How to Win the Battle of the Mind

A war is defined as a state of armed conflict between two opposing sides, and when it comes to your mind, this war is non-stop. Everyday, a new battle ensues on a new battlefront, but the question is which side of your mind has declared war, and which side is defending itself?

If you’re a naturally positive person, then you’ve declared war on any negativity that appears in your mind. If you’ve always been a negative person, then you’re always trying to defend yourself from the forces of positivity. Why? It’s because your negativism is your identity and you fear a positive life.

Fearing a Positive Life

How could someone fear a positive life? They fear it because they don’t believe it’s genuine. They feel that positive people are self-deluded and unrealistic. The negative person is convinced that a positive mind will operate in denial of the harsh truth about the real world.

The opposite is true for the positive person. That person believes that the negative mind is blind to the opportunities that life has to offer. The positive person is convinced that even though the world can be an unfriendly place, it’s far better to enjoy the journey than to wallow in so-called “realism.”

Be an Aggressor, Not a Defender

Depending upon what your tendency is—to be naturally negative or naturally positive—how you engage in war for your mind will have the greatest impact on your life experience.

It may sound strange that the negative person is defending him or herself against the forces of positivity. I say this because the negative person is by definition in the passive position. The negative person is not a progressive person. They are defenders, not aggressors. Their tendency is to get what they can with the least amount of effort.

It’s not that they’re lazy. It’s that they’re constantly barraged with the demands of this world that can only be met with a positive, aggressive outlook. This is what the negative person is resisting.

Positive People Are Not Passive

The positive person is typically not a passive person so they tend be on the offensive. The positive person recognizes the danger of the smallest negative thought, and they are usually diligent in stomping it out and then embedding a positive thought in its place.

If you’re a negative person, then you need to start operating in the same fashion as the positive person. This means opening yourself up to the invading onslaught of positive forces and resisting the entrance of negative thoughts, suggestions, or words.

Create a New Addiction

Again, this war is relentless, so to choose not to fight is a choice to lose. Yet, you have all the same capacity as the most positive person in the world. The only difference are the habits of thought that you’ve cultivated throughout your life.

As is often said, you didn’t get here overnight, so you certainly won’t change it overnight. However, any effort you spend on reversing the way you think is going to result in an IMMEDIATE change in your life experience. The advantage to this is that you’ll enjoy the feeling that goes with it, and a good feeling is addictive.

Six Ways to Build Your Mental Strength

The challenge will be that right along with those initial positive feelings resulting from positive thoughts will come those “realistic” voices telling you, “This is all bullshit. It’s a complete denial of reality.”

This is where you must now resist the enemy, because that voice of realism IS the enemy. The way you know that is by asking, “How has my life experience been while living under the governing voice of negative realism?” That’s all you need to know.

Your life experience improves to the degree that your mental strength does, so focusing your efforts on building up your mind is your priority. Here’s how you do it:

1. Fill your mind with information that empowers you. Do that with existing resources on personal development.
2. Get the new information embedded in you by practicing it, talking about it, and writing it down in your own journal or note-taking system.
3. See your mind as a battlefield and every negative thought as a grenade from the enemy.
4. Build your resistance to negative thoughts by seeing in your mind where those thoughts lead you. See the outcome of negative thoughts, and you’ll acquire a distaste for what you once protected.
5. Reject every negative thought as soon as it appears in your mind because that is when it’s weakest (I say this a lot!).
6. Fill the mind space that the original negative thought was after by stating the opposite to yourself. For example, if you receive the thought, “I’m such a loser. I’ll never have the discipline to eat healthy,” you immediately reject it and say, “I am not a loser, because I have as much personal power as anyone else. If poor eating happens one decision at a time—and I’ve done THAT successfully—then right eating will develop one decision at a time. I CAN do it!”

Winning the battle of the mind is tedious, but the process is simple. Don’t allow the intimidation you’ve experienced in the past keep you from unleashing hell on who you used to be! Please leave me a comment below and tell me about how you’re fighting the battle of your own mind.