Have you had a time where it was difficult to interact with someone because they were either too emotional or devoid of it altogether?

Maybe it’s not just others that you have seen this in, but yourself as well? This could have happened when you were having a discussion with your significant other, at your job when you tried to show the work you have been doing, or at times when you have been competing in your favorite esport.

You wanted to express your frustration, but the way you did that was through an aggressive tone or body language, which limited the effectiveness of your speech. Or maybe it was that no one could connect with you as they felt you were a computer spitting out information due to no emotion or creativity.

If this resonates with you then continue reading, as I will be showing you that what you just read are examples of both reasonable mind and emotional mind. After those are described I will explain how the Core Mindfulness Skill of Wise Mind can be used to allow both reasonable and emotional mind to be integrated together so that balance occurs. This is a powerful tool that can enhance your gameplay and can also be used for experiences outside of your esport too!

To do this I will first break down emotional mind followed by reasonable mind in order to give context. This will allow you to learn how to notice the times in game where these mindsets can happen so that you can be aware of what can be changed.

This will be followed by an overview of what constitutes wise mind, along with steps for how you can achieve wise mind. Ready to learn how to become as wise as an owl? Ok so maybe not that kind of wisdom, but lets move into the different types of mindset.

How to create a wise mind

Emotional mind

The names of the two mindsets leave little to be imagined as the emotional mindset is exactly that, one where your emotions dictate your thoughts and subsequently your behavior.

Examples of this are raging at your teammates, taking events such as what others say personally, and other forms of intense responses that are likely followed by an impulsive behavior.

When only using your emotional mind your responses are likely to cause problems for both you and for those involved in that situation. This can even lead to a snowball effect where your emotional response becomes so out of hand that there is little you can do to stop the inevitable destruction.

Now the emotional mind is not only where poor responses are created. One of the positives is that it is where your creative mind exists, which allows for you to make plays in game that leave others in awe as they never saw your action coming!

Because of the influence that your emotional mind has, it is important to learn how to use it in a healthy way by creating balance with your addition of your other half, which I will discuss next.

Reasonable mind

With a reasonable mind you are not making rash decisions. Instead everything you do is calculated so as to choose the option that makes the most sense based on the data you have collected.

This is very helpful when dealing with situations as you will be able to come up with whatever the “best” option would be. It is important to have this as a part of your life, as without this ability you wouldn’t be able to make many of the decisions that you do everyday.

The reason why this cannot be an effective way to handle everything in life (sorry Vulcans) is because emotions do exist, and they have the power to influence the way we interpret information which then affects our choices. It also would leave you without any creativity, as you would not be able to think outside what makes the most logical sense.

The part of reasonable mind that can be problematic is when you think what you are doing and how you are playing is the “right way”. This creates inaccurate information that you are then living by as you only have one side of the coin.

When you only use reasonable mind and do not acknowledge the emotional mind at all you will have difficulty in your gameplay, as well as other areas of your life such as limited creativity and potential difficulty in your relationship with others.

To counter this, lets learn how to build a wise mind by taking the best from both emotional and reasonable mind and creating wise mind.

Wise mind

Now that both emotional mind and reasonable mind have been explained it is time for you to see how wise mind is the best of both worlds, and how it will help you to increase your gameplay in your esport.

As you may have noticed, both emotional mind and reasonable mind have aspects of them that are positive. Wise mind is the combination of those positives into one mindset. With both of them working together you will be able to gain insight into what you are experiencing and why.

I will warn you now, it is not an easy task to gain wise mind. While it is nice to have skills that immediately solve a problem, often times we are only treating the problem itself and not its source.

Wise mind is more than an individual problem solver as it is a way to view all of your experiences in a healthy and consistent way so that you can find the most effective solution.

Take for example when someone rages at you. Your emotional mind would want to rage back and your reasonable mind would be confused as you would not see the reason for the rage happening since you have been playing well despite your team not doing well as a whole.

By learning how to use your wise mind you would be able to see reasons for the raging behavior beyond the ways that it affects you. For instance that teammate is likely to be having a bad game himself and deciding to take it out on you, or could be in a promotion series and they are angry that it will affect their promotion, maybe it was a bad day at work/school.

These things can be deduced through the use of wise mind by allowing both the understanding of emotions and the use of data to come to more rounded conclusion to the experiences that you are having.

So you are probably saying that is all well and good, but how do I get to this wise mind? Here are six ways you can work towards this.

6 skills to reach wise mind

Building mastery over your mind through the use of wise mind is best done with the use of these six skills.

Those six skills that are linked for you have been developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD for working with unhealthy behaviors, and you can find more of her work here.

As mentioned earlier, developing these skills to work towards a wise mind is something that will take time. The reason being is that one of the best ways to develop your wise mind through these skills is to use the experiences that you have everyday. The reason being is that you need that experience to be the canvas you paint your wise mind on.

Now apply it!

So remember, the next time you find yourself in either emotional or reasonable mind, remember that in order to have the best outcome you need to combine the healthy parts of each to form wise mind. This will allow you to keep at bay the unhealthy responses to the unwanted outcome in your esport.

You now have the knowledge of what it takes to develop a wise mind along with the tools needed to get you on your way, so start using these skills when playing your esport, and in your everyday life!

Are there ways that you can use wise mind to enhance your gameplay and even your life? Let me know on Twitter or tell your story in the comment section below!

References

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/Core Mindfulness Skills. (2006, June 24). Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. Retrieved 23:27, August 23, 2015 from https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Dialectical_Behavioral_Therapy/Core_Mindfulness_Skills&oldid=499188.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/Core Mindfulness Skills/Wise Mind/Experiencing Integration and Intuition. (2013, December 27). Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. Retrieved 23:28, August 23, 2015 from https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Dialectical_Behavioral_Therapy/Core_Mindfulness_Skills/Wise_Mind/Experiencing_Integration_and_Intuition&oldid=2596531.

Linehan, Marsha M. (1993). Cognitive behavioural Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford Publications. ISBN: 0898621836.

Linehan, Marsha M. (1993). Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford Publications. ISBN: 0898620341.