Your thoughts are your responsibility – anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is lying or has some sort of other agenda. Some of the most challenging aspects of the mind can be more clearly understood by simply breaking them down to their fundamentals. The simple fact is; your mind is only capable of changing and evolving if you yourself allow it to. Nobody else can do this for you.
For inspiration let’s look to those people, who I like to call heroes – those with the courage to battle depression. Despite their inability to see the world the way they wish they could, they still take it upon themselves to stay in the fight – the fight for their life. Battling depression is one of the most, if not the most challenging experience anyone can mentally face. It often requires us to rebuild ourselves from the ground up. In M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Travelled” he explores this perfectly, saying – “It entails a period of intensive growth, during which the patient may undergo more changes than some people experience in their lifetime[1].” For this growth to occur, the ideologies we have of our ‘old-self’ must be given up. We must learn to control our thoughts and direct them into a new understanding of life. This can seem quite complex, so I will illustrate with an example.
A young battler of depression sees no escape from his realities. He wants to hold onto the things that he has lost – by death or by separation or by choice. There is a fear inside him that if he lets all these things go there will be nothing left for him worth living for. He feels lost.
This young man needs to have faith in something that grounds him. Whether that be God, a superior power or a belief that all things will come full circle – that’s his way out, that’s his key. He must realise that by having faith that all the dots will somehow connect down the road it will give him strength and courage to start working towards the small daily tasks he must complete[2]. The young man will understand that by winning these small daily battles he is adding pieces to his puzzle or map of life that will come together somehow down the track.
That’s not to say that the pieces he is applying to his map or puzzle are necessarily the correct ones, but it is only by placing the wrong pieces occasionally that we can realise that they don’t fit. Through this process the young man is learning how to apply the pieces to his puzzle and this is a life-long goal some never achieve. Sometimes the pieces that don’t fit will need to be replaced – these pieces could represent things such as people around him or his job or his goals. The fact that he has now learned he has the ability to control the pieces he adds and removes through his own actions it empowers him to grow. His faith earlier on has directed him to understand that no matter what changes he may face going forward he now has the capability to replace his ‘old self’ with a new refreshed version that fits the puzzle more accurately.
We are responsible for our own thoughts and it is faith in a force more powerful than our own that can help us to control our thoughts and direct them to reflect our goals and ambitions.
~ The Mind Connectory, 2018
References:
[1] Peck, M., 1983. The Road Less Travelled. 3rd ed. Great Britain: Hutchinson & Co.
[2] Steve Jobs, 2005. “Commencement Address” Stanford University
The Mind Connectory 
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