Written by: Marisa Thomas, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Explore how the brain functions, creating subconscious limitations and a simple 5-step strategy to optimize your mental energy.
It is natural, human nature, to want to function at our best each day! Therefore, in pursuit of that goal, we must first explore the energy forces that help us attain optimal performance. My research suggests concentrating on five energy forces that impact how we function. We will explore one of those today, but first let's list the five.
Five engines to fuel your energy forces
Mental
Physical
Social
Cultural
Environmental
I refer to these energy forces as your “Quinjet”! A “Quinjet” is an aircraft powered by five engines. It was first introduced to us by Marvel in 1969, but I think many Marvel movie fans may be familiar with it from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The five engines of the Quinjet require equal force to perform at peak optimization.
Although this craft's exterior is impressive, it will receive modifications from time to time to adapt to changing needs, advance its impact or expand its reach of capabilities. Likewise, the engines may get fuelled differently over time, but at its core, those five engines possess the power to be extraordinary.
So, when you think of yourself as limited to specific possibilities and outcomes, ask yourself if you're optimizing your “Quinjet”?
When people observe your Quinjet functioning at its best, they see something spectacular. They study how you maneuver obstacles, navigate your terrain, and gracefully glide through inspiring and stressful situations. You are strong. Sometimes you will take hits, and the dents will show, but you recover fast. They see you adapt to your environment with modifications that grow your capabilities. They feel a strong presence, especially when you are at rest. They wonder at the mechanics of how you operate with such stealth, resilience, and determination. Each observer will conclude. They will choose a truth that is befitting from the angel and perspective from their standing. They will interpret your impact, value, and worth based on what they see and how often they engage, but do they know what’s fueling your engines?
For today’s article, I want to focus on the most potent engine fueling your quinjet. Think of this energy force as the nucleus from which all others are connected.
The central force from which all other energy connects is your mental force! This energy force is all about mental agility, the power of our mind, and how we think both subconsciously and consciously. How our thoughts manifest and how we behave, feel and act.
The brain is a magnificent and complex organ. It partners with the spinal cord and forms our central nervous system. The brain is our command center. It’s the control system, working like a super advanced computer with sophisticated AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Processing Automation) technology fully built into the body's ecosystem. It works to regulate our temperature, feelings, emotions, and breathing. It processes our thoughts and data inputs, organizing and categorizing them, and purging and storing information and memories. It drives our movements, vision, and hearing, and then it takes all of this and figures out how to operate the 400 billion bits of data your brain faces at any given moment. It happens mainly as a result of learned behaviors over time, eventually becoming behaviors and characteristics that are your natural state. You operate under automatic pilot for most of these second-nature activities and forms of thinking.
As a child, the act of crawling and walking is a mammoth task. It’s a pattern of trial and error, it’s the discovery of the order of physical placement, and practice builds strength and stability. It feels, looks, and is awkward, uncomfortable, and sometimes painful. You endure bumps and bruises, but eventually, you can stand for long periods. You take steps with the aid of the edges of the sofa. You take that all-important first step with no support. You may have succeeded at the second step had the “big” people around you not jumped and screamed at you. For a minute, you’re a little taken aback, not sure what to make of the abrupt interruption to your staring moment, and then you realize it was “your staring moment” that got the big people all excited, and now you're excited and laughing. As much as you want to repeat the action of that standing and stepping forward, your senses are overwhelmed. You don’t know how to organize yourself, you want to stand, but the exciting feeling is consuming part of your energy, it feels funny to stand and much more unsafe than before, so you laugh, and whoa, the laugh monopolizes all the energy, and you’re back on your bum again. Each day you keep trying to recreate the moment, and it happens again, this time with you taking a few more steps and so on.
As adults, we barely have to think about what it takes to stand up and walk. We don’t consciously think about it at all. Your subconscious RPA system takes over, leaving your conscious thoughts and actions lagging by about 7 seconds. Even then, a high percentage of those actions fail to register your conscious thought. They have become a habit.
Have you ever driven somewhere and scared yourself because you don’t remember the journey? Do you just know you arrived safely? That’s your subconscious taking charge. It is also how biases form. We gravitate to the familiar, acting without thinking in given situations through autopilot. The brain registers a piece of stimuli (visual, auditory, emotional, etc..), instantaneously seeking to connect with past similar situations and will jump the mind or action to the conclusions most commonly reached in similar cases.
The brain, in its subconscious state, does not distinguish between the real and the perceived.
If the subconscious mind detects a rising heart rate and a burst of adrenaline, it will automatically connect to a sense of danger cultivated from past experiences. Suppose we don’t take the time to tune into these instinctive behaviors and analyze our cause-and-effect habits in that case. In that case, we can cause ourselves to miss opportunities, unintentionally insult someone, make counterproductive decisions, and negatively impact the ability of others to realize their potential. These actions can be counter to our conscious intentions. We just don’t know if it’s happening. Therefore, it’s important that we tune into how our mind works for us or against us to optimize our mental power force.
