Fast Living

We live in a society now where thoughts are coming at us at a million miles a minute. I mean, even 10 years ago, if you look at marketing stats, it would take five or six touches for someone to hear your message. Now it’s 10, 20, 30 times, just because of the volume. It’s like we’re drinking from a fire hose. But here’s the thing, is we are in the driver’s seat. We are the captain of our enterprise. We get to decide what input comes in.

And a lot of the time, we have this attitude where, “I’m just going to go with the flow and be thrown around by the winds of change and whatever comes my way, oh well,” and not having that agency. You have agency over your own life. You get to choose what you watch. You get to choose what you listen to. And you get to choose what you believe. Because not every thought that pops in your head is true or believable. And this comes down intrinsically to things like your habits.

Consumption

What are you consuming? Junk in, junk out. The same concept, like slot machine. Money in. Not that life’s a slot machine, but, again, it’s like, controlling your thoughts, first of all, the first step is awareness. Are you aware of what you’re thinking, or are you allowing whatever junk that flows past to consume you? So, the first thing is to really encourage people to be aware of what they’re thinking about, which is the metacognition part, and start to question, is this truth or a lie? And then to decide what input you want to put in there. If your mind is a computer, you get to decide what you keep on your hard drive, what you ditch. And then, eventually you need to empty the trash and you need to clear the cache, right? We need to clear out what’s been there, which sometimes means going into the backups from way back when and to really question what was presented to you.

Question Everything

Because, as a child, what you think is truth, and you come to a stage where as an adult you start to question, say, an incident that happened when you were five years old, when Mom and Dad were fighting, and your view on, “They were fighting because of me.” Or perhaps you believed a lie that, “Daddy didn’t love me because they were fighting.” But, again, what does a five-year-old actually know about life? But what we do as adults, we believe that five-year-old story until we 55. But how about we go back and think, “What was actually happening in that moment? Maybe I didn’t have all the facts. Maybe I can look back at that.” It’s almost like being analytical towards your emotions. And I’m not saying be an Android. I’m just saying give yourself an opportunity. And sometimes that’s hard.

Sometimes people require a little bit more help. They might need more of a therapy or a psychologist’s help to process old emotions and to process old memories, because sometimes a lot of them are painful. But what I’m encouraging everybody to do is, denial is no longer an option. It’s costing you time, money, peace, and your sanity. If you feel like your wheels are running at a hundred miles an hour, you can’t seem to find peace and clarity, sometimes it’s good to hit the brakes and hit some pause. Take yourself into the garage for a bit. Maybe we need to do some tinkering and fix things and to get you back on the road, because I don’t know about you, but I prefer to be driving a Bugatti at the right speeds, in comfort and style, than to try to patch work an old jalopy that’s no longer serving me.

Happiness versus Joy

There’s a big difference between happiness and joy, and I think all the movies and the songs, The Pursuit of Happyness. I think happiness is overrated, because happiness relies on happenings, and it’s external to you. It actually puts you in a situation when you feel out of control, because if the weather doesn’t happen, or the boss doesn’t give you the raise, or the business doesn’t make as many sales as you’d hoped for, if your happiness is related to your happenings and circumstances that are beyond your control, you’re guaranteed to get unhappy. Where, the opposite is if you choose joy, and joy is one of those things that, it’s a choice. You get to decide, no matter whether it’s good or bad, sunny or cloudy money, no money. I get to find the joy and the gratitude in the moment that I’m in, and just saying, “You know what? Might be bad, but it’s not as bad as it could be. So I’m just grateful for where I’m at, and I’m going to just keep going.”

I think if we can adopt more of a joyful attitude, we will immediately rewire our minds and our thinking and start to see things with a new lens. Instead of thinking, “This job doesn’t make me happy,” or, “This relationship doesn’t make me happy,” it’s like, “How can I find my own happiness and joy in the moment whether I’m married, single, divorced, with money without money?” However you find yourself. If you can really get that skill, and allowing yourself to say, “You know what? It’s basically coming back to what Mama used to say, is, ‘Count your blessings,’ right?” It really is. And neuroscience has proven that the power of gratitude is one of those things that you can rewire your own thinking, and help yourself get out of that stuck feeling and get yourself back on the path to where you want to go.

Grab Resources

I have some great resources for you if you go to mimikacooney.com/supercharge. I have the eight tips to supercharge your mindset. And also on my website, I have a podcast you can subscribe to, I regularly put out information in podcast episodes. And I have a tab that’s actually has articles and resources, so if you want to learn a little bit more about rewiring the brain, how to unstick your mind, all this good stuff, definitely connect with me online.