Authors: Sebastian Bailey
Step Four:
Put your hand into the water and check the temperature. If it is too hot or too cold, turn on the taps again until the water reaches the right temperature. Put both hands into the basin so the water laps against your wrists. How does this feel?
Step Five:
Now take your hands out of the basin and pick up the soap. Notice its color, its shape, and its texture. Bring the bar up to your nose. What does it smell like?
Step Six:
Roll the soap over in your hands and notice how it lathers and how your hands glide over each other. Put the soap down and notice the sound it makes as it is set on the sink. Continue washing your hands.
Step Seven:
Put your hands back into the water. Hear the noise as they break the surface of the water. Note how it feels as you leave them in the water and how your hands change as you start to rub them together to remove the remaining lather from the soap. Notice how the water changes color and bubbles appear on the surface. What else can you see as you look into the sink?
Step Eight:
Take your hands out of the water. Pick up a towel, noting its color and texture. Use it to dry your hands. Note how this feels and the patterns the towel makes as you use it.
Step Nine:
Release the drain plug. Watch the water disappear. What do you hear? What does the sink look like now? How is it different from when you started, when it was empty a few moments ago?
Step Ten:
Open your eyes and come out of the visualization.
This visualization went into far more detail than the previous one about opening the front door. Once you get used to the process, it becomes easier to delve deeper into visualizations and create specific sensations.
You can also purposefully alter the circumstances of your visualization, which leads to a whole new string of experiences within your visualization (for example, the soap bar could slide out of your hand and fall onto the floor). If you aren’t yet comfortable with visualizing, keep practicing with these two scenarios or try something else to visualize, like peeling an orange or making a pot of fresh coffee. Sometimes the simplest things can create powerful visualizations.
Some people find the visualization about washing their hands in itself a relaxing experience. This is partly because it takes their mind off things that worry them and partly because they find the experience (putting their hands in warm water) and the pace (fairly slow and reflective) calming.
Using visualization to help you relax is the process of creating a place (real, imaginary, or a bit of both) where you feel completely at ease. This place is unique to you. And although you create it through a fairly detailed visualization, once you have imagined it fully, you can return whenever you want to feel calmer.
The visualization exercise that follows is a bit longer and more detailed. However, it will help you create your place of peace, so we highly recommend practicing it over and over. Ready to go?
Step One:
Visualize yourself walking down a path. What do you see? What do you smell? What is the weather like? What’s the temperature? What is the path made of? What are you wearing on your feet, or are you barefoot? What sound do you make as you walk? What else can you hear? What else are you wearing? Is your mouth dry? Can you taste anything?
Step Two:
You come to a bend in the path. Maybe you speed up, because you’re eager to find out what is around the corner. You see a building. It is a building where you instantly know you will be relaxed, happy, and calm. What kind of building is it? What does it look like? What are the walls made of? Are there windows and doors? What do they look like? What is the roof made of, if it has one? Is smoke coming out of the chimney or a flag blowing in the breeze or anything else moving?
Step Three:
You walk up to the door and push it open, knowing it will be safe inside. What is the door made of? Is it heavy, or does it swing open easily? Is there a squeak, another sound, or is it silent? You step over the threshold and into the building and close the door behind you.
Step Four:
Look around the place and take in the doors, walls, and windows. What do you see? What is on the walls, if anything? What kind of flooring? What is the ceiling like? If things are unclear, experiment with what is on the walls. Feel free to change what you see. If you don’t like something, just remove it and put something else in its place.
Step Five:
Add some furniture and other decorations. Turn around and look up and down so you have a good idea of the entire interior of the building. If you want to, walk around and look in some other rooms. Once you are familiar with the inside of the building, go to each window and look outside. What do you see? If you want, each window can have a very different view. Are the windows open? If so, what can you see or feel or smell of the outside?
Step Six:
Now add some sound: Have something that creates noise, whether it be wind chimes, farm animals, a high-tech sound system, or even a live band. Play some music in your mind. It could be jazz, pop, opera, or the latest country music hit.
Step Seven:
Tell yourself that when you’re in this place you can do anything you want and no one will care. Here you can be relaxed, content, and creative. Sit or lie down somewhere where you are completely comfortable. If you are hungry or thirsty, help yourself to a delicious meal or snack or drink.
