The mind is a powerful tool that could be used as a weapon in life. It could be an even more of a powerful advantage or debilitating disadvantage. It can fuel all emotions from rage and anger to sadness and happiness to confusion and hopelessness to even more complex feelings such as love or preferences & taste. We all experience them and sometimes these ranges of emotions and thoughts could benefit us for the long term, or on the other hand, send us down a toxic downward spiral. The ultimate question is how to deal with these ranges of emotions.

For the scope of this article, the focus will be primarily in dealing with the complex mind and challenging the mental barriers that one may face. For the author, it is a personal vendetta that has been discovered through writing. We all have an inner voice guiding us, telling us where to go and what to decide and how to best approach a situation. How do we know if that inner voice has our best intentions? Some may respond to this by including their morals and values and of course, religious beliefs as part of that guidance. Some may look to their environment when making a decision on which path to take. There are plenty of answers, sure, and we all have different rationale and thought processes that each make us unique.

Let me reiterate that the mind is VERY powerful; to your benefit or to your detriment. If you are a person reading this article and finding yourself trying to take the next step in your life whether it be in your career, trying out new things, new ventures, new experiences, new love, whatever that may be and you have always had these inner voices telling you to not try; to just play it safe or why bother? But deep down inside you are just unsatisfied and you know you have to do SOMETHING. There is obviously a mental barrier there.

It could be easy to just go with the flow and see where life takes you. That is a great approach to life and personally I envy those who think like that. In contrast, if you are a “planner” in this world, you are aware that easily things could be over thought, over planned, over analyzed to the point of exhaustion. I have had my fair share of these feelings throughout my teens and 20s that I have been coping with and honestly recovering from at the same time. It is okay to try and have a plan; in fact, I think it is important to success and your own goals, aspirations, priorities and of course the ultimate underlying attribute – happiness. Remembering though that life rarely goes according to plan is something that was just incredibly difficult to grasp.

The feeling of over complicating life, trying to plan every step, every month, every year, the next 3 years, the next 5 years, the next 10 years and wondering about the “what-ifs”. Failing to meet the milestones in that plan could cause disappointment and even worse, depression and thus, causing a major setback.Again, the importance of having a structure is great because it illustrates your dedication and you are able to see the deviation from the baseline more clearly. However, to truly get to where you want to get to –remembering at times of when to let go is a concept in itself. If you are having a mental struggle or you are a control freak, you just have to try something else. How about trying to: LET. IT. GO! I am learning this personally as I speak (or in this case, write). It is not the end of the world and what is the use for more stress either? Honestly, letting go is liberating. Let me be VERY clear, this is not to say to completely let go to the point of NO control (that would be self defeating) of course, but rather trying a better more productive approach:

Putting in the work, trying something new to see what could work and what does not and learning to PIVOT one way or another.

In other words, you just have to give it a shot! If you are not satisfied with any or some aspect of your life, you must keep on trying new things, new adventures, new careers, new hobbies, etc. Meet as many people as you can, and your mind will feel liberated just by hearing other people's experiences and stories. As a result, happiness and success will soon follow. At the end of the day YOU are still in control regardless. You control your mind. Kill those mental barriers by sharing new experiences. The world is constantly changing and people must be quick to adapt.

To quote a company’s slogan from Oregon (Nike of course):