Mind is defined as “The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought” (Source: Oxford Dictionaries).

The mind is very powerful. It is fed by experience and learning. Even in the case that everyone learns the same and grows up in the same area, within the same culture, the mind is still different from person to person. Each person is interpreting the learned and experienced things differently. The hypothalamus (or limbic system), a small part of our brains is steering all automatic functions of us human beings, like hunger, pain or joy. This is called subconscious. The subconscious is influencing the (automated) interpretation of the environment a lot. Imagine, you are scared of a spider. You see a spider in front of you, what do you do?

Remember the last time you watched a horror movie. Imagine, you were really inside this movie and emotionally touched by it. The only bright thing in your room is the TV and you are alone at home. Alone, sitting in a dark room, watching a dark movie, all you hear is the movie, a really scary movie. The movie reaches its most exciting part and suddenly anything hit the window next to you. Something you did not expect. Were you scared?

Now imagine, you are sitting the office, some colleagues are around. You in the bright office with people around, reading an E-Mail and suddenly a bird hits the window. Would your reaction be differently? I trust so.

As you see, the environment, your emotional situation is influencing your automated reaction directly. Also if you know, you are safe, an unexpected situation causes automated reactions. The form of the reaction depends on your feelings and your thoughts in that moment. The consciousness influences the subconscious, but the consciousness cannot fully steer the subconscious, while the subconscious can fully overwrite the consciousness for some time.

I learned that our brains are muscles. Muscles can be trained. If you train your brain everyday e.g. in Mathematics or learning languages, after a while, this will be easier for you. The older you are, the harder it might get, but still, everyone has the chance to train the brain. I am sure: If you continuously train your brain, you will also be fit in high age.

Now imagine, the mind, controlled by the functioning of our brains, including the limbic system can be trained. If you want to be great in math, train math. For being more innovative, exercise practices that train your creativity. In case, discussing about the sense of life is your biggest life enrichment, than build your opinion and discuss with others. Be open for the opinion of others and think about it to enlarge your possibilities.

I believe, you can train your mind in the direction you want it to be. My mind is actually trained to be open for new and positive, always. This is not about an artificial positive attitude as a facade, while I feel negative inside. I am positive deeply inside as well and believe that good things happen, if you do even better. Of course, you need to be careful, people might hurt you or deceive you, but this is their problem, not yours. You can take that experience and learn from it and this is awesome as well. These experiences can make you even stronger, if you let them. If you do good, good comes back around. This is what my experience taught me. There is always a positive gain in changes.

This understanding brings you a development of your mind: You learn to see the things more positively and to see chances instead of risks. You learn to step forward instead of looking or stepping back. I enjoy my life much more than I expect it to be, seeing the risk first. This strong trust in the good inside helps to survive hard times, like my fight against cancer. You are stepping forward through hard times, remembering the awesome target and hard times seem less hard.

My experience teaches me over and over: Targeting the Good Leads you to Good. You can compare this to driving car. You watch where you want to drive and arrive there more save. I see and feel that the mind can be trained to be more positive and that feels great. Important is that you really want it to be positive, otherwise the project fails.

You have the chance to control the power of your mind, maybe less by what you see in the media, but by what you experience yourself. It is up to you to actively power up your mind or follow the direction it goes. You can create great things with it. Trust yourself. Be active and not the victim.