Beautiful Mind

That day I was thinking about this movie called "A Beautiful Mind". As many of you might already know, this is a story of a scholar man who eventually develops paranoid schizophrenia. The movie takes us through his journey of disease and how he fights with it with  the help of medications, family and friends. Further, he uses his strengths and eventually wins the most prestigious Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. The movie is a biographic drama based on life of John Nash.

 

I always feel impressed looking at his life story. He definitely had "atypical" mind. It could have lasted in a life long misery but he used this "atypical" mind and achieved something which is not "typically" achieved by many.

 

Mind indeed is a mysterious and beautiful thing. In Hinduism and Buddhism, mind is called another sense organ. It interacts or deals with feelings and perception. Many poets and writers write about how difficult it is to control. When it comes to psychology and psychiatry, it talks about mind's strengths , abnormalities and cures.

 

If mind is another sense organ then it is surely very important for "learning" about our surroundings. Also, it might be difficult to control but if it is another organ then it needs to be taken care of just like other organs.

 

We often talk about it being difficult to control and that means we all agree on the strength of the mind. Though, we often under estimate the need to take care of this powerful organ and rarely think about improving this strength or using it effectively.

 

If mind is another organ and it deals with feelings and perception, it becomes very important for us to take care of it.  if there is an impairment in any sense organ, it becomes challenging for the person to access the surroundings. Same is true for mind as well. Along with intelligence, it is an important tool and medium to make daily choices, understand situations and to have effective interpersonal relationships, etc. We often see doctors even for small complaints like common colds, coughs, headaches but we hardly bother to get help for mind related difficulties.

 

We often ignore the need to keep our mind "light" by giving away the burdens on it, which we keep on collecting during day to day life. Most of the times we keep feelings like sadness, jealousy, discomfort, fears  and insecurities to ourselves thinking that others are busy or they might judge us and so on. This ever increasing burden can become a big threat to mind's health, specially during the difficult times. Until we reach others, we do not realize that we are blessed with many different family, friends and community support which we can reach out to share these burdens and to keep our minds light and healthy. I think daily dose of conversation with a loved one  and daily check of emptying out the "baggage" is must for mind's health.

 

Another aspect of this beautiful mind is training it to make good choices. When we are little, our parents teach us to make good choices and to avoid bad consequences coming with bad choices. This simply means that even though it is difficult, one can "train" or "teach" mind to make good choices. We often see the examples of people who gave up the self destructive behaviors and adopted healthy lifestyles like fighting addictions, bad food habits, unhealthy life styles, bad company of friends etc. In psychology, they often talk about cognitive behavior therapy. In CBT, they work on person's unhelpful thinking to achieve improvement in his/her mood and functioning. This means, mind can be trained to overcome its own unhealthy ways.

 

Going further, if used in its full potential, mind can be used to achieve wonderful and difficult goals. Many examples show how people overcome their limitations imposed by disabilities and achieve wondrous things. Many philosophers believe that we attract the things that we think about often. That's why it is recommended to think positive thoughts and to be in a good company. Many times high achievers tell that few years ago they did not have any idea about how they will reach an impossible looking goal. It was their will power only which helped them to do so.

 

Mind is sure a wonderful thing. It needs to be kept happy and healthy with the help of loved ones and with the help of mind itself. People who recognize its strength, cause change in the world! The answers to our questions are within, we often take a wrong rout by searching for it outside!