Step Eight:
It is now time to create a symbol for stress. The blinds or curtains or shutters close and block the view through the windows. Now imagine, for example, a pile of metal knives, forks, and spoons on a table, each with a life of its own, wrapping themselves around each other, stretching and twisting, with the prongs of a fork trying to trap a spoon, or a knife trying to cut off one of the prongs of a fork. You can hear the screeching sound of metal scraping against metal and perhaps even the cries of anguish and determination as they do battle. They are tying themselves up in ever-increasing knots, sliding in and out of one another faster and faster, like snakes, forming more and more distorted shapes, each trying to get the better of another.
Step Nine:
There is then a release of tension—relate the image to how you feel. Imagine, for example, that the knives, forks, and spoons are uncoiling from one another, sighing with relief, gently flopping away from one another and resuming their original shapes. Perhaps they all lie down together, the spoons neatly fitting against the spoons and the forks against the forks. Or maybe they form a neat table setting—a knife, a fork, and a spoon resting happily together or rolled up in a comfortable, thick napkin. Focus on the knives, forks, and spoons finding their comfortable place and, as they do so, the blinds or curtains or shutters open to let in warm sunshine. And you feel totally calm, peaceful, and at ease.
Step Ten:
Look around you again. Stand up and wander around your room, make improvements and changes wherever you like, and perhaps look out a window at the view. Notice what you see. Enjoy the feeling of calm control.
Step Eleven:
When you are ready, open your eyes. This visualization should create a sense of calm. If it didn’t work for you, then it’s worth another try. Perhaps the real you needs to be in a place where you are less likely to be distracted, or you need more time to indulge your senses.
Some people find that trying to come up with an imaginary place is too demanding. If you feel like this, then envision a place you know. Maybe you want to visualize sitting in the backyard or being at your grandparents’ house or walking in a nearby park with the smell of recently cut grass or lying in bed on Sunday morning with the aroma of toast and freshly ground coffee. As long as it is somewhere you associate with being relaxed, it should work.
Visualization has many uses. Athletes, for example, often visualize the race they are about to run or the game they are about to play. They do it because it works. Scientific research proves that effective visualization increases your chances of achieving your goals in all walks of life (poor visualization, however, can decrease them, so beware). And possibly the most important aspect of visualization is its power to help people experience relaxation. This, combined with proper breathing, will allow you to experience a whole new level of calm and a whole new level of control over stress—wherever you are and whenever you want.
GIVE YOUR MIND A WORKOUT
1. Schedule a daily five-minute deep-breathing break at a time when you are normally tired or stressed. Put a reminder somewhere where you’ll see it and turn off all distractions (or at least as many as you can).
2. Practice breathing to a count of ten using this cadence: Breathe in and say in your mind
one
, breathe out and say
two
, in on
three
, and so on, until you get to ten, then start over. Try to focus only on your breath and the number. Notice how good it feels to breathe slowly and deeply—and also notice how quickly your mind wanders. You might find yourself wandering and counting out
thirteen
in your head; if this happens, just start again at one and keep trying.
3. Once you can reliably count to ten without your mind wandering while doing this exercise, increase your time to ten minutes—or do multiple five-minute sessions throughout the day.
Create your perfect mental peace place by answering the following questions. Once you’ve created it, take it for a test-drive and watch your stress disappear.
1. As you walk toward your place, what does it look like?
2. How do you enter your place?
3. What can you see as you walk in and look around?
4. What are the details of, for example, the pictures, the furniture, the floor?
5. Does your place have a particular smell?
6. What can you hear?
7. What can you see out of the windows?
8. What time of day is it?
9. What is the weather like outside?
10. How do you feel as you walk around or sit down in this place?
And remember, you can always change any details you don’t like. Try painting the walls a different color and see how this changes your mood. Some people also find it useful to write down what their place is like, to help jog their memory for the next time.
I
magine you are at your high school reunion. It might be ten or twenty or even thirty years since you’ve seen many of your classmates. You bump into Kevin, the wimpy guy everyone picked on. You stumble into Donny, the guitar player who had rock-star hair. You briefly say hello to Ryan, the valedictorian and Eagle Scout. You might carefully approach Kate, who was ultrashy and didn’t have many friends. Oh, and then you notice Jody, the party animal. Maybe you wind your way through the event, talking to all your classmates. And each time you bump into someone from your past, you realize something profound: They aren’t the more mature versions of your adolescent perceptions. In fact, Kevin is now over six feet tall with a commanding presence. Donny the rock star is now a financial analyst at a major brokerage firm. Ryan currently travels with a rock band as their sound manager. Kate, the shiest person in your class, is actually running for political office in her state. And Jody is an attorney at a large law firm in Los Angeles.
