15 Key Patterns of the Mind
What is the Mind? Nevermind!
It’s difficult to define what the mind is.
Generally speaking, it is often understood to be a non-physical faculty that manifests itself in mental phenomena like perception, sensation, reasoning, thinking, belief, memory, desire, motivation, and emotion. Mind or mentality is often defined by contrasting it with body, matter or physicality.
Rather than struggling to get a specific definition of mind, I created a list of many of the patterns that we generally accepted concerning the mind:
• The mind ascends quickly to what it believes to be the truth. Simply speaking, the mind grabs at any declaration, proposition, or alleged fact that seems to support its beliefs.
• The mind creates evidence to support its beliefs even if there is no personal knowledge or objective facts to support those beliefs.
• The mind is comfortable with and is strongly attracted to repetition, habit, and familiarity.
• An untrained mind will seek pleasure in the moment (short-term gratification) before it even becomes aware of the benefits of delayed gratification.
• An untrained mind will generally react faster to thoughts of extreme future discomfort than it will respond to the experience of great pleasure.
• Every human being is unique. Every mind is unique. Their view or “map of the world” of any individual will be based on his/her ethnic background, gender, religious influences, genetics, childhood, age, conscious and unconscious life experiences, and many other factors, both known and unknown.
• The mind needs a predictable future. When there is no predictability, it searches all the stored memories of known situations to find an appropriate action pattern. When the mind is “extremely busy” the door to the unconsciousness of an individual opens and accepts whatever a desirable source of information will tell him/her.
• When the mind is confused it enters into a trance-state or dissociation.
• A large part of the population is more suggestible to influence when their expectations are so unfulfilled that they feel lost and confused.
• If this confusion is extreme enough they will enter into a permanent trance state (a dissociative trance disorder). It is a disorder because they do not have whole, well-balanced, functional lives.
• A student of self-actualization can place himself/herself in self-induced trance-states (auto-suggestion) and feed himself/herself specific suggestions to transform his/her own behavior.
• A skilled coach, mentor, teacher, or therapist can place himself/herself in self-induced trance-states (auto-suggestion) to create greater rapport and to listen more effectively to others especially students, clients, and patients (in the case of wellness professionals and physicians).
• The unconscious mind is always listening. Whether or not a person is in a trance, suggestions could be made which will have a hypnotic influence, as long as those suggestions find some resonance at the unconscious level.
• The mind has the potential for great wisdom. It has the ability to integrate intuition, explore non-linear concepts, and create a foundation of highly developed and effective ideals and principles to govern all actions and decisions.
• The mind has the ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously.
The Takeaway
It is these qualities that at the most basic and obvious level allow the human mind to make notes of patterns — what psychologists call “pattern matching” or “pattern recognition”. We can use this to create powerful and effective strategies for our life games. Some of these patterns connect for us on an intuitive level while others connect to us on a left-brained, linear, and intellectual level.
Here is a Medium Poem about the mind you might enjoy @davidrudder
Here is one I posted on @LewisCoaches
Author: Lewis Harrison is a book author, public speaker, and seminar leader on strategic thinking and self improvement.
For a decade, Lewis was the host of a humor-based Q & A talk show on NPR (National Public Radio) affiliated WIOX FM in NY.
