What’s Hijacking Your Mind?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 18, 2011
Last week was a strange one for me. I lost a client and I lost the opportunity to bid on a client. I got some initial interest in a book I'm working on. I did an experiment where I only drank water for the week. I heard from my mother that my grandmother is actually communicating again, not overly but enough to have cracked her first joke in 3 months. And I saw the Harry Potter movie at a midnight showing and want to see it again.
Every day our minds get pulled into many different directions. If the accumulation of good or bad dominates, that will tend to push you in either direction, and then you can get locked into it so deeply that there's no getting out of it.
Even working from home, my days aren't all that much different from anyone else's. I have days that go well, days that go badly, and days where there's a mixture of both. I try to stay even keeled no matter which direction things go, but I'm not going to lie and say that my mind never gets hijacked one way or the other.
There's a reason we see all these tales about the "dark side" of things. It's been proven that it's easier to wallow in negativity than it is to uplift yourself. For every 24 good things you hear, that one bad thing you hear can shut you down for the day sometimes. It doesn't even have to be anything overtly mean; that's how insidious it can be.
Sometimes people want to know why something that might not be a benefit to them occurred. It adds to allowing ones mind to be hijacked in a negative direction. This past week I read about people who want to find out why someone subscribed from their newsletter or blog, or why someone turned down their Facebook invitation, or even looking to see who has dropped them from Twitter or the new Google+.
I asked all of them the same question; why do you want to know? The standard answer, at least for newsletters, is that people say they can't improve if they don't know why people leave. I always say then just concentrate on the people you still have and work on keeping them happy. It's more positive and uplifting because for the most part those people are going to tell you nice things, even if they have a criticism or two. And let's be truthful; if someone's criticism was that they didn't like your red logo, are you really going to run out and change it?
What types of things hijack your mind and upset you, and what do you do to overcome them, if you can?
Great topic, Mitch! My mind gets highjacked by the same things yours (and probably everyone else’s) does. And my antidote has been the same as yours. I sort out what’s truly worth my mental angst from the stuff that may initially bother me but that really isn’t important.
I also find pulling myself back from overanalysis helps a lot. The irritation may still be there but I let go of my stranglehold on it. I find this tack helps me focus more on what really needs to get done. Many times the irritations I give little or no energy to just dissolve.
Thanks Doug. You know, I will make allowance for a small bit of wallow, but only a small bit. We do have to find ways of letting go, otherwise we get paralyzed into inaction, and man, that’s easy to do as well.
Mitch, would you find it hard to believe that only one thing hijacks my mind? Marital discord.
I can blast off everything else. This is learned behavior – 50 year’s worth. But I still can’t figure out my wife. LOL
She teaches me as best as she can – I’m just dense in that department. So, my goal is to try to be as attentive as possible to avoid discord.
Cheers,
Mitch
Brilliant Mitch. It’s probably harder to brush that off because she’s still going to be there and you still have to deal with her, whereas everything and everyone else you can get away from for a long time if you want to. I’m just glad y’all talk when you need to.
It’s very common for people to be derailed by any little thing going wrong rather than celebrating what goes right, the real capacity of each of us is in how fast we react (positively) to it. I tend to shrug off negativity pretty easily, I believe it’s more of a state of mind than anything else. I know people who are overwhelmed by negativity and find it hard to go beyond it, I guess perhaps I just underestimate it, which isn’t always a good thing but so far it worked for me.
Gabriele, I have good days and bad days when it comes to this. Most of the time I’m good, but when my mind isn’t set bad stuff can enter my mind and stay for days. That’s never good, which is why I try to always find ways to motivate myself.
Hi there, I ws kind of interested how did your experiment on drinking only water for a week go? I watched Harry Potter last Sunday, too, and yes, I wanna watch it again! And again! 😀
If someone will say that he or she doesn’t like my red logo, I’d look into my logo if what’s wrong with it but I would definitely not change it for just one person. 😉
Hi Minerva; you can read about my water experiment here: http://www.imjustsharing.com/the-water-experiment/ As for the other, that’s the thing about listening to other people; many don’t give constructive criticism, just criticism. If it’s not going to help then it’s useless, and who needs that dragging them down?
With me there is only one thing that can destruct me and make me leave everything or destroy my day. It’s just one single person, my biggest love. I have army discipline and I am doing everything right or at least on 90% or I don’t do it. The way I take this hijacked mind back is playing music on my keyboard or guitar.
That’s a good way to go, Carl. I stopped playing piano years ago so I have to find other means to get me there.
I haven’t play piano for more than 10 years, started again a year ago, as I remember some words from my grandfather which was a great self though musician, he could play piano, guitar, cello and saxophone, he was mad at me actually as when I was younger I’ve was frontman of heavy metal band.
I wasn’t in a band but I played and sang at weddings for 14 years, mostly in the church.
Hi Mitch,
Sad but true: the weather plays a part in highjacking one’s mind. Grey days and above average heat tend to get to me. I really struggled the past few weeks while the temp was extremely high. I fought against sluggishness, drowsiness, and general irritability to get anything done.
Highjacked? Something that affected me strangely was someone unfollowing me on Twitter. Wait … I don’t usually look for these types of things but I was trying out some aggregation service (NutshellMail) which is sort of like Paper.li in that it creates a digest and emails it to you. I haven’t paid much attention to the section on “who unfollowed you” until I saw a particular name, which surprised me.
I say it affected me strangely because that day I was planning to subscribe to this person’s membership site. A few days went by and I still hadn’t done it. When I finally asked myself why, I realized it was because he had “unfollowed” me!
I’d say unresolved issues, even those that you haven’t articulated as issues, will highjack your processes.
You know Vernessa, I don’t often go through the process of seeing who is or isn’t following me in many places for just that reason. There are times when it’s best we don’t know, and in truth sometimes we find that what we’re thinking isn’t what was going on at all. As for weather, I just had to turn the AC on with all that heat, and that bothered me because last year I think I turned it on twice all summer.
And definitely we all have to deal with those unresolved issues here and there, but the art is learning how not to dwell on them for too long, whatever that may be for each person.