When you take control and change your thought patterns, you transform your life. In this post, you’ll learn how to train your mind in as little as five minutes per day. You’ll discover six simple techniques that you can start using today.
The mind is a powerful tool that shapes our reality. Your thoughts hold energy and create vibrations that attract things with similar vibrations. It means what you think directly impacts and shapes your life. Your subconscious mind is always at work, processing these thoughts and shaping your experiences accordingly.
Emotions amplify the power of your thoughts. Positive emotions attract more positivity, and negative emotions attract negativity.
Luckily for us, the mind can be trained. It doesn’t like to be out of control or to be in fear and worry; it just falls into that trap because it doesn’t have you guiding it. You have the power to control your thoughts, focusing on positive ones and dismissing negative ones.
By consciously training your mind to focus on happiness, health, and abundance, you can influence both your mental state and your reality.
Let’s dive in.
6 Techniques to Train Your Mind
1. Visualization
Visualization is the technique of imagining, in our mind’s eye, having or doing whatever it is we want to see happen in our lives—seeing ourselves closing the deal, having the relationship, healing the illness, etc.
We repeat these images over and over again, daily weaving the web of all reality for two to five minutes.
The key point to remember is that we always visualize ourselves already having the things we want. This is the mental trick. We don’t hope we’ll achieve it, or have confidence that someday it will happen, we “live and feel it” as if it is happening to us right now.
To train your mind, practice visualization for two to five minutes a day, seeing your goals being realized.
2. Affirmations
Affirmations are statements we repeat to ourselves silently or out loud over and over again. We repeat to ourselves exactly what we want to see happen without concerning ourselves with the details of how it will happen. This is probably the simplest and easiest of all the mind power techniques, and yet its effects can be quite dramatic.
Affirmations vibrate your intentions and allow you to replace negative or limiting beliefs with empowering thoughts, and this creates a fertile ground for creating a new reality. Affirmations weave the web of all reality in a very powerful way.
We should always have a variety of affirmations that we are working with daily. And we don’t have to just say them; we can write them on a piece of paper, input them on our computer, text them to ourselves, or even sing them if we like.
You can practice affirmations anywhere: in your car while you’re driving, sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for an appointment, or lying in bed before you go to sleep.
You simply decide upon a statement that represents what you want to have happen to you, and you repeat it to yourself over and over again for about two to five minutes every day.
Here’s a popular affirmation I teach students in the Mind Power Training: “I am connected to everything and have the power to create my reality.”
3. Removing Negative Thoughts
Thoughts are energy and they attract things of a similar nature. And that applies to negative thoughts, too!
Have you ever found yourself wishing a problem go away? And the more you focused on the problem, the worse it became? The more thought you give something, the more likely you are to attract it.
Thinking about how you don’t have enough creates more scarcity. Thinking about you’re not appreciated brings more self-doubt and less opportunities for advancement.
That is why an important part of training your mind is to remove negative thoughts from your mind – even if they feel valid and true.
I have written extensively about getting rid of negative thoughts, but here are two techniques for eliminating negative thoughts that you can start practicing right away:
- The pattern interrupt: As soon as you recognize a negative thought, immediately stop it and replace it with a positive one. Don’t argue, analyze, or defend against the negative thought—just cut it off and think of something else. For example, if you think, “I’m worthless,” immediately replace it with, “I am valuable.”
- Labeling: When a negative thought arises, label it as a “negative thought” and remind yourself it only has power if you react to it. By not reacting, you diminish its power. For example, if you think, “I’ll never succeed,” recognize it as just a negative thought and don’t give it power.
Remember, negative thoughts only have power if you let them. From now on, you can choose not to let them control you.
4. Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness is an awareness and focus on the current moment. It is allowing the moment we are experiencing to be without judgement and sufficient. In this way we experience and appreciate the pleasures and accept the misfortunes, experiencing everything for what it is without being overwhelmed.
Mindfulness happens when our mind is not cluttered with discriminating thoughts of good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, but being fully present with what is. When you’re mindful, you accept even unpleasant situations; for they too are part of our lives.
To bring more mindfulness into your life, remind yourself daily who you are and why you are here. Each day, remind yourself that you have a mind, a body, a subconscious, and a soul. You are an exquisite being of consciousness and energy on an extraordinary journey to awaken yourself.
