When Your Mind Works Against You - Ted Powell

Dealing with wife’s cancer the speaker learned significant life-altering lessons.

Some of the main ideas in the presentation are as follows:

Get out of your Head and go to scary place of ‘Not Knowing’

Let go of ‘Need to Know’ each and everything

Let go of ‘Need to Control’ anything over which you have no or little control.

We have a strong desire make unknown known as part of survival mechanism.

Unknown is a scary place as it brings pain and discomfort

Drunken Monkey

I need to fix this now

What if this happens?

Why did he do that?

How can I possibly handle this?

Negative Self Talk

Drunken Monkey wants

Simplicity

Clarity

Certainty

World is changing at fast rate. People are finding difficulty in coping with it. They want to hold on to something positive and certain even if it is not true. This leads to growing fundamentalism. If fear is strong enough people are ready to kill others who oppose their viewpoints.

Three Valuable Lessons

Reject the Label – Stop labeling people or events – sign of intellectual laziness

Limit Mental Junk Food

News carries most of this kind of junk food

Negative programming or conditioning of people

Feed Fears

17:1 negative news – positive news ratio

Drunken monkey thrives on it as it feeds on negativity. It gives false sense of security

Beware of Fearful Rhetoric

Drunken monkey involved in policy making causes wars.

Pay attention when drunken monkey hijacks your mind.

We have the ability to controlling and changing our way of thinking. This is the most transformative and empowering tool in our hands. Use it on daily basis to change your life and the world around you.