The Discipline of Mastering Mental States

It’s really important to monitor mental states. They will usually affect whether we do our exercise, eat healthy, binge watch TV shows, drink alcohol, eat junk food, or are open-hearted (or rude) with the people we love.

It’s also an incredible skill to be able to move into the proper mental state to do focused work, to create, to meditate, to exercise, or do whatever you find meaningful.

1. Recognize that you’re in the wrong mental state. It’s not likely to lead to a calm focus. It will lead to you doing busywork or seeking distraction.
2. Experiment to find a set of actions that can help you move into the right mental state. This is going to be different for each person, but with some experimentation, you can discover things that work for you.

• Meditation
• Go for a walk
• Get up and move around
• Talk to someone (if you’re worried about something)
• Having a cup of tea
• Taking a power nap
• Having a cup of coffee (differs for each person)
• Getting into a quiet, uncluttered environment
• Turning off your wifi router
• Using full-screen writing apps
• Playing calming music
• Reading an inspirational quote or article
• Talking to someone (including a therapist, if needed)
• Bringing playfulness to the task

Learn that you don’t need to change your mental state to do what you’re committed to doing.

If you need the perfect mental state and a perfect set of circumstances to do your commitments, this is a fragile system. Anything that keeps you from doing the actions you need to do to get into the right mental state … throws you off and prevents you from doing your meaningful work.

1. Recognize that you're not in the ideal mental state to do the thing you need to do. 
2. Ask yourself if you're committed to this or not. If it’s not that important, you can put it off until I get into the right state. If you’re very committed, you'll do it if at all possible.
3. Make it happen, despite the mental state.