9/31 – Mind games

Darling, I can play your game, too and much better than you.

This article is, again, inspired by podcast of Cory Muscara on the topic of Self-love.

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According to Merriam-Webster, “mind game is a psychological tactic used to manipulate or intimidate —usually used in plural”. We often come across this term with the connection to love – playing mind games to get someone where we want – or winning over our opponents using some kind of a sneaky technique. As I was reflecting upon a topic of self-love after listening to Cory’s podcast, I realized that mind games and self-love are deeply connected topics.

As Sue described in the video, mind games in our brain are fueled by our ego who constantly fills our brain with over-protective and over-destructive thoughts just about everything. Even when hearing word as self-love, deep in our brain, we might connect it with a mild form unhealthy focus on ourselves or in some cases or in the even more common sense, we are not even able to interpret that word ourselves. Heck, we do not even give it an importance to interpret it properly for ourselves!

Am I right?
Have you ever asked yourself what self-love actually means for YOU?
I bet you didn’t.

That was my case as well. My ego was playing this dangerous game with me. First of all, it did not believe in self-love and second of all, it was giving me different kinds of screwed up definitions. It was the moment of awareness when I asked myself, which thoughts of my ego do I actually believe? My mind felt like it was filled with smokescreen. But my desire to truly understand and feel what self-love actually was, persisted.

Then I told myself…

Darling, I can play your game, too and much better than you.

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In this mindset, trying to hold on the realization that my mind was actually playing with me all the time, popping out different words, accusations, judgements, I decided to play the game back intentionally and create my own “definition” of self-love just out of pure and intended curiosity.

The random (but not really random words) started to appear in my mind and I was searching in my own mind search 🔎.
To my surprise, I had a definition in my mind, I just never searched intentionally to find out what the self-love was for me. These were the search results:

Looking back at my previous views on self-love, there were actually few “definitions” that my ego used to give me to satiate my curiosity while dismissing the importance of self-love at the same time. Previously, the keywords in my mind, after hearing the wording self-love, were: I do not have time for this, what a kitsch word combination, self-love? – another type of narcissism?, I don’t care, oh no…again…, self-love? – self does not exist, mmm…let me skip this…

Little did I know that the word has such fundamental importance in the connection to my inner beliefs and inner satisfaction. After seeing the new search 🔎 results, I delved deeper into the words mentioned in the picture. Shockingly, I grasped that those were the words that kept me alive and sane. If I never tapped into those words in my real life, the hate towards myself and my well-being, would keep slowly killing me. This new definition anchored my previously faulty and unorganized search results

No more mind games. No more ping-pong games. Ego throwing the balls (words or thoughts) towards the wall.

Done.

How to kill the mind games?
It is simple – Think with intention.

Take the ball (thoughts/words) and aim strategically against the ever-flowing current of chaotic thoughts of your ego.

And repeat:

Darling, I can play your game, too and much better than you.