreams.
As M. Scott Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, “for the worldview of patients is always an essential part of their problems, and a correction in their worldview is necessary for their cure.” Correct your outlook, correct your life.
If you’re not in control of your mind, that means someone else is.
Originally published at https://cultured.substack.com.
