This week in The Brain BS™ Blog and Podcast I am going to share some tips for how we can effectively manage our minds when those around us are not. I am going to share bits and pieces from previous blogs and episodes to illustrate how the concepts learned here can be implemented into our daily lives and interactions with others. We cannot control other humans who decide to be unkind, rude, or even downright mean in person or online, but we sure can empower ourselves by choosing our thoughts on purpose that inspire us to respond in a way that works for us, not against us.

Okay, let’s start there. I am going to refer to blog post #27) It is Not Happening To Us, It is Happening For Us. We often believe we are victims of our lives and have no say in what happens to us but that is not true. If we can understand that our life lessons are there for our highest potential, we can approach them in a much more solution oriented and positive way. The truth is, everything is happening for us, exactly as planned, and totally determined by the Law of Attraction. Basically, this means we have our subconscious thoughts (ego, brain BS) and our conscious thoughts (higher self, soul). Our soul always has a higher vibration that serves us and is pure. Unfortunately, our subconscious brain has a much lower vibration and is usually our point of attraction because this is where we primarily reside 95% of the time. As a result, we frequently attract negative people and events into our lives because we are not living consciously and don’t even realize we are doing it. This means that whenever we experience anything, it is because we manifested it and there is a gift in every interaction no matter how unpleasant it might be. If it is happening, the Universe thought we needed that lesson. So instead of getting all worked up over other people’s behavior, we learn the lessons being offered to us (and for us) by the Universe, so we can then move on to the next lesson.

For example, say I have a relative that I believe is not being very kind to me. I notice that and start to dwell on it. Whenever she posts something about me or says something to me, I am looking for evidence to support the thought that she is not being kind to me. I have this thought so often, that I come to believe it to be factual. Until I realize that thought is not factual and just a brain filter (hidden belief that skews my perception in life), I will keep believing my own brain BS over and over again. Once I increase my self-awareness and learn to differentiate fact from fiction, I can start to notice things I was overlooking before. Whenever I am triggered in any way that feels unpleasant, it is actually a good thing and time to look within because there is a lesson to be learned. If I can remember that, I don’t need to get so worked up over what other humans are doing all the time.

The next blog I want to refer to is #11) How to Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You. First, let’s acknowledge that even if we believe our situation is better than somebody else’s, there is always somebody else who we perceive to be doing better than us and that seems to be who we focus on. We see their beautiful homes, fancy cars, and hear about their amazing vacations they go on and we envy them and wish we could be more like them. What is really happening is we are rejecting our present moment as not being good enough and wishing it was somehow different. We could have a million great things going on in our lives, but our brains always want to offer us what we do not have and what is not good enough. This is normal, nothing has gone wrong. This is just another reason we have to be onto our brains and the BS they offer us.

Worrying about what other people think causes us a great deal of suffering. It can totally debilitate us and keep us stuck from trying anything for fear of what others might say. If we believe the opinion of others is more important than our own, we will always be at the mercy of other people and what they could possibly say about us. That is why it is so important to work through this fear. The way we can begin that process is by increasing our self-awareness. We start to pay attention to what is going on in our brain. We start to notice the self-talk and the way we treat ourselves so poorly. We start to notice deep seated and subconscious thought patterns that have been guiding our behavior for decades. We start to realize that worrying about what other people think is actually optional and we have control over it. We start to learn how to manage our minds to make the transition to believing our thoughts are the thoughts that really matter. We start to realize that the best way to take care of everybody we love is to decide to love ourselves first. We start to realize that if we love the way we are showing up in our lives, we do not really care what anybody else has to say about us and we reclaim our personal power.

This brings me to the next blog post I want to refer to and that is #32) Emotional Adulthood. Okay, let’s start first with what I mean by emotional adulthood and how we were actually raised in a way that did not serve us. When we were little, we were taught that other people could hurt our feelings. For example, we might come home from school crying because little Jimmy called us a name or said something mean and our parents would get really upset. Sometimes they would get upset enough to call the parent of the child who said something or even the school if the parent was not handling the situation the way we thought they should. They would complain that little Jimmy should be nicer and should not be making kids feel bad. Essentially, we were taught that other people have more control over the way we feel than we do. We learned that the way to feel better in life is by trying to control what other people say and do, instead of focusing on how we respond to them and manage our minds. This is in direct contrast to what emotional adulthood is all about.