This is a contemplation or active meditation I encourage you to do daily, even if you can only dedicate five minutes to it. Sit down in a quiet place, shut off distractions, and hold yourself with a sense of dignity and grace, feel your greatness, and feel the connection to the universe and everything in it.
I’m not talking about arrogance, but rather a profound awareness of the beauty and wonder of the human experience. We respect the opportunity we have been given, embracing every new circumstance, small or large, exciting or terrifying, as an opportunity to awaken ourselves.
When we put all circumstances in our lives into this context, we never lose our perspective about what is important and what is not.
5. Self-Talk
Anyone who works deeply with their mind, whether through meditation or Mind Power, notices their mind constantly talking. It comments on everything: “It’s too cold today,” “I don’t like these people,” “I wish I had more money,” or “This meal is delicious.”
But you are not your mind. Your mind is just a part of you, meaning you can talk to it and train it.
Your mind won’t fight back. In fact, it loves being noticed. When you start a dialogue and guide your mind, it becomes your best friend, your biggest supporter, and you become a great team.
Here’s an example.
At night, sometimes my mind often races with thoughts. When it does, I ask, “What do you want to think about?” The mind replies, “I’m upset with someone.”
I suggest, “Why not feel compassion instead?” The mind resists, wanting to be angry. I allow it to feel anger for a few minutes, then ask, “How do we feel now?”
The mind answers, “Still upset.” I suggest compassion again, imagining how the person has their struggles. We try this for two minutes.
Afterward, I ask, “How does that feel?” The mind says, “Much better.”
You can do that, too.
After a long day, you might tell your mind, “I would like to feel gratitude right now. Can we feel gratitude together? Do we have anything to be thankful for?” Your mind will think and find reasons to be thankful, moving you into a state of gratitude.
6. Gratitude
Gratitude is a powerful success vibration. And here’s a little secret about gratitude: whatever you give gratitude for, you increase.
If you give gratitude for beauty, more beauty will come into your life. If you give gratitude for your business opportunities, more business opportunities will come. If you give gratitude for your health, more health will come.
It’s so simple, yet so neglected.
Gratitude is not just something you feel whenever life’s going the way you want. It’s an emotion you practice. And it’s especially important to practice it when you don’t feel like it. It’s easy to be thankful when your stomach is full. When it counts most to be thankful is when you think you’ve got nothing to be thankful for.
You can practice gratitude in several ways: you can do affirmations around gratitude, visualize things you’re grateful for, or make it part of your journaling routine. Ask yourself: What am I thankful for? Then make a list and feel gratitude for these things as you express them on paper.
Even in the worst moments, there’s so much that you could be grateful for. You don’t have to make things up. Simply prompt your subconscious by saying to yourself, “For the next five minutes, I’m going to feel grateful.”
The mind will likely go, “Grateful for what?”
Then you respond, “Well, let’s think of all the things that we have to be grateful for.”
The mind starts thinking, “Okay, I have my health, I have my marriage, I have my children, I have my interests, I have nature, I have friends,” and you start to realize that you do have a lot to be grateful for.
Be grateful and feel grateful.
Why Train Your Mind
When you train and master your mind, you unlock limitless potential and pave the way to a life filled with success, health, love, purpose, and spiritual fulfillment. In other words, you can achieve and manifest anything you want if only you take the time to train your mind daily.
Success & Abundance
Have you ever wondered why some people find it easy to make money, while others spend their lives just getting by? Our ability to attract money starts with our perceptions and expectations about money. These ‘programs’ run in the subconscious mind and can be programmed with the mind power techniques I teach.
Health & Wellness
Your thoughts are the architects of your physical and mental health. When you embrace positive thinking, you slash stress, boost your immune system, and elevate your overall well-being. By training your mind to focus on health and vitality, you become a beacon of energy and healing. You don’t just live healthier; you thrive.
Relationships & Love
The quality of the relationship that you have with yourself will define the quality of relationships that you will have with others. The way you treat yourself will transfer to how you treat others in relationships. This is all but a mindset, something that can be easily trained.
Purpose & Destiny
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny.” The thoughts that gain entrance into your subconscious define your life and thus your destiny. By retraining your mind, you change your destiny and follow the life course you were made for.
