There are many lessons in life that can be tough, but one of the hardest lessons can be learning how to take control of your mind. We’ve all been there. We’ve decided we want to make a major change in our life and then an inner voice starts casting doubts, or we remember a time when we tried something similar and it didn’t work. And then before we know it, we lose some enthusiasm and motivation and we find ourselves dismissing the idea altogether or we procrastinate and feel even worse.

The problem with the human mind is that it is an incredibly complex as the control centre of our body and has a nasty habit of not acting in a way that we expect. Sometimes our mind is like a runaway train going off in a direction we can’t control and at others it appears very calm, controlled and allows us to do what we want. If you’re going to make changes that you want there is one very obvious thing to do and that’s learn to take control of your mind.

So that’s simple isn’t it? Not necessarily. When you’re learning to take control of your mind, it’s important to remember that the control can be positive and can be negative. I had a sharp reminder of this, this week when I was watching Episode 1 of the Biggest Loser USA. The programme pits 16 chronically obese people against each other to lose as much weight as they can whilst competing for the ultimate prize of 250,000 dollars and the coveted title.

I’m not keen on reality programmes and watching people with such serious health problems doing a range of hair-raising challenges is not really my idea of entertainment, but I am interested in the common human behaviour traits that are on display. The candidate clearly have numerous health issues that need to be tackled, but the biggest battle for all of them is learning to take back control of their minds in a positive way in order that they are motivated to make enormous changes. The programme shows the dilemmas that so many people experience in different contexts.

So here are my tops tips to take control of your mind and get motivated.

1. Decide you want to make changes for yourself: Although it’s laudable to do things for other people that often needs to be a secondary issue. If you want to take control of your mind, decide why you are doing it and what you will gain from it. It may be that if you do something it will make someone else happier, but think through the benefits for yourself.

2. Don’t play the victim: Lots of people in life have hard times, terrible families, addiction problems, terrible tragedies etc. I’m not diminishing anything that anyone has experienced that has had a terrible impact on their lives, but at some point you have to say. I’m not going to play the victim. I’m going to be a survivor. “ You see examples of survivors everywhere. Survivors motivate themselves. If you feel you’re stuck and finding it difficult to be motivated think of that.

3. Don’t let other people define you: It can be really difficult if you have been criticised or hurt by other people to let that go. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and be de-motivated to make changes. if you let other people define who you are. Make the decision to take control of your mind and define the person you are and want to be.

4. Don’t allow others to sign off your victimhood: It can be difficult to get motivated if you have someone else constantly sympathising with you about your inability to move forward. Don’t let this happen. You want encouragement from people that will have a positive effect not have them buy into your feelings and help to keep you stuck.

5. Be honest with yourself: Identify what is stopping you from being motivated. Boredom, fear, disinterest. Once you know the reason, you can look at what you can do to overcome those barriers and move forward.

6. Banish negative self talk: If this is a habit, it can be a difficult one to break, but there isn’t anyone else who can do it for you. If you want to take control of your mind, try a distraction technique. Every time that voice says I can’t or something negative – do something positive. Don’t allow your inner voice take control.

These are just some of the steps you could take in order to take control of your mind and become motivated to make the substantial changes in your life that you want.