Emotional Adulthood requires us to increase our self-awareness and become more insightful regarding our habitual brain habits and patterns when we are in default mode. This gives us valuable information about how our brains are automatically working to give us our current results. For example, if we unknowingly but frequently think that somebody is out to get us and we are being taken advantage of, we will most likely experience anger or resentment on a consistent basis. Or if we tend to believe that the world is out to get us and we are a victim of the times, we may feel powerless and even hopeless. Another common theme is the thought of not enough (this is not good enough, I am not good enough, nothing is good enough.) It usually goes hand in hand with thoughts that everything should be better than it is. People who have these thought patterns struggle to ever be happy. They spend a great deal of time feeling inadequate, insufficient, and unworthy. Whatever our brain habits and patterns may be, it is critical to be aware of them first in automatic mode if we want to then purposely create different results in our life.

After we become more self-aware, it is time to actively manage our minds. This means that we decide if our current thoughts are serving us and if we want to keep them. Yep, that is right, our thoughts are optional and even if we believe them 100%, they still may not be useful for us to hold onto them. We can choose different thoughts that will trigger different feelings, that inspire actions to give us a different result. Regardless of the thoughts we choose, emotional adulthood maintains it is always up to us to determine how we want to feel. We can experience life and our emotions from default mode, or we can do it deliberately by managing our mind and choosing our thoughts on purpose.

Let me give you an example of how this might play out. Say you are interacting with somebody online or in person and they start talking politics and they are not on the same page as you. You learn that they have different values than you and you believe that some of the stuff they are saying is offensive and even intolerable. The reason you feel that way is because of what you are thinking, not because of what they are saying to you. Can you see that? Nobody can make you feel anything without you having a thought first. Your first thought might be OMG, I can’t believe they support that or maybe you think they are despicable. Whatever it is that makes you feel intolerant and offended is going to lead to actions that give you a negative result. If you can remember that thoughts are optional, you can purposely choose another one to believe (you have to really believe it and feel it in your body for it to work) that can give you a different result. It could be as simple as, everybody is entitled to their own opinion or maybe nobody is all good or all bad. The whole point here is that it is up to us to decide what we want to focus on and how we want to feel. When we embrace emotional adulthood, we reclaim our personal power and stop blaming other people and circumstance for the way we are feeling.

Lastly, I am going to refer to blog post #20 You Cannot Outrun the Law of Attraction. Our thoughts and how we manage our minds are how we create the reality that we experience. As I mentioned earlier, most people unknowingly bring many negative events and people into their lives through their unexplored subconscious and dwelling in negative emotions. Learning how to live a deliberate life aligned with our inner purpose enables us to manifest whatever we want in our lives by choosing our thoughts on purpose to create the results we want. When we really pay attention to what is going on in our heads and decide how we want to feel on purpose, our point of attraction and lives improve dramatically. It is not possible to “trick” the Universe or outrun the Law of Attraction, so intentions matter more than words or actions. If we are acting phony and inauthentic, no action is going to improve the point of attraction. So if we are getting all worked up over what other people are doing and causing ourselves to dwell in negative emotions, we are bringing more of the same to us. If on the other hand, we manage our minds on purpose and strive for neutrality when we just can’t quite achieve a positive feeling, we are going to create a much better future for ourselves.

In conclusion, life is going to present us with difficult situations and people and we get to decide how we want to handle them. We have to understand that those difficult times always happen for us, not to us. We must not worry more about what other people think about us than what we believe about ourselves. We need to remember that If we have our own backs, it does not matter what anybody else has to say about us. Embracing the concept of emotional adulthood and taking responsibility for our emotional state, ensures that we maintain a positive point of attraction when it comes to the Universe and Law of Attraction. If this is not enough to inspire you to manage your minds around people who are not, I don’t know what is. Join me in the Brain BS™ Podcast to discuss this further.