It's 12:00 - Do You Know Where Your Mind Is?

There’s a funny print cartoon that has a man and woman sitting on the couch staring at a TV screen and the caption below reads, “It’s 12 O’clock, do you know where your mind is?”

As time goes on and we grow up from children to adolescents to adults, for many of us, somewhere along the way life begins to become routine. Day in and day out whether we’re walking, driving, talking, eating, going to the grocery store, or being with our families our minds get kicked onto auto-pilot and continue to develop their habitual ways of thinking, interpreting, expecting, and relating to other people. These habits of the mind can keep us stuck in stress, anxiety, depression, or even addictive behaviors.

Here are a few habits of the mind and a mindfulness practice to help you break out of auto-pilot and gain more control over your life.


Common habits of the mind that are not effective for well-being:


Catastrophizing - If you’re prone to stress and anxiety, you may recognize this habitual mind trap. This is where the mind interprets an event as the worst case scenario. If your heart is beating fast, you may think you’re having a heart attack. If your boss didn’t look at you while walking down the hall, you thinking you’re going to get fired. You get the picture. This style of thinking will support increased stress, anxiety, and even panic.


Discounting the positive and exaggerating the negative - The news is wonderful at supporting us with this one. This is where we habitually reject or minimize any positive feedback and magnify the negative feedback. The glass is always half empty. If you catch yourself saying something positive and then saying “but” followed by a negative, you are practicing this. “I got a 95% on this test, but I didnt’ get a 100%”. Without awareness, this style of thinking will likely land you in a depressed mood.


Blaming - Be careful of this one. We all do it, pointing the finger at someone else for our woes or point the finger at ourselves for others woes. “If my boss wasn’t so hard on me at work, I wouldn’t be so anxious” or “It’s my fault my parents got divorced”. Just check in with yourself after noticing this style of thinking. It doesn’t cultivate any solutions and just makes you feel stuck, anxious, or depressed.


Cultivating the ability to be more present to these mind traps will help you break free from them and shift your attention on more effective ways of interacting with life. If you notice catastrophizing, actually say to yourself “catastrophizing is happening right now”, then bring your attention to your breath for a moment to steady your mind and then ask yourself, “what are some other possible reasons why my heart is racing fast (e.g. , I just ran upstairs, I’m nervous)?

If discounting the positive, come back to the breath, and then switch the “but” to an “and” so at least the positive statement get its equal weight, being more realistic and balanced. If blaming, call it out, say to yourself “blaming is happening”. Remind yourself that blaming simply isn’t effective for anyone and then come back to your breath to steady your mind and bring yourself back to the task you were just doing.


This is not an easy process, yet an important one for regaining control from the ineffective habits we develop in our minds. If we’re not mindful in our daily lives, our minds could just fall into their habitual states to the point we’re on our deathbeds asking “where did it all go?”


Just check in with yourself during the day, look at the clock and say, “It’s X O’clock, do I know where my mind is?” You may catch yourself in some mind traps and if not, just notice whatever you are doing in the moment and then continue if you still want to be doing that or change if you’d rather be doing something else.


Try to be patient through this process and not judge yourself if you find the mind traps arising. Judging yourself as bad or wrong is another mind trap that holds keep you stuck. Breathe in, breathe out, and just redirect your focus.


As always, please comment below on thoughts or questions about this blog. Do you notice when you’re on auto-pilot? What kind of mind traps do you catch in your daily life, what works for you? Writing below helps create a living wisdom that we can all share and benefit from.


Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and conducts a private practice in West Los Angeles. Check out Dr. Goldstein's acclaimed CD's on stress prevention, depression, and addiction -- "They are so relevant, I have marked them as one of my favorites on a handout I give to all new clients" ~ Psychiatrist.

If you're wanting an interactive program to find relief from anxiety and stress, check out Dr. Goldstein's progressive online behavioral change program in Aliveworld. Dr. Goldstein is also available for private psychotherapy.

Power of the Human Body

Is our body something that just carts us around? Do we value its powers behind the scenes as we sleep, breathe, eat, digest, think, exercise? I think not. We are all guilty, to some degree, of not doing more to honor our bodies. An example that comes to mind is something you have heard all too many times....eating good food and exercise.

But what is often overlooked is honoring our nervous system which is housed in our skeletal system. The power of the human body lies not in the brain or heart - it lies in the nervous system that controls the brain and the heart. The nervous system is thee most important system in the body for development, growth, performance and not least of all - immunity.



Case in point: Lately folks have been coming in with severe viral infections. I usually recommend Colloidal Silver and Lysine to start and to immediately get baseline blood work done. One patient had a simplex herpes infection on her lip and that solved the problem once blood work proved a viral infection that medication could not address. Rest and improving immune functions were at the top.



This particular patient is very chiropractic savvy. She knows chiropractic is not just about your back and neck - actually it is about your life. Your life - the biochemistry of your life. By getting her spine adjusted, her immune system is in the best position possible to fight infection.



Guyton's Medical Physiology states : The nervous system controls and coordinates all body physiology. As a chiropractor, I work with the nervous system, thus I am working with her body's innate ability to heal and tap into the immune system. Within 2 days infection gone. She said most of the time, it takes weeks to heal. The power of the human body. It is incredible.



Next case in point: Another patient in her 50's comes in with a condition labeled "Post-Shingles Neuralgia". She has had this for months. Nothing has helped and she has been to more specialist doctors than you can count on two hands. No medications have worked for her yet.



I did my usual objective tests of rolling thermal scan and surface EMG. Discovered that she had major inflammation in the lumbar and sacral areas along with 3 standard deviations muscle spasm in upper neck area (No, she wasn't complaining of neck pain). Within a week of care, about 50% of the symptoms were gone. This was a few weeks ago and she is feeling better day by day.



I think it is essential that she got evaluated by a neurologist, a rheumatologist, her primary care doctor, an infectious disease specialist and a Virologist. It is essential to get to the bottom line. As long as I know that I can proceed without delaying necessary medical care - I feel confident that chiropractic will help her. To what degree I can never know for sure. But it certainly makes sense that a body will work better when the nervous system is not interfered with. And it certainly makes sense that the least invasive way to do that is with chiropractic care. And my 14 years in practice just proves that each day.


The power of the human body is so fantastic. I am honored to help all patients who enter my doors or refer them to the right doctor if need be. I am honored to be in a profession that respects the vitalistic component of healing that being that the body has the potential to be self-healing. I am honored to work with medical doctors who know when to refer to me when what they have to offer is not going to move the patient further towards healing. I am fortunate enough to refer patients to these wonderful medical doctors as I know they will take excellent care of my patient when I cannot handle their clinical issues within the scope of my chiropractic practice.

Power of the human body = power of the immune system = power of the nervous system. As my favorite person in chiropractic is wont to say : Enuf said!