Set the mindset

Remember the feeling before an exam? Being relaxed (or not 😀 ), waking up, getting ready for the day, walking down to school/high school/university and… getting all stressed up and worried once you make it into the crowd waiting before the doors of the examination room.

You know what you know, or what you don’t know, you were relaxed, but now the blood is pumping, heart pounding in your ears, breath is rapid and superficial, your adrenaline levels are sky rocketing!

Or maybe the idea of getting a surgery or any other kind of medical intervention (who hasn’t been at least once at the dentist’s?) sounds more familiar? You know you have to make it, you know you won’t get by without it, you know it would do you good. And you are maybe even relaxed, at peace and comfortable with the idea! But then, you get to the hospital and… it all goes down! You see all the people suffering, hurting, maybe even whining and you start having second thoughts, cold feet, doubts, you would do anything to escape that area.

It goes the same with almost all the aspects of our life: we get influenced by the ones surrounding us. We embrace their feelings, we kind of get contaminated with their feelings and impressions, and based on our endurance, we give in to their influence sooner or later. This is no secret, we influence each other without even realizing it, there have been numerous studies about presenting the same gestures as other people in the room, after spending a certain period in the companionship of those people, gestures taken unconsciously from our parents, care takers, friends, or even from people who we dislike. Although this is not wrong if we do it willingly, in order to “borrow” healthy habits or gestures, this can be very dangerous when done unconsciously. And it gets worse when, being presented with the facts, we dismiss them for not being true. This is the way we can be influenced up to manipulation, with our consent, without even knowing about it.

The more you spend time with a group of people, the more you get influenced by them in a lot of conscious and unconscious manners. Which is OK, it helps us evolve, learn and borrow skills from each other. But what happens when it holds us back? What if it gives us a view on life that is more restrictive than expansive? Do we go on with it? Do we fight it? Do we even realize it?

The fact is, it’s hard to realize that we “borrowed” indeed the thoughts or the reactions, because all this works at a subtle level, affecting directly our subconscious. We are set up from birth with the ideas, rules and impressions of the ones around us. We learn their words and their values, from the names and the differences between colors, to the meaning of good and evil in life. We are thought about “impossible” things and desirable outcomes. We are told stories and we make expectations. Depending on the stories we are told and the outcomes of the actions of the people around us, we draw our own conclusion: life is easy, life is hard, I will never make it, I will make it just like my ancestors, etc.

And we embrace this mentality, this mindset, passed through generations. It becomes our only reality and shapes our surroundings, defining who we are. We embrace it just like a fish, that spends its entire life under water, and if told that there are birds that can fly and breathe air, it categorizes as absurd and nonsense, because no fish has ever flown, therefor nobody can.

The only way to detach from this mindset that occupies every single millimeter of our lives, is to detach from it. No matter how much we are pressured to conform, no matter how much we are told to stop asking questions and to obey, we must detach from it and leave. From a good distance, all the aspects in a person’s life start making sense. From a healthy distance, we can even find reasons to laugh at our concerns, see the irrelevance in some of our wishes, and most importantly, see clearly what is benefic and healthy for us! Because nobody can tell us what is actually good for us, at least not as an absolute rule. We all have our unique way of being happy, satisfied with our lives, we know our own needs and possibilities.

Even if it’s hard to resist all the voices that suggest or demand you to obey and do things like everyone else, if you feel it’s not right, just leave! Go somewhere where you can be out of any influence, somewhere where you can feel and hear only yourself. Give yourself time to silence all the outside noise from your mind, breathe without hurry, spend some time in silence. Without external echo in your ears, you can make lifelong decisions, you discover your own possibilities and talents and you start living your own life.

And when you know for sure who you are, what you need and want, what is your approach on life, return and help change the odds. But remember to always go back to yourself, detach again, each time you feel your own will suffocated, because the way the mindset of the others affects us is an insidious process and it seems that the most contagious “disease” is fear.