What is Mindtraining for Life? Choosing How You Want to Live

An Introduction by Dr Stephen Gene Morris

If you’re looking for the Mindtraining Glossary, click here.

Choosing How You Want to Live is the claim made by practitioners and advocates of Mindtraining. This might seem like a bold claim in a world where there is a growing mental health crisis. However, consider this, if I am not choosing what happens to me then who is? There are clearly limitations in how far I can control the external world, for example the outcome of job interviews, the weather or what people think about me but if I cannot regulate how I think and feel about those events then the course of life will be decided by others.

Over 25 years of working with mind training systems have enabled me gain a profound understanding of how the brain works and under what conditions we survive or thrive. The reality is that many of the psychological problems we experience are rooted in how we make sense of ourselves and engage with the world. By explaining how mental processes work and then teaching people to observe them and ultimately control the way we think, profound changes to how we live are possible. This is Mindtraining for Life.

Everything we experience, all happiness and sadness, our positive and negative emotions are the products of our consciousness. We can think of consciousness as the prism through which we make sense of ourselves and the world. For most of us consciousness manifests as concrete, as something real and fixed, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many of our emotional states are transient, subjective interpretation of events that we have created. We frequently help to generate and sustain anxiety, low self esteem and depression, yet we view them as dangerous impostors who we have little control over.

No one wants to generate problematic emotions and psychological suffering, but most of us have a hand in our own negative emotional states. Understanding how positive mental health is generated and sustained, in theory and practice, is mindtraining. Let’s be clear it does take some effort to regulate and control our minds. In short we are dealing with cause and effect, the more you positively engage with mindtraining the greater your levels of happiness, wellbeing and success are likely to be.

We know, personally and scientifically, that how we think about ourselves and society is intrinsically linked to our health and wellbeing. We also know that social isolation (the sense that we are alone and uncared for) is one of the major causes of psychological suffering. One of the ten principles of mind-training is that humans are designed to have compassion for self and other; to be positively socially engaged. Because striving only for one’s own success or material wealth is unlikely to protect us from poor mental health. Conversely, training the mind in nondual compassion likely increases resilience and enables people to thrive.

Mindtraining is an ancient concept based on three principles consistent with reliable Western psychology. Firstly, improved psychological resilience and flexibility support good mental health. Secondly, many of us have the capacity to understand the mind training methods. Finally, the systematic application of these reliable methods can positively mediate brain function and structure, leading to improved mental and physical health.

Mindtraining is neither new nor novel, humans have been using systematic ways of thinking to increase wellbeing, happiness, and success for millennia. Meditation, a form of mindtraining, has been a central part of many Asian societies for thousands of years. In fact, the movement to introduce meditation and mindfulness into psychology that began in the 1970s was an attempt to improve the mental health treatments in economically advanced nations. However, research has demonstrated that in relocating traditional mind training methods from East to West, some of the health benefits of meditation and mindfulness was likely reduced.¹

At its heart, mindtraining is a system designed to support improved quality of life. It is wholly rationale and evidence led. It only uses techniques which have provgen benefits to wellbeing. One of its strengths is to give clients the ability to observe, understand and resolve their own psychological limitations and challenges. However mindtraining is not a cure all or panacea, the human condition is far too complex. The three principles underpinning effective mind training; understanding, observing and transforming have a postive role in reducing suffering and increasing resilience.

Reference

1. Morris, S.G., 2024. The Scientific History of Mindfulness: 1938 to 2020 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Kent,). https://kar.kent.ac.uk/106240/