A year back I was sitting in my AI (Artificial Intelligence) Lab trying to train a machine on a set of data. While the PC processed the data my mind was continuously comparing our brains with an artificially intelligent machine. These machines, although not as powerful as our brain, imitate it to a great extent.
I was going down the track with my thoughts trailing along the lines: how we process data, how the brain learns new data, how it links old and new data and how I can train it to reach my goals more efficiently.
We all have goals.
We all have an image we would love to be.
Enjoying a vacation with our spouse in Costa Rica.
Running a successful online side business.
Writing a best seller book.
Waking up on time.
Losing a 100 pounds weight.
Running a 5000m marathon.
Singing to a crowd of 2 million people.
Every Goal Comes at a Cost
We can all well imagine the happiness that would come to us out of living the success of these goals. But when the time comes to think about the process, the staircase, the elevator, the ride to achieve these goals… we all come across mental blocks.
Because as much as the goal sounds thrilling and fun, the ride is rough and boring. Your brain refuses to think of ways to achieve them because they all bring some degree of pain.
Singing to a huge crowd needs years of practice, waking up early, spending days and nights in the studio, and working your way up to the stage.
Enjoying a vacation needs you to earn or save that much money. Put aside other commitments. Book a flight, pack, plan the vacation. Reserve rooms, plan meals, look out for great spots. Know the issues and be prepared for all that as well.
A side hustle needs continuous hours of effort every single day. You need to take risks. You need to invest hard-earned money.
And so on.
But the glory of those goals can’t escape your mind. There has to be something done in order to get there, in order to get rid of the mental blocks.
5 Things you can do to Overcome Mental Blocks
These are my top 5 things I struggle with to keep away those mental blocks and work efficiently towards achieving my goals.
#1 Train that Brain
The more you are willing to put effort into doing something, the more your brain will develop the power to do that efficiently. Your first task will always take more time, energy and effort. But when you develop into that momentum it becomes easier.
Your brain is a muscle. Just like regular exercise brings you stamina. Regular practice makes your brain more efficient. You then land into mental blocks seldom.
#2 Eat that Frog
Brain Tracy’s book Eat that Frog sums up this tip for you. Try to accomplish the most difficult task of your day first. We tend to keep working on smaller tasks which have less impact when the need is to tackle the greater, more important tasks first.
Write your tasks for the day and then work in the sequence of priority.
#3 Put it in Black and White
Your brain has a lot of work to do. It is always busy. Sometimes processing meaningless emotions, all the gossip you pour into it, the burden of your impending tasks, taking in all the visual and audio data from around you and trying to make meaning out of your environment.
It is very possible you will miss many of your important tasks only because your brain can’t always remind you to do what you want to do at the right time. We have the tendency to get distracted every 8 seconds (on an average). When I first learned that I was surprised how little we can focus. But that is until we get into the practice.
It is therefore important to write down all your tasks in a list and keep it with you all the times. Perhaps keep a list of tasks due on your work desk. Or keep them on Google Keeps. Set reminders. These are your daily tasks.
I try to enlist my tasks on paper the night before so that I know what I have to do the first thing in the morning.
#4 You are not Special
All this self-help industry tries to sell you is mental pills. Pills give you relief temporarily but leave you with side effects and untreated illnesses in the long run. I’m talking about quick fixes and short-term solutions to our problems. We are told that we all are special. We all are extra-ordinary. While we all do have the tendency to be extra-ordinary, not every one of us is that special. Many of us are actually average.
If we all were extra-ordinary – by definition there won’t be anyone extra-ordinary. For many of us, our ultimate goal is to be happy in life. We are wrongly trained to believe happiness come out of being special or something impressive, something that makes others say ‘wow’.
Happiness can totally come out of being average. In fact, it comes out of small things. You need to set your metrics right. If you continue to compare yourself with something far far away from you, you will never feel accomplished or satisfied. Your brain can not work out your way to being Elon Musk when you are just starting out. Go slow and appreciate whatever you gain in your journey.
#5 The 21-hour rule
It is said if you want to develop any habit, you need to dedicate 21 focused hours of your life to it. I say if you work on anything for 1 hour for 21 days you can develop it into one of your habits.
Work towards your goals for at least one hour every day for 21 days. After that, you will come into the habit of working on it. Do something little or small but make sure you work on your goal every single day.
Every Single Day!!!
This is how you train your brain to overcome mental blocks. The brain is like any other machine. It needs data to train on. Give it time and practice religiously. You will reap the results one day.
Do you have any ways that you get rid of your mental blocks?
Share your top tips to get rid of mental blocks.
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