The mind is a wonderful and complex thing. It has the power to offer us genius, creativity, love, imagination, and many other extraordinary things. Yet, the mind is also a place where people struggle. Research shows that we can spend up to 50% of our day in mind wandering. So, we live in our minds, playing out and living the stories that it offers us. The power these mental stories have can be huge to performance and personal wellbeing. Therefore, a core part of my work helping people in high performance environments to perform at their best comes to getting to know their mind and the stories that it is telling them. A question I pose to them is what stories is your mind giving you? – and how is that serving you?
First Step: Getting to know the mind
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened” – Michel de Montaigne – 16th Century
As you read this next paragraph, within the next few seconds, your mind is going to wander to something. A thought, an image, a narrative. That is what minds do. You live out stories in the mind very easily, and it will offer you an accompanying narrative. The crucial thing is, what is it repeatedly offering you?
I view with a hugely critical eye, the Instagram influencers and pseudo-psychologists who tell us to get out into nature and be positive, and it will offer you so many benefits. Possibly.
But what if, when you are walking in nature, your mind is running mental stories of your next business presentation being a catastrophe, of you messing up terribly on the playing field, or ruminating over past memories that offer stress. That then is your reality. Not the nature that you are in.
And because your mental story is your reality, it serves to give you all the mental, emotional and physical reactions that are attached to that type of story. The catastrophe story comes with worrying thoughts, anxious feelings and tension.
So, how do I change?
The first step is to begin noticing when you are drifting into mental stories. I invite my clients to bring awareness to the triggers or contexts that provoke more mental story mind wandering. Even if this is a reflection after the experience. For example, being tired or when experiencing a stress response, are common contexts for more mind wandering. Therefore, you can prime yourself that you may be served more mental stories during these times.
But there is a double-edge to this process. You are now shining a light of awareness on your mental content, which is a vital process in making change. But in doing so, you may become enlightened to what you mind has habitually been going to without your awareness. And you may not like that content! And that’s why many people fail at this step.
Because your mental stories and narratives may be horribly unpleasant. And it is a natural default to want to avoid these. But then they remain with you. It stays as your default setting when tired and stressed. And your mental, emotional and physical reactions stay the same. And you perform the same way as before, from your habitual actions and behaviours to these reactions.
Step two: Turning toward the content of the mental story
The mental skills training I offer helps people with this next step. And that begins with a subtle but powerful change in perspective. That first step of awareness to your thought content, it’s mental stories and narratives, offers you a crucial mechanism of change. Because now you can view your mental content from the perspective that it is simply a pattern of thoughts. The mental story is a creation of the mind – a story. The narrative is not you – but a series of mind processes that creates your inner chatter.
I am not saying this is easy. But if you want change, turning towards your mind’s content is essential. Avoiding, as before, leaves you a perpetual victim to its content.
What some amazing scientific research is able to show us now, is that this perspective of viewing thoughts as thoughts, mental stories as mind creations, and narratives as a self-talk you bring to experience, changes your brain activation.
Without awareness to your mental content, as I mentioned above, your brain perceives this as being your reality. It activates areas associated with the type of mental content you are playing out. So, for example, if your mental stories are associated with threat, worry, negativeness, pessimism, your brain activates the emotional areas (e.g. amygdala and hypothalamus) associated with that. That becomes your lived reality.
In contrast, brain studies with fMRI imaging have shown that when people shift to the perspective of viewing mental content as mental content, the brain shifts its activity from the emotional areas to your prefrontal cortex – your executive controlling area. The emotional areas diminish in activity with this change in perspective. And over time, if you do this awareness check-in repeatedly, your brain begins changing its neural connections to your mental stories and narratives. It weakens them, and offers you the opportunity of breaking free from habitual reactions and behaviours that were getting in the way of you performing at your best.
The skills training program I offer has another vital component to help people deal with the content of the mind – the attitude you bring to it.
Step three: Changing the context around the thought – helpful attitude responding
So, you’ve started to notice your mental stories and narratives. You can bring that powerful perspective change, to see thoughts as thoughts.
But imagine now that you’ve caught yourself mind wandering in a mental story of catastrophe or worry. And you start responding to that with wanting to deny it, you judge it as horrible, maybe saying to yourself that you are useless, that others don’t have this issue, or you bring a narrative of self-criticism each time you view your mental content.
Another crucial mechanism of change comes from knowing that the content of the mind is just one uncomfortable aspect of experience. What YOU bring in terms of how you relate and respond to that thought content is another.
That thought content could sit in a context of anger, criticism and judgement, which is all brought by YOU. Yes, the thought content may be unpleasant or difficult. But what you are adding compounds the experience and makes it worse. You activate the brain areas associated with threat and dysfunctional emotions simply from the attitude you have brought to the thought content.
Changing the context to the thought content comes from responding with a helpful attitude. Being open and curious to content of the mind. Observing it as if being an impartial witness. Allowing and accepting it to be there – offering yourself a willing consent to sit with the difficult thought or mental story. Bringing a compassionate, befriending narrative around the thought content. Now the difficult thought content sits in a context that is different and more facilitative for performance.
Your helpful attitude responding allows you to relate to difficult thought content in a way that changes your brain activation. Rather than areas associated with threat and heightened emotional reactivity, you have shifted to executive control, and this offers a means of managing emotional reactions when you have to perform.
Mental skills training for performance excellence
What I have described is not an easy change process, and one that is more easily achieved through guidance with a professional psychologist. What I am able to help clients with is accepting that negative thought content will arise. You cannot stop that. But you can change how you respond to that thought content. You can change the context that negative thought content sits within and from that manage your reactions and behaviours.
I have recently finished a interesting research study showing that high performance athletes and corporate executives can learn to respond in ways that are more helpful for performance and wellbeing in 8-sessions of 90 minutes.
How are your mental stories serving you? – If they are not serving you well, then consider training to make them do so. You can contact Stuart at [email protected]
Stuart is a mental performance psychologist with the Canadian Paralympic Alpine Ski Team and consults with high performance athletes and corporate executives wishing to improve their mental skills to enable better performance. His research is part of the process to being a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society.