The mind is thought of as a complex system, but even the most complex of systems is made up of simple building blocks which can be understood. Here are a few facts on the mind with brief explanations to back them up.
The mind is a prediction machine. This is basically how worrying comes about: your mind trying to prepare, protect or warn you by coming up with scenarios on how it could possibly go. Let’s say I have an interview tomorrow, my mind will come up with predictions on how the experience could go and my thought process will be something like: what if I wake up late? What if my outfit isn’t professional enough? What if I say all the wrong things? What if I’m not qualified enough? Is my CV good? I’m I confident enough? What if I don’t impress them? What if I’m nervous and anxious then?…it could go on and on. But at the end of the day, as important as those warnings are, it’s best to remember they are your mind’s doing, and have nothing to do with how the situation will play out. So instead of missing out on that interview because you think you won’t get in, or failing to ask that girl out because you think you’ll be rejected, or turning down everybody who shows interest because you’ve predicted future heartbreaks, or putting off publishing that book because you already think no one will read it… It’s best to find out how the situation will play by forgetting what you think will happen and actually giving it a chance to happen.Your mind is your reality. I found some quote on Insta that said: you become what you constantly think about, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s easier to notice mistakes when you are always thinking of mistakes, it’s easy to find opportunities when you are always thinking of opportunities, it’s easy to be happy when you are always thinking positive… Belief is a very powerful thing, and it’s been proven that what you believe in often than not manifests in your own reality. A story I read somewhere: A man and his family lived in their home for years without anything extraordinary happening, until one distant relative visited. Now, the relative being a man who loved to prank, came up with ghost stories about one particular room in the house. He claimed the room he’d been given was haunted by the ghost of a woman who moved by tapping on the floor, going further to describe the ghost’s physical appearance. It may have been a made up story, but the next morning, the little girl who had slept in the room confirmed she’d heard the ghost tap. Soon, everyone in the family was convinced there was a ghost in the room. So they told their neighbor, and asked him to spend a night in the room and prove them otherwise, but the next day, the neighbor was also certain he’d seen the ghost. What they didn’t realize was that there was no ghost at all, but only a projection of what their minds wanted to see and hear.
When you don’t understand, you depend on reality. But when you understand, reality depends on you.
The mind lives in the past and the future and rarely in the present.The mind is a master at dwelling in the past or dreaming of the future. This may not seem bad at all on the surface, right? Especially when the present isn’t what we want it to be. But the problem with this is that you end up missing out on the present which is what we really have ( the past is gone and it’s only a memory while the future isn’t certain so it’s just an imagination: they both only exist in our minds). So instead of worrying/ planning for the future or reliving/suffering for the past, take time to exist in the present, enjoy it, give yourself permission to be happy and get things done. When you do that, you won’t have to worry about the future, because everything will kinda fall into place.The mind is a system. It is. Which is why we have habits, some deeply rooted in our unconscious selves that they become part of our identity. A story adapted from Atomic habits by James Clear: a woman, once a preschool teacher, got a new job as a corporate lady. But even then, she still found herself asking her fellow adults whether they’d washed their hands after using the washroom. Habits are therefore a big deal because at the end of the day we become what we do (habits are things we do repeatedly) and what we do often goes back to who we believe we are (see, the mind!). So if you want to change who you are, start by getting habits that align to the person you want to be, which means you start by doing things like the person you want to be. For example, if you want to be fit and healthy, start by acting like a fit and healthy person…working out, eating healthy etc. And don’t forget to watch yourself inorder to learn about those deeply-rooted, automatic, unconscious habits. I had to watch myself to learn that I often cover my mouth when I yawn, chew on my nails or anything I can get when I’m bored, apologize for literally anything, adjust my glasses when I’m nervous and so many other things which I used to do so unconsciously.The mind is a processing machine.The mind is a problem solving machine and because of that it’s always processing information, analysing and trying to ‘make sense’ or figure out what’s being fed to it. When things don’t add up, the mind is notorious for filling in the blanks inorder to make sense out of it all. Which is why we are often advised to trust memories less. The mind is always picking, choosing and altering information: so what comes out in memories is likely to be fabricated than what went in. Our brain often tends to make sense of what happened in the past by relating to the present. A true story by author Meredith Maran in her book My lie:A true story of false memory; Meredith was divorced, seeing a therapist, having a strained relationship with her father and dating a woman who’d survived sexual abuse. After a few repressed-memory therapies, Meredith discovered her father had raped her in childhood. She accused him of that in front of all her family members, he denied it, and the family was split into two: those who believed and those who didn’t. After a few months though, Meredith discovered her father had never raped her, the memory had been made up. Her brain had only been trying to make sense of her present: why she had the strained relationship with her father, her failed relationships with men, her toxic abused girlfriend, her feminist ideologies and the fact that she’d been studying the topic of child molestation . We can all prove this to be true. I mean, have you ever realized when you are dating someone, your memories with them are always so positive, but when you break up with them, you start to view the memories differently? What was once sweet and thoughtful becomes selfish and immature.
The knots represented a different item or number. The Inca’s chief means of transport were the llamas.Machu Picchu ~ An Incan town.
The great mounds.
The speculations are:The mound was used to mark time or seasons for planting and harvesting since the serpent’s head aligns with the summer solstice sunset and the tail points to the winter solstice sunrise. Scholars also suggested that the curves on the snake’s body align to the two solstices and equinoxes. Another speculation is that the mound was used to determine the true north and served as a compass, since the first curve on the snake’s torso after the head matches the Pole star of the Draco constellation. Another, is that it’s a documentation of a solar eclipse with the oval representing the sun. Or maybe just a place of worship for the snake god or goddess. We may never know for sure.
