Taking control of ourselves

After quite an interesting weekend, I decided to start the week of writing about the idea of our senses and how we interpret, learn and deal with them.

As we all know, the way we interact with our surroundings consist of our physical bodies, and the interfaces would be our skins, eyes, tongue, nose and ears (sensory organs). These then transmit the inputs they receive to our brains, and in turn our brains interpret them. When we get hurt, we 'feel' it. When pain occurs, we sometimes choose to use painkillers to dull the sensation of these inputs via our nerves in the affected areas. This shows us that we can manipulate our brains in ignoring pain, and hence, carry on without much change in the rest of our bodies function.

Of-course there are limits to this, but that brings me to my point for today, and that is the manipulation of our brains, a type of conditioning for us to deal with things/issues and in a more holistic picture, life.

Just as how we gain our sense of balance at a very young age, when balance itself must have been one of the most difficult things to obtain then, we take for granted now. This is true since we practiced and fumbled, until we finally could take those first few steps then run, jump and other motions of the sort. In this same way, we learn to heighten our sensitivity to our surroundings over time and with practice.Example: for a right handed person can usually 'feel' more details with their right hand, or can carry out more intricate control, such as writing. Also, with the example of using a blind person and  braille. They can read fully formed words and books by means of indentations on a surface using dots, while, an average seeing person, who hasn't learnt to read braille, wouldn't be able to make out the difference in the indentations. This is because those who can read braille, have developed a better sense of sensitivity with touch.

In this similar way, i feel that we can not only teach ourselves to dull pain, or heighten our sense to experience a higher resolution of our surroundings, but also use it as a tool that would help us deal with issues which are not so physical, such as the loss of loved ones, or the hurt of heartbreak and other things as such.

If we use our brilliant minds, to practice enough about the possible unbearable situations which we may have to face in life and how would we best deal with them, we can perhaps make ourselves better at dealing with our mind issues such as stress, distress, etc.

A good practice way to start with this type of conditioning, is to figure out what would be one of the most distressful situations that you may come across during life, and while you are in a stable frame of mind, you can decide on how you would deal with this kind of occurrence. What you would do, what would be the first steps that are required, and also, what plans you may, or may not need to be in place. By constantly thinking about other such things, we can learn to deal with these thing in much better manner, as practiced familiarity, rather than acting as clumsy fools with realization for the first time when it occurs. Although, there is very little you can do to change the facts, you can change the way you deal with them, and from what i feel, i think that this is the best method of doing so.

On a brighter note, this practice seems to involve a lot of negative thoughts, but from personal experience, I'm more of an optimist and always look for the best possible result of things. When something bad happens, i usually know how to deal with it, and look for the best way too look at the bright side of things.

This you can say is like if you understand something, then you are in a better position to deal with it. My aim, is for us to better understand these feelings, and so then in essence live a happier life with less hurt, pain, distress, stress etc.

Go ahead, take control :-)