8 Ways to Take Back Control of Your Mind

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8 Ways To Take Control Back Over Your Mind

Taking back control of your mind means deciding for yourself where your attention, time and energy go, instead of letting ads, feeds, habits and other people's expectations decide for you. Eight practical ways help: choose your media carefully, build steady daily routines, move your body, train your focus, invest your energy only where it matters, choose your perspective, master a skill, and nurture whatever gives you a sense of meaning and connection.

These eight ideas come from an essay by Amateo Ra, a writer and spiritual teacher, published on the site Spirit Science and Metaphysics. His starting point is that from childhood we absorb a great deal of programming from school, culture, advertising and entertainment, much of which shapes how we see ourselves without our noticing. Below, each idea is explained in practical terms, with notes on what research supports and a couple of popular claims that do not hold up.

Why your attention is worth protecting

Your attention is valuable, and many businesses compete for it. Online platforms track what you click, how long you watch and when you are most likely to buy, then use that data to show you more of whatever keeps you scrolling or spending. That is not a conspiracy; it is the business model of much of the internet. Advertising works best when willpower is low, which is why tempting offers often appear late at night or when you are tired.

None of this means you should be afraid. It means your choices about where to look and what to do matter more than they seem. Every hour you direct on purpose is an hour you are living by your own priorities rather than someone else's.

1 and 2: Choose your inputs and build daily rituals

1. Be very selective about the media you consume

News, social media, films and series all compete for your emotional energy. Some of it informs and inspires you; much of it leaves you anxious, envious or simply numb. Try an honest audit for a week: after each session, ask whether you feel better, worse or the same. Unfollow accounts that reliably leave you feeling worse, turn off non-essential notifications, and give more time to sources that teach you something or connect you with real people.

2. Create healthy daily rituals

Create Healthy Daily Rituals

The quote in this image is usually credited to Aristotle, but the wording actually comes from the American historian Will Durant, who was summarising Aristotle's ideas in The Story of Philosophy (1926). The point still stands: what we do every day shapes who we become.

Routines reduce the number of decisions you have to make, which frees up mental energy. Ra suggests a simple exercise: sketch your ideal day from waking to sleeping, then shape your real days a little closer to it, one habit at a time. Be choosy about which products and apps you let into those routines. Consistency matters far more than intensity; a ten-minute morning walk you actually take beats an ambitious plan you abandon after three days.

3 and 4: Move your body and train your focus

3. Exercise and get back into your body

Physical activity is one of the best-supported ways to look after your mind. Reviews of the research link regular aerobic exercise with better executive function (planning, attention and self-control) and with improvements in several kinds of memory, and a single session can sharpen thinking for a couple of hours. Exercise also raises a brain growth factor called BDNF and is associated with better mood and lower stress. The effects are real but usually moderate, and much of the evidence comes from adults rather than from dramatic transformations.

Ra describes our bodies as extensions of our minds and hearts, and the practical lesson is simple: when you feel stuck, sluggish or caught in a loop of screens and snacks, movement is often the quickest way out. Start small and choose something you enjoy enough to repeat. If you have a health condition, check with a doctor before starting a new programme.

(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)

4. Learn to focus without getting distracted

Minds wander naturally, and the modern internet is built to reward that wandering with a constant stream of novelty. Jumping between tabs and apps feels productive because each switch brings a small hit of stimulation, but it makes deep work much harder. Focus is a skill you can rebuild: work on one task in a set block of time, keep your phone in another room, and gradually lengthen the blocks.

Learn How to Focus without getting Distracted

The quote above, attributed to self-help author Tony Robbins, makes a similar point: people who never commit to one thing tend to dabble through life without mastering any of it.

5 and 6: Invest your energy wisely and choose your perspective

5. Be selective about what you invest in emotionally

It is easy to pour hours of feeling into the latest celebrity drama, an online argument or a person who constantly frustrates you. Ra admits he does it too. Each day, try to point most of your attention toward what you actually want for your life, your relationships and your surroundings. When you notice you are deeply tangled in something you do not value, ask what it is teaching you, then step back carefully. Pulling out too hastily can simply land you in the next distraction.

6. Use the power of perspective

How you interpret events strongly shapes how you feel about them and what you do next. Two people can lose the same job: one sees disaster, the other an overdue chance to change direction. Neither reaction is forced on you by the event itself. Your response is yours to shape, even if you cannot control what happens.

The Power of Perspective

A correction is needed here. The original essay claimed that perspective changing reality had been "proven" by quantum physics and by studies of emotions changing the structure of water. The water pictures shown above come from the Japanese author Masaru Emoto, who claimed that words such as "love" or "I hate you" changed how water crystals formed. Scientists have criticised his experiments for weak controls and missing methodological detail, and his claims are widely regarded as pseudoscience. Quantum physics does not show that our thoughts reshape the everyday world either. The everyday psychological point about perspective stands on its own without these claims.

7 and 8: Master a craft and connect with something larger

7. Master a craft

Few things steady the mind like getting better at something you care about: an instrument, a language, woodwork, cooking, coding. Practice gives your attention a clear direction and your efforts a visible reward. Ra mentions the famous "10,000-hour rule", which Malcolm Gladwell popularised in his book Outliers. It is worth knowing that the psychologists whose research Gladwell drew on, led by Anders Ericsson, disputed his use of it, and a large analysis by Brooke Macnamara and colleagues found that deliberate practice explains only part of the differences in skill between people. Practice matters a great deal, but there is no magic number, and good feedback matters as much as hours.

8. Develop a lasting connection to spirit, nature or meaning

Develop an Endless Connection to Spirit

For Ra, connection to spirit, nature and what he calls universal intelligence is the deepest remedy for a distracted life. Readers will describe this in different ways: faith, meditation, time in nature, art, or service to others. What these share is a sense of belonging to something larger than your own worries, which can make the pull of trivial distractions much weaker. If we do not choose what our lives are for, Ra argues, we risk living a life designed by other people.

Develop an Endless Connection to Spirit

The line in this image comes from Bob Marley's "Redemption Song", released in 1980 as the closing track of the album Uprising. Marley adapted it from a 1937 speech by the Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which included the words "none but ourselves can free the mind."

Common myths about controlling your mind

  • "Control means never having negative thoughts." Unwanted thoughts are normal. Control is about what you do next, not about a perfectly quiet mind.
  • "Willpower is all you need." Environment usually beats willpower. Removing temptations and building routines works better than relying on constant self-discipline.
  • "Thinking positively changes physical reality." Attitude shapes your choices and your mood, which matters a lot, but it does not alter matter or water crystals.
  • "Multitasking makes me efficient." For most tasks, switching back and forth costs time and makes mistakes more likely.

A one-week starting plan

You do not need all eight changes at once. Try this instead: on day one, turn off non-essential notifications. On day two, write down your ideal morning. On day three, take a brisk twenty-minute walk. On day four, do one hour of single-task work. On day five, notice where your emotional energy went and cut one drain. On day six, reframe one frustration as a lesson. On day seven, spend time on a skill or a practice that gives you meaning. Then keep what helped.

Develop an Endless Connection to Spirit

The essay originally recommended the free e-book Live Free by Steven Bancarz, the founder of Spirit Science and Metaphysics, as further reading on these practices.

Sources: Essay by Amateo Ra, published by Spirit Science and Metaphysics; Wikipedia: Neurobiological effects of physical exercise; Wikiquote: Aristotle (misattributed quotes, Will Durant); Wikipedia: Masaru Emoto; Wikipedia: Outliers (the 10,000-hour rule and its critics); Wikipedia: Redemption Song.

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