The Basic Rule in Mental Training
The following rule applies to all forms of mental training at all times and under all circumstances. Please make sure that you understand it thoroughly before you do any mental training on your own! A good coach will know this rule; if you want to work without a coach, you need to know it so well that you even think of it when things become difficult.
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The free energy available must always be bigger than the task at hand. |
Please understand that in mental training you have to move weights. If your "mind muscle" is not trained for a certain class of weights, the attempt to stem such a weight will hurt your mind rather than making it stronger.
For instance, a drill that teaches you to stay calm while you are being insulted is a moderate exercise. A session that asks you to deal with the details of a divorce is a much bigger challenge. You need to make sure that you have the free energy for such a session before you start it. Finding out in the middle of the session that it is too much for you is not so good. It will not kill you, but it will leave a lot of negative energy in motion, which makes it difficult to come back to it and complete the session at a later time.
Ways to make sure that you have enough free energy
We have already mentioned that mental training is for healthy people. If you don't feel mentally healthy, please consult with a doctor who is specialized on mental health. If you feel mentally well but would like to improve your fitness level, there are several ways to make sure that you have enough free energy to handle a certain task:
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Work with a partner. This can be a therapist, a mental training coach, but it can also be a friend or family member who is not involved in the situation you are planning to take up. All procedures offered on this website can be done either with or without a partner. If you have a partner, his free energy combined with yours should be sufficient for nearly every topic that comes up. Both you and your training partner should have read and understood the Recommendations and Hints for Successful Mental Training, so that silly mistakes don't unnecessarily get in the way of your work. If you still have difficulties, ask for the help of a professional mental trainer.
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Know the rules. If you don't have a partner or don't want to work with a partner, you still need to know the Environment, Health, Nutrition, Physical Requirements section of these recommendations. This will keep you from getting your energy distracted by factors other than the task at hand.
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Find an advisor. If you don't have a partner or don't want to work with a partner, see that you find a mental training expert who can give you some advice. He or she doesn't have to do the actual sessions with you, but you will have help in deciding how to proceed. Your advisor will add some of his free energy to yours, which will make you stronger if a task is getting difficult. Also, knowing such a person makes it easier for you to find somebody to give you a session when you have gotten into trouble dealing with a certain task on your own. Registered members of our workgroup can get such advice (per e-mail) for free.
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Make the tasks small enough. If you don't have a partner or don't want to work with a partner, and also don't work with an advisor, make the tasks small enough. To stay with the example of the divorce, don't try to look at all of it in one session. Take up the easier parts first - maybe the question of who gets what part of the furniture -, and deal with money, heartbreaks, violence or the loss of children later. We are planning a manual that gives more details about how to plan your mental training. For now, just use these principles:
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start to work in present time and proceed to the past later, when all is fine with present time
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start to deal with yourself, your family and your working environment first and proceed to bigger social circles later, when all is fine in your immediate environment, both private and in the job
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if a task feels too massive to handle, cut it into smaller pieces. If the pieces are still difficult to handle, make them smaller yet.
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Listen to yourself. If you ask yourself "What part of this topic can I handle today with my free energy?", your mind will give you an answer. Use that to make the task small enough that it doesn't require more energy than you have. If you are still doubtful about whether or not you will be able to handle that much, go back another step in your training gradient and take up only half of the task that your mind has come up with. Half of the task means, of course, not to do only half a session, and not to interrupt the session when it gets difficult, but to take up a smaller part of the task and handle that completely: just one room's furniture instead of the whole apartment's furniture, or just one chair if the mind said it could handle one room. Some procedures consist of several steps - in this case it is OK if you use more than one session to do them.
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Be well prepared. Do some preparation exercises before you start with actual training sessions. Of course these exercises are actual mental training too, but they have the special benefit that they are developing skills in you that you can use in other sessions in order to deal with the negative energy that might get kicked loose.
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Watch the changes in your strength. Just as your mind and your memory will become faster and sharper, expect your free energy to become bigger and stronger as you proceed in your mental training. Think of it as a muscle that grows with the growing demand. If you look at this concept in the other direction, consider the possibility that your free energy is not very strong and reliable at the beginning. Don't hurt yourself by demanding too much. There is also a possibility that your mental strength is not always the same. Physical illness or other natural events, like menstruation or pregnancy, can interact with it. So can physical fitness training or any other big physical effort. Just keep watching yourself for changes in your mental strength.
Please come back to this page often, until you are certain that you remember the basic rule in mental training in any possible situation - even if your phone rings at 3:00 a.m. and you come awake from a period of deep sleep! Here it is one more time:
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The free energy available must always be bigger than the task at hand. |
With that principle in mind, nothing can go wrong with your mental training.
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This page last changed on: 30. Mar 13