What is the Mind and How Does it Work to Create our Reality?

When you are on a self-development journey sooner or later you will find yourself in this phase. What is the mind and how does it work to create our reality. You will come across all authors and speakers in this space repeatedly telling you that your thoughts create your life, you are programmed to think the way you do, and that you must reprogram your mind in order to consciously create your reality. But through that you may be wondering WHY does this happen to us and what actually is the MIND? How does it work to create our reality? Are we living in the Matrix? Let’s break it down for you.

Derick Grant of DG Mindset recently spoke about “Getting out of Your own Head in 2024” I’ll link the video here. In it He explained the 6 muscles of the mind step by step and I wanted to share this info because, out of the hundreds of books and information this journey has led me on I felt this was broken down in such a way that it was easy to understand. When you actually understand how things work, you have a better understanding of how to fix them. So, Let’s get into The Mind and how it works!

“Your Mind has 6 muscles, Think of it like a tool belt. You have a hammer a screwdriver and so on, but no one ever told you how they worked or how to use them. Same goes for the mind, there are 6 faculties of the mind creating our reality 24 hours a day and we were never taught how they work.”
Derick Grant

The 1st Faculty of The Mind is your Imagination:

Imagination is your ability to think of something in the future that does not actually exist. This is not a place you can go to. It is not in the NOW. What is Happening is Now, there is only now, there has always been now and there will only be now. The imagination creates the concept of the future, but the future does not exist, tomorrow doesn’t even exist. The imagination is intended to create your reality. When you envision something and you carry it out now, you will be living that reality when it gets to tomorrow. The problem is that people are so far off in their imagination thinking so far ahead about what could happen, and they leave their body in the now feeling stress and anxiety, but it is all “mind made” it does not exist outside of the mind. You cannot see fear or stress outside of you. So, if you have the ability to create the fear and anxiety, you have the ability to destroy it.

The 2nd Faculty is Memory

The Memory is the past. So, the mind creates the future and then it creates the past. Yesterday does not exist in the now. Everything you are thinking about yesterday is a memory. You cannot physically be in yesterday when you were there yesterday. But because of the memory of past experiences, good or bad, this causes us to react to things in the now.

The 3rd Faculty is Intuition

People do not tap into intuition. Because you have got to be quiet to hear it. You have to be still and get very quiet. Intuition comes from the heart.

“The fascinating thing
about the human body when you were in
your mother’s womb the first organ that was developed
was your heart, it’s design almost as if
the walkie-talkie system that was going
to be leading us down the road had to be
equipped and wired first but what
happens is this{the head} is louder than
this“{intuition}
Derick Grant

The 4th Faculty is Reasoning

Reasoning. We try to reason our way out of something. Trying to think our way instead of feeling our way. How many times has something happened and you just knew it was going to happen, but it didn’t make sense because you were listening to reason. If it makes more sense and can be explained in such a way that we feel it is the safer choice or better option, we will choose reason over feeling. Most of the time choosing the way of reason when we have an intuitive hit on something, we choose wrong.

The 5th Faculty is Willpower

Willpower is the ability to hold on to thinking in one direction. If you have a weak willpower muscle, you cannot control your thinking and in turn you cannot control your environment. Willpower is directly linked to your level of energy. If you have low energy levels and don’t prioritize sleep, meditation, nutritious food and pay attention to how your body feels it will be harder for you to have the willpower to control your thoughts.

The 6TH Faculty is Perception

Perception is the lens that you use to view life. Within perception we have perspective.

“Imagine this,
perception are the glasses perspective
is the tint of the glass. So if I have
yellow tinted sunglasses I will see the
world with a yellow tint”
Derick Grant

Your life is directly tied to your perspective. If there are 30 people in a room, there are 30 different realities. We all have different experiences, belief systems and so on. Perspective determines how you experience something and how you experience something is called your reality. Your reality is directly tied to how you view it!

Now that you have a better understanding of the mind and how it works, how do you get to the point that you are aware of all these wheels in motion?

Meditation. If you are going to get any kind of control over your thoughts, you have to be able to discern where they are coming from and the only way to do that is to get quiet. I was never interested in mediation. I do not come from a family that meditates or is spiritual for that matter. But you get to the point that either you are so unhappy and looking for a change or are sick and realizing you may be able to heal your body by healing your mind. The corpse pose in yoga was what got me started. I always skipped ending in corpse and then one day I set my timer and decided to try it for 5 minutes. I was hooked. I actually enjoyed the silence. I was surprised that I enjoyed it, I was always such a busy body. I always thought there is no way I can meditate, I can’t sit that long, I have things to do. 8 years later every single day for a minimum of 20 minutes a day I meditate, and it is my saving grace! I do it at the end of my day when my family is asleep. I sit in a chair with my feet planted and I sit in prayer and close my eyes to slow my thoughts. Most people say you have to meditate first thing in the morning, and that doesn’t work for me at this time in my life and that is ok! If you can only meditate 2 minutes a day when you randomly find time here and there, that’s ok too. Just remember, you do have the time. When you pick up your phone to look on Facebook or Instagram, swipe over to your clock and set your timer to start a quick session. This really is one of the only ways you will be able to start taking charge or your mind. I see so many people out to dinner or sitting somewhere and they are on their phones being constantly entertained or swiping until they find something. It is very important that we learn to sit with ourselves in silence. This is the only way that we can learn to conquer our minds and consciously create our reality. Check out my post on Meditation here.