As you can most likely tell, I’m a big fan of Marvel superheroes. So let’s use an example from a series closely tied to the concept of your energy forces, powering your “Quinjet.”
In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, agent Elena Yo-Yo Rodriguez is attacked by a bird-like creature called a Shrike. The trauma of the event that almost killed Yo-Yo rendered her powerless. Initially, the team sought to investigate the disappearance of her powers through scientificinvestigation.
They suspected the creature had poisoned Yo-Yo. Agent Simmons worked to find an antidote, but with no success. In the meantime, danger continued to find the team; it would be down to Yo-Yo and her speedster powers to save the day. With increasing pressure and anxiety forming, the team decided that maybe agent Daisy Johnson’s diviner mother, Jiayling, might be able to help. With the help of Jiayling and agent May, Yo-Yo connected the trauma of the Shrikeattack with an early childhood memory of her uncle's murder. Yo-Yo recollects how at ten years of age, she used her superspeed powers to save a necklace from being stolen. It had deep sentimental value to her, although tensions rose when the intruders saw the necklace was missing.
Ultimately her actions caused her uncle’s death. The trauma of her childhood memory was triggered by the trauma from the attack of the Shrike. Her subconscious resurfaces the earlier trauma and connects the two events through the similarity of the feelings. As a result, her subconscious suppressed Yo-Yo’s powers at the memory of how using them resulted in a negative outcome all those years ago. Digging deep into her memory bank provided her the clarity to explore how to overcome that mental block. Prompted by May’s reassurance that she would “Bounce Back,” Yo-Yo had an aha moment that helped her reframe her mindset and ultimately regain her powers, just in time to save the day.
This storyline demonstrates just how powerful our thoughts can be in influencing our feelings and ultimately impacting our actions. In addition, it touches on a few key concepts:
1. There is connection between deep subconscious thought and physical ability.
A forgotten/suppressed memory, often associated with deep trauma, can resurface years later when a similar traumatic event occurs. In those situations, our brains work to process that information and send messages through the central nervous system that can render us physically unable to do things we would ordinarily have been able to achieve. While this is an extreme example, you can experience a similar correlation to how emotion can surface some sort of trigger, which can affect your physical performance. For example, athletes who have suffered a setback or an injury that previously knocked them off course can do so again, even when they are at peak fitness. It tends to happen when something triggers the memory, and the emotion associated with that past event resurfaces.
2. Fear and doubt can hinder achieving our goals.
We saw in this example how outcomes could be impacted when we function from a position of fear and doubt, regardless of how much we may desire a successful outcome.
3. There is power in conscious, constructive thought.
Note I didn’t say positive thinking. Yo-Yo’s situation is an excellent demonstration of how Carl Bene guides us to think about the difference between positive thinking v.s. conscious, constructive thought. In this situation, Yo-Yo demonstrated a positive mindset, visualizing herself using her special powers to defeat the enemy and win the day. She is optimistic, she has used this skill with similar success multiple times before. She knows she can do it. Yet, despite her constantly pushing to bounce back, she fails time and time again. Now frustration sets in. Anxiety rises as time runs out, the fear of failure is genuine, and the feelings of self-doubt and disappointment mount. Even then, she is not aware of the inner turmoil that is the cause but instead looks for external answers. It’s not her; it’s something else. She’s been poisoned. Having ruled out any external possibility, Yo-Yo finally looks inward and is supported and guided by Jiayling and agent May, shifting her mindset to embrace the inner demons and consciously reframe her thinking to move towards her desired goal. However, the goal didn’t change. Positive thought alone was not enough. Developing conscious, constructive thinking was needed to blend positive visualization with a better, more targeted action plan.
4. Asking for and accepting help is critical.
Without the guidance, encouragement, and expertise of many, but particularly agents May and Jiayling, Yo-Yo would have remained stuck and taken longer to recover. Maybe she would have given up at some point and never recovered, settling for less than she is capable of.
Scientists have long proclaimed a strong connection between mind and body. In other words, what we are thinking influences how we feel, and how we think and feel affects the way we act and how others act towards us. In his book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” Dr. Joe Dispenza says, “How you’re thinking and feeling have created your state of being and environment.” Dr. Dispenza expertly fuses science and spirituality together with grounded studies in neuroscience, quantum physics, biology, genetics, and brain chemistry to scientifically ground how, as human beings, we create a “Quantum loop.”This loop is a string of learned behaviors, built over time and within our environment, that wire us to function unconsciously inspecific ways. His notion is that if “we” control the thoughts and feelings that have formed our unconscious characteristics and behaviors, then “we” can also break those habits; develop new habits to create different outcomes.
