7 Great Aids to Mental Efficiency

There may be nothing that provides inner peace better than achieving mental efficiency—mastery over our cognitive world; ownership and control over our thoughts; the ability to switch-off.

These tasks below are important in getting us there:

1.      Bring Order to Chaos. Anything chaotic has the potential to throw us into mental, and therefore emotional, disarray. Having a command over our thinking spaces is about bringing structure to bear on our otherwise unstructured lives. Diligence in creating order is blessed.

2.      Deal with the Past. Skeletons in the closet just will not do. They haunt us just knowing they are there. An unreconciled past stands there as a perennial distraction, and who can think in the presence of such a troublesome historical backdrop.

3.      Forget About the Future As Much As Possible. The reason we have one day at a time—only one 24-hour period—is because tomorrow’s troubles lie in store for us whether we worry about them today or not. Why worry about them twice or 22 times. We can only meet, and impact, today’s troubles.

4.      Refuse to Be Hurt by People. We may think that some people are out to press our buttons, but if in pressing our buttons there’s no response, they’ll soon stop. There are ways of handling hurts that mean we don’t end up hurt. The best of these is learning the grace of forgiveness; the empathy that acknowledges that hurt people hurt people. When we carry none of other people’s baggage we are free to think and exist in the simplicity of mind.

5.      Breakaway Occasionally to Really Clear the Mind. Learn the age-old practices of contemplation. Emptying the mind is something we learn to do through intent and practise. Gradually we become better at it.

6.      Get the Rest Required. Sleep. One word. Not many single words have more power to revive us. A quantity of 7 to 8 hours sleep per night/24-hour period is ideal. Just as important is the quality of our sleep; unbroken as much as possible. Nap. Get disciplined in achieving continual alertness.

7.      Enjoy Simplicity. Make the complex simpler. Make things no harder than they need be. Simplicity is its own blessing.

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True peace is experienced in the mind, and such a mind beautifies the real estate of the heart with landscaped serenity. Mental efficiency promotes such a state and the abundant life stands, then, to be enjoyed.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.