Do you ever get down on yourself, discouraged or depressed?

If so, welcome to the club of the human family.  🙂

You’re not alone.

I think we all go through periods of times where we allow our minds to focus on things that get us down,

…instead of focusing on the things that lift us up.

For the last 6 years I’ve been hosting a daily mastermind for home business entrepreneurs – studying principles of success, preaching positivity & prosperity and after all this,

Du, du, du DAH… (drumroll please)

I still get a little down and discouraged every now and then.

In fact, just this last weekend, I went through a little bit of a funk.

The good news?

I got myself out of it and I believe, with the right information, so can you.

In this post, I want to share with you a few thoughts that have helped me.

I’m hoping they can help you too.

First, I want to share with you one  way of looking at where depression comes from and,

Second, I want to share with you a handful of things you can do to potentially break out of it quickly.

The Funnel Of Human Consciousness

In many books you’ll read about the mind and the functions of the conscious & sub conscious portions of that mind, you’ll find an interesting statistic.

Authors will tell you that the unconscious mind can absorb millions of bits of data while the conscious mind can only process 7 plus or minus 2 bits of data at one time.

A great way to remember and get this is to imagine that your mind is like a funnel.

The big end of the funnel can represent your unconscious mind taking in all the millions of bits of data coming at it through sight, sound, feelings, environment (so on and so forth) at any one time.

The small end of the funnel can represent what your conscious is bringing to the fore front and choosing to focus on at any given moment.

This is the 7 plus or minus bits of data out of the millions coming at it.

Here’s what’s interesting. 

According to Trevor Sylvester in his book Word-weaving: The Science of Suggestion, when people have a ‘problem‘ it’s typically because the conscious mind is choosing to focus on the the 7 plus or minus 2 bits of data that are causing the problem and ignoring the millions of other bits of data that could equal ‘not the problem’.

The main job of a therapist or hypnotherapist, he writes, is to help the client take the focus off of the problem data, and instead shift it to the bits of data that equal ‘not the problem.’

Here are 5 steps you can take to get back on your mental horse, if you should fall off

*Keep in mind, a  huge part of the purpose in these steps seems to be getting your conscious mind off the problem and on other all those other millions of bits of data that equal not the problem.

(happiness, joy, plans, action AKA – – -> The solution)

I think that’s really the principle here.   Whatever you can do to get that done, that’s the point.

Here are a few that seem to work for me.

1 – Set a New and Inspiring Goal

If your mind is like the night sky, maybe a bit dark and cold from time to time, one of the most inspiring things you can do, is notice the glistening glimmers of light shining back from the the stars that blanket the background.

Setting a new and inspiring goal for the future, and choosing to focus on that, can do wonders for your spirit.

This last weekend I set a new goal for myself and created a back ground for my Iphone with my goal written on it.

Now every night when I set my alarm before I go to sleep, I see my new and inspiring goal.

Every morning, when I wake up, instead of seeing Gmail and Facebook, I see my new and inspiring goal.

This seems to have helped me a TON.

If you can edit the background on your smartphone, you might try this.

Here’s one I used for Iphone that you’re welcome to grab, edit and deploy if you like.

2 – Make A Gratitude List

I’ve found that no matter what’s going on in my life that I might perceive to be a challenge or a problem, I can always find so very many things that I’m grateful for.

You can write these out or do like I did in my truck while I was driving and just start verbally listing them.

I’m grateful for my family, my friends, my health, my freedom, the internet, the heat (yes it’s been FREEZING here in Idaho)… so on and so forth.

You get the point.

In very short order, your conscious mind is off those pesky little 7 plus or minus 2 bits of data that you felt were going wrong in your life, and on those tens, hundreds or ever thousands of bits of data that are going wonderfully right for you.

I LOVE This!

3 – Make A To Do List

One of the common sources of discouragement for me, it seems, comes when I start to think about all the things that I need to get done, and think of them all at once.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Overwhelm, right?

Have you ever done this?

You start thinking of all the things you could do, and should do, and the list just keeps getting longer and longer and before you know it, you don’t feel like doing any of it.

I guess in this case, we’re overloading the small end of that funnel with things that really don’t need to be coming through it, at least not all at once anyway.

I’ve noticed that when I stop to make a list, of things that need to get done, I instantly feel better because I’ve gotten those things out of my head and on paper.

Once they’re on paper you can notice a couple great things.

1 – some of those things that seemed so important in your head, might not seem as important on paper and you can cross those things right off the list.

2 – Listing things out, at least for me, allows my brain to relax and realize I only need to get one thing done at a time.

I can focus on the next item on the list and everything else can wait.

Since those things are on paper, they’re not going anywhere and they’ll be there for me when my mind is ready to handle them,

1

……at

……………a

……………………………time.

ahhhh, peace.  🙂

4 – Call Or Have Lunch With A Friend – Help Someone Else

Getting outside of your own challenges and looking at the world through someone else’s eyes can really help get yourself out of a funk.

Napoleon Hill in his last book, Grow Rich With Peace Of Mind, tells this story of how he was at a low point with certain problems plaguing his mind.

He had this friend who had just opened up a new restaurant and was having some financial problems because for some reason, dinner times were dead and no one was showing up to eat.

Napoleon Hill stopped thinking about his own problems and started to think about helping his friend solve his.

They decided that Dr. Hill would offer free classes on The Science Of Personal Achievement during dinners, to see if they could draw in a crowd.

They did and in the process, Dr. Hill totally forgot about his own challenges and activated the law of compensation in his behalf.

I think connecting with friends and helping them with their problems can help us in a couple huge ways.

First, when you start to realize that other people have challenges and problems too, you’ll quickly realize that
you’re not alone.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll probably also notice that many of the people around you might even have
problems that make yours look ridiculously small.

A small shift in perspective like this can equal a big shift in attitude.

And secondly, focusing on helping someone else, like Dr. Napoleon Hill did, can activate your soul power.

Service seems to be one great way to activate those positive feelings your spirit seems to get when you’re helping someone else.

Do you know what I mean?

5 – Say A Prayer, Read A Book, Listen To Some Music

BOOM.. a “Threefer!”

ha ha.. three for one.  Three tips in #5.

My good friend Mahara Tucker shared a brilliant insight this morning on our mastermind.

She compared thinking a thought to riding a horse.

If you’re thinking a negative thought (AKA – focusing on the wrong bits of data) it’s like you’re riding a horse.

She said it’s important to stop and ask yourself, “Do I like the destination that this horse is taking me?”

If not, get off that horse on and jump on a different one.

I think saying a prayer, reading a book and listening to music are 3 great ways we can jump off that negative horse and test drive some more powerful one’s.

So there you have it my friend.

My top 5 tips for getting out of a funk.

1. Set a new and inspiring goal.

2. Make a gratitude lis

3. Make a ‘to do’ list

4. Spend some time chatting with and/or helping someone else

5. Say a prayer, read a book or listen to some music

I really hope these tips can help you like they’ve helped me.

Have use used these yourself?

Do you have any other tips for getting yourself out of mental ruts?

I’d love to hear down below.

 

PS – Just in case you’d like to listen in on our mastermind discussion from this morning…Here’s the audio replay…