Let’s frame this in an example: When we are nervous or worried, our brains transmit messages to parts of our bodies in preparation to fight and protect. Chemicals are released, and we can feel nauseous and light-headed. Our stomachs can ache, and we feel weak. These reactions and behaviors have been built over years of conditioning from personal experience or the things we heard from our parents and others as we grew up: “Don’t walk on that wall; you’ll fall off and hurt yourself.” Therefore phrases like this stick with us, and when we fall, our bodies now expect pain, and our mind starts to worry. Equally, when faced with the metaphorical wall to traverse to get to a new exciting destination, our mind is already conditioned to be on guard.
We expect we might fall, visualize the worst, and work to protect ourselves from pain and embarrassment.
So, at that precise moment when we need strength, our mind wants to tap into learned behavior of how to make the body react when we worry. But, we also know that we can feed the mind with positive energy and thoughts. In other words, we can change our state of being from a position of weakness to one of strength. How often have we had that moment when fear strikes us when we least want it to appear? It usually occurs when the stakes are high. At a pivotal moment in an interview for that dream job; as you are about to take the stage at a conference; as you are about to make that important presentation that will launch a lifelong ambition, or even walking into a doctor’s office to open up and ask for help. When we choose to take back control, we do things like:
Take a few deep breaths and quiet your mind.
We relinquish the negative thoughts of “Delete that program”
Lift our posture and stand strong, ready to open up to what’s ahead
Speak to ourselves with positive words: “I can...”, “I will…”, “I am... ” redirecting our energy to positive outcomes
Visualize the successful outcome. With your clear intention set, you move forward through that now wide-open, inviting Door
Before this can be effective, you need to become grounded in who you are beneath the surface. You will need to allow vulnerabilities to surface. Invite and embrace the discomfort, accept inevitable failure points as learning opportunities, as a necessary means to create something great.
My study of the connection between the mind and performance was what inspired me to develop the DoorS methodology. I encourage practicing this with my coaching clients and have a guided practice that anyone can use to practice the DoorS methodology through meditation. If you visit my website, you will find access to the 15 mins guided meditation. You will notice the sound of doors opening in the background occasionally. At the point of transmitting your intentions into the universe, the sound of an aircraft can be heard.
These are intentional. The connections will become more evident as you explore the DoorS methodology more deeply, but for now, I want to provide you with a high-level introduction to this five step process.
Five steps to optimize your day with increased mental agility I created the DoorS methodology to create a state of being that is influenced by a set of intentions we create in our minds. How we think has a powerful impact on the choices we make, the paths we walk, the emotions we feel, and the opportunities we find or accept. I call these opportunities “our Doors.” The DoorS methodology is a sequence of five simple phases that we can use to shift our frame of mind at the moment, in our daily/weekly routines, or with long-term aspirations. No matter what your intention is, whether requiring immediate impact or as a means to guide your state of being for the long term, this guided meditation is a powerful tool to manifest sustainable success. Whatever that means to you. Firstly I know you’re wondering why the letters for D and S are capitalized and the other three phases start with lowercase letters. There’s a good reason for that. Firstly let me outline each of the five steps of this methodology:
D - Disconnect (find mental space and quiet the mind)
O - offload (relinquish the thoughts that are no longer serving you)
O - open (expand your thinking toward new opportunities)
R - redirect (point your thoughts toward optimizing new goals)
S - Set an Intention (visualize succeeding at new destinations of success)
While all five steps are essential, your most significant gains will be mastering the ability to Disconnect and Set an Intention. Without fully being able to disconnect, the following steps will be hindered by the distraction of other thoughts, tasks of the day, or issues of the moment. So by the time you reach that moment of setting your intention, the message can become challenging to decipher amongst the noise that surrounds it. When you transmit that Set Intention out into the universe, you want that message to be crystal clear, with no room for error or open for interpretation. With that clarity, you operate with intention, and opportunities gravitate toward you. Some techniques of mindfulness complement this practice. Mindfulness is more about being present. At the same time, the DoorS methodology is geared toward disconnecting from the present, transporting yourself to an alternate dimension through visualization, and creating the doors that will lead you to a new and exciting future reality.
Using guided meditation is just one approach and tool to practice the DoorS methodology. You will refine this practice over time, and when you get there, you will learn techniques to draw on set intentions you have created within moments and without the need to be in a complete state of meditation.
Are you interested in better optimizing your mental energy force? Then, visit my website and let's connect!
Marisa Thomas, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marisa Thomas is a talent amplifier, forward-leaning visionary, and strategic business leader. She is the Founder of DoorSeffect LLC and describes herself as a “constructive optimist,” striving to continually lift, adapt and evolve the way business leaders think and approach their people and business growth. She is charting a new course to bring a deeper sense of relatability and connection between business outcomes, technology, customer needs, and the “Human-force.” Her mission is to ‒ Transform the thinking; Evolve the person; Arrive!
