Your mind can be your greatest friend or worst enemy. Knowing how your mind works is the key to mastering your life.

1. How to Love Your Life
Know How Your Mind Works

2. Welcome from me, Dina Marais!
It’s true that your mind can be your
greatest friend or your worst enemy.
This is determined by your inner
conversation that results in your mind-
body-emotional states and your
responses.

3. For further reading, download the
eBook.

4. Your mind-body-state and
inner conversation, your
overall state, how you feel
most of the time is also your
primary disposition – your
Attitude towards your life.
Do a quick check of your
mind-body-emotional states:
How do you feel most of the
time? Are these states
enhancing and empowering
or paralyzing and limiting? Do
the states of consciousness
you live in make your life a
party or a misery?

6. Your Attitude consists of your
values, beliefs, meanings,
intentions. It determines and is
determined by your inner
conversation. Your values,
beliefs, meanings and intentions
all are what we refer to as
frames by which we frame all
information.
Your frames determine the
games you play, meaning that
the frame results in a state and
you respond from state. This
sounds very technical, so let me
give you an example.

7. Say you meet your friend
for coffee and she’s late.
Now if she is always late,
the frame or meaning
you may give this is that
she is wasting your time
and you may get angry
(state) and when she
arrives you may shout at
her (response or game)
and the coffee date is a
real disaster (outcome).

8. After losing your temper
you feel guilty about
your anger. This is a state
(guilt) about a state
(anger) that is called a
meta-state. You say to
yourself, “Why do I
always do this?”
Then you feel contempt
(state) at feeling guilty
(say) and say to yourself,
“I am so stupid!” (frame
and inner conversation)
and burst into tears
(response and game).

9. CONTEMPT
GUILT
ANGER
VAK
Stimulus
Response
“I’m so stupid!”
“Why do I always do this?”
“She is wasting my time”
STATE & META-STATES FRAMES

10. CONTEMPT
GUILT
ANGER
VAK
Stimulus
Response
“I’m so stupid!”
“Why do I always do this?”
“She is wasting my time”
STATE & META-STATES FRAMES
What is important to know
is that your higher frames,
states and games govern
the lower frames, states
and games.
In this case the highest
frame is “I’m so stupid”,
feeling contempt about
yourself and the game you
play is beating yourself up.
The next important thing
to know is that changing
any frame or state will
change the game.
.

11. So, say after you feel angry when your
friend is late, you access a state of
calmness and apply that to your anger,
your state changes to calm anger (meta-
state) and you say to yourself, “She is
probably stuck in traffic, I’ll catch up on
calls while I wait” (frame and inner
conversation).
When she arrives you are happy to see
her and say to yourself, “I’m blessed to
have great friends!” The coffee date is
bliss (outcome).

12. So, say after you feel angry when your
friend is late, you access a state of
calmness and apply that to your anger,
your state changes to calm anger (meta-
state) and you say to yourself, “She is
probably stuck in traffic, I’ll catch up on
calls while I wait” (frame and inner
conversation).
When she arrives you are happy to see
her and say to yourself, “I’m blessed to
have great friends!” The coffee date is
bliss (outcome).

13. Accessing the state of calmness,
confidence, excitement, focus, curiosity,
etc. and applying it to another state is
like slipping on a Jacket that changes
your state, posture, facial expression and
response accordingly.
Associating and linking or anchoring a
state and all the sensory qualities with a
specific Jacket (style, colour, texture, etc.)
gives you the opportunity to recall and
stay in a resourceful state, no matter
what the situation.

14. On My.CoachingSelf.com you can create a whole Wardrobe of Jackets.