The changes in your perceptions, however profound they may be, still can’t compete with your perceptions from the past. You still view them as the people they were in high school. And they view
you
as the person you were in high school. For some, these reunions are grand experiences, where they are able to revisit a triumphant youth. For others, reunions are painful reminders. And here lies the point.
Your mind is consistently being introduced to and challenged by new situations, new relationships, and new stimuli. Your life follows a path, and along that path, your experiences change and shape the way you think.
If you read this book once, your mind will expand. But it will only expand in ways that relate to your current situations and relationships. Read it again in six months, a year, or five years, and your understanding of the insights, tools, and exercises will be completely different.
Quite simply, if you met your classmates today, your perceptions of them would be quite different from what they were in the past. And if you met yourself two, three, or ten years from now, the same would be true.
Use this book now. Use this book then. Use it when you need it. Use it when you simply feel that change is necessary or confusion is high or frustration is present.
Working out (both physically and mentally) is not a one-time endeavor. It’s a lifestyle. And when you feel you’re getting a little flabby, head to the gym. Go back to the beginning. It’s time to get in shape.
Mind Gym
would never have happened without the insight, support, and energy of many others:
The academic board, including
Professor Guy Claxton, Professor Michael West, and Professor Janet Reibstein.
The Mind Gym core team, including
David Atkinson, Paula McLoughlin, Cathy Walton, Cile Johnson, Rich Hodgson, Pui-Wai Yuen, Hannah-Leigh Bovington, Davina Whitten-Eisenacher, Jennifer Cheung, Sinead Keenan, Geethika Jayatilaka, Daniel Leatherdale, Oliver Fisk, Dawn Haynes, Sarah Donovan, Deborah Buchanan, Emma Burgess, Jayne Callum, Shahveer Ratnagar, Ryan Boughan, Hywel Berry, Dominic Harris, Preet Satiarthi, Ellen Wilsker, Robert Windeyer, Phil Banks, Alex Franklin, Nikolai Koval, Kate Williams, Jacqueline Arnott, Kieran Roche, Kate Lafferty, Hannah Roderick, Diti Sangoi, Arron Dowdall, Louise Parry, Emily Mora, Laura Barone, Alexandra Evans, Cordelia Hutchinson, Ian Friday, Kate Marples, Beth Maguire, Polly Clarke, Louisa Spiteri, Brittany Sandstrom, Rachel Loughrey, Steven Craig, Nicola Sutherland, Melissa Goddard, Deepak Lall, Catherine Hible, Becky Starr, Georgina Law, Alicia Holloway, Danielle Raye, Lauren Frieslander, Rachel de Minckwitz, Eleanor Daniel, Naomi Guckenheim, Kelci Davidson, Rosie Santos, Tessa Roberts, Rachel Morris, Bex Field, Annamaria Mattera, Ceri Williams, Lindsay White, Martha Wright, Cara Struthers, Tom Waghorn, Kirsty Hannah, Mimi Schilz, Camille Malet, Francesca Bliss, Eileen Tan, Isabel English, George Clarkson, Marek Rembiasz, Anastasia Tielman, Shuyun Kong, Lamia Khaled, Lucinda Barrett-Cheney, Natasha Idnani, Colleen Cagney, Iain Smith, Ekaterina Solomeina, Robert Irven, Paige Rinke, Karine Haberland, Oliver Brincat, Charlotte Sandbach, Alexandra Loy, Alice Kingsnorth, Anthony Suppiah, April Robinson, Cara Beeton, Caroline Amer, Emlyn Middleton, Marius Bett, Maryam Yaqub, Natasha Elvin, Roper Peckham-Cooper, Ann Strackhouse, Belinda Chiu, Brian Alvela, Greta Raaen, Ryan Ross, Leslie Schaffer, Belinda Chiu, Erin Wickham, Michael Kofsky, Rory Sisco, and Erica Zalma.