In this 4th mental tool we will learn of a way to better use our time and avoid useless drainage of brain-power.
It is important to have motivation, discipline and to maintain balance in our lives, but we don't always seem to have the time to do so.
When we speak about time, it's really mental processes that we're referring to here. You see, we all have a limited number of mental processes available for us in a day, defined by our biology.
So, how do we get more time?
We cannot. Ok so, how can we make more/most of our time?
Well, first we have to look on what we spend our mental processes. For the brain it does not matter if we spend them by relaxing, learning, creating or by criticizing ourselves or having a mental chatter with that rude co-worker. Mental processes will be used, and once used, you will have less of them for the rest of day.
Of course, there are legitimate mental processes that we have to use, in one form or another, to live our lives. But, there are quite a few mental processes that are not necessary to live our lives, but can actually make our life worse.
There are many particular examples, different from person to person, so it is better if we pick more general ones that apply to most.
Mental fighting and worry
Part of our brains is wired to look for danger. In the past this was extremely useful, as danger then meant a wild animal was nearby that needs fighting or fleeing from or some food found in the forest might be poisonous or a storm is coming.
Now we largely eliminated those threats, and even though neural-plasticity is a real thing, it is a somewhat slow process.
The result of having age-old brain wiring in our modern society is that sometimes we tend to worry for insignificant things or that we are mentally fighting non-existent foes. Thus spending valuable mental processes (time).
Mental fighting and worry are useless mental processes
They have no use since nothing actually gets accomplished, no new decision is being made, it does not help others and certainly it does not help you. Most of the time, it's just a reflex to a trigger that sucks us into a vicious mental-cycle that has no actual real-life benefit.
Therefore, if we we're able to eliminate mental fighting and worry, we would find out that suddenly we have a lot of "additional" time on our hands on a daily basis.
How can we drastically diminish mental fighting and worry?
To do this we have to use our pre-frontal cortex, our rational mind, to get to a clear conclusion about the matter.
First we have to acknowledge without a doubt that mental fighting and worry has no use. Contemplate on the matter, take your time, and realise that mental fighting and worry is useless.
When we get to a definite conclusion upon examining every possible reason we can think of about it's existence, we would then be closer to change one of our beliefs.
Changing a belief consciously takes time
At first, even if we got to the conclusion that mental fighting and worry are useless, we are still going to catch ourselves doing it. Only this time we are not the same as before, this time we have the conclusion we got to upon thoroughly contemplating on the matter, and we can say to ourselves without having a doubt that mental fighting and worry is useless.
Doing this at first will reduce the time spent worrying and fighting mentally, but not eliminate it.
To better metabolize this we have to exercise. When we catch ourselves worrying or fighting, we can just point our mind to the conclusion. Or if at first it's not enough, we could repeatedly ask ourselves "What use does thinking this have?" and eventually remember about our contemplation and the conclusion.
After a while of doing this, we will develop a mental reflex, such that when mental fighting or worry begins we immediately dismiss it as useless thoughts and not dwell on them any longer.
This seems sooo hard and not worth it?
Think about it, how much time do we spend in a day worrying about our appearance or what others think of us or that this might happen or that might happen? What about when someone is mean to us or is inconsiderate, how long do we fight them in our head? How much time do we spend cumulatively in a week or in a month?
Can we honestly say that taking a few minutes or a few hours thinking and contemplating in just one day in order to get to a conclusion that we can then apply to eventually eliminate this useless thought-processes is not worth it?
It would be hard to say that, so how about you give this mental tool a shot?
There we go, this is the 4th mental tool, which is a sort of protector or shield tool that frees us plenty of mental processes (time).
What do you think about it?
I do hope that this was useful to you, if it was do not forget to upvote it.
In case you missed the first three parts, here they are: Part 1: Motivation, Part 2 Discipline, Part 3 Balance.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day ahead :)