Using Your Mind To Grow

Often the mind wanders, but how often does your mind wander outside of the boundaries of your knowledge? Probably not often, if at all. Your mind prefers to stay within its comfort zone and all your thoughts consist of things that have happened to you, are happening or will happen. Also, it would seem rather illogical and absurd for your mind to think of things that you have not been exposed to anyway. As humans our minds are inclined to remain on the rails and follow a certain path of certainty. Risks are cases of uncertainty and therefore instill fear within us, putting the mind in an unfamiliar place outside of its comfort zone. In those cases you may become anxious, nervous and just freeze. But it’s in those circumstances that you as a person can grow and explore further than what your mind thought capable. Through this you can allow your mind to wander further, consume information and expand your knowledge.

The perfect metaphor for this concept is a train. Think of your mind as the carriage and yourself as the driver. The driver has a role to keep the train and the carriages on the track at all times. You don’t dare to go off track because there’s fear within you, you don’t want to know what the consequences are and there are is a clear risk attached. You are constantly roaming but never do you stray away from the clear path, what you have already seen many times. Think to yourself, what if you went off track and were able to go through the bush lands surrounding the tracks and explore the unknown? Up until now you have not known what is really beyond the tracks that are already built, beyond all that you have been taught, known and seen for yourself.

Force yourself to go beyond the known and explore what you have yet to seen because that’s what learning is all about. There’s a lot more out there than what you know that you’ll be surprised what you could find within minutes, hours, days, weeks of roaming around and exploring the unordinary. You should at least owe it to yourself to go off track just once to at least see how far you can get. There will always be risks involved but there are also risks involved with staying on track, in the form of lost opportunities. By staying on track you may miss the opportunity to see something magnificent, find hidden treasure, and take photo of something no one else has seen before, or learn something new if not about something then at least about yourself.

Humans aren’t engineered creatures, we were not born to remain on the rail and follow a set path. There’s no blueprint for life, outlining every direction you must follow or every step you must take. You write your own blueprint, manual and in the end that’s your masterpiece. Not everyone lives, but everyone dies. Don’t let your life go to waste without at least getting all you can get from it. There’s more to life than what is ahead of you. There are always things to your side, while not obvious and clear that’s fine because what you put in, you will get something in return. Whether that’s life experience, memories or money. Take control of your life, steer clear from the norm and try find bush land where you can clear your own path and learn new things along the way. Your life is your own journey, not anyone else’s and you are the captain of your own ship, the pilot of your own plane, the engineer of your own train.