In Life, one thing that is almost guaranteed is the existence of Mind Games. We often wish that we never had to play them but we do and they are necessary. What I want to talk about is different ways to handle mind games successfully. Although it may not be true that you can always win mind games, I do believe that there are certain effective ways of handling them.

Mind Games happen when people try and manipulate other people. In many ways they are useful. For example, mind games are a natural part of the dating process. The idea that someone is or isn't interested in you can increase or decrease how much you like them. If you are certain of their affections sometimes it may take away from your own due to the psychological principle of scarcity 'We often like more what we must work to have'.

Now, although it can be useful most of the time mind games are just troublesome situations that we must tolerate and deal with in our already busy lives. Without getting into too much detail about the different mind games that there are out there, what is important to be aware of is the general principles behind dealing with all types of mind games.

Bullying, backstabbing, belittling, gossiping about, laying guilt trips, blaming and bad mouthing are all examples of ways that people use mind games to hurt other people. Now, in order to understand how to win out over such behaviour, it is important to understand what the behaviour is designed to do.

When someone bullies, they do it to exert control, have their own way and demonstrate power. When someone backstabs, gossips about, badmouths or belittles, they do it so that they can appear better than the person because they feel it's important that there are seen better than them. When someone blames or guilt trips another person, they do so because it gives them a control over the other persons feelings and they want to have the other person owe them something or they want the person to be hurt by the situation.

So, mind games are then about the other person having control and power over other people and appearing better than them. What this all comes back to is insecurity.People who play mind games, do so because it lets them hide their insecurity by apparently demonstrating the opposite traits.

As long you remember this, you can remember the secret always is to keep a cool head. Mind games can only work on you if you let them. That's the beauty of 'mind' games. As long as you take charge over how you think about them, you will always win.

At the end of the day who really cares if another person 'thinks' that they are getting one up on you. The question is 'Does it really matter?' When you realise how insignificant this is, you get to the point where you can instead focus on what is useful.

What is useful when dealing with mind games is getting to the point where you can seem to ignore them but at the same time deal with any problem that comes with them. For example, if you are being badmouthed it is obviously important to defend yourself.

It is essential that you don't get yourself caught up too much in the politics. Simply let yourself be aware of the impact the comments might have and cooly and calmly lay out the facts as accurately as you can. Seperate the facts from the claims, the truth from the bitching and make things clear to whoever is relevant.

Far too often we let ourselves get really caught up in what everyone else things and how 'important' we are. We spend too much time trying to prove how valuable we are. In reality this is just another stupid way of playing mind games with ourselves.

We shouldn't need validation from other people to know that we are good, worthy and intelligent. What's essential to realise is that we are good when we do good things and we know when we do good things. We are worthy when we do worthy things and we know when we do worthy things. We are intelligent when we do intelligent things and we know when we do intelligent things.

Once you get to the stage where you are aware of things like this, you can concentrate of feeling good yourself and letting people do what they do without letting them affect you. Then you have true control and no matter what their illusions of control and power of you are... you can simply roll with it and stay focused on doing all you can do, being all you can be and being so big that they can't get to you.

It's also very useful to make sure that you are nice to such people. Any demonstration of anger or abusive behaviour on your side demonstrates that they are 'winning' and also gives them further ammunition. When you can smile and go about your business in a relaxed way then you truely get to win in all ways.