Oh minds, how I do love them.
So keen are they to fight their corner (because they're in charge, yeah?) that they'll do anything to justify their input and their worth.
It doesn't bear thinking about – the number of conversations I have had with clients (or more often not-clients, because this one's the mental equivalent of the Great Filter – it brings the shutters right down on exploration) that included a variation of a statement that began:
“But if I ignore my thinking…”
[insert Bad Thing Happening™ here]
🙄
First on its list of arguments is “…I won't get anything done!” which is just ridiculous.
The mind says:
📦🗣️: I keep you motivated. I come up with the good ideas. I do all the hard work. I get you to take action.
The corollary of which is:
📦🗣️: If you stop paying attention to me and doing what I say, then you will be unmotivated, out of ideas, lazy and apathetic.
But it takes the very lightest of observation to discover that it's actually the opposite!
Just think back to, or better still, notice, the next time you have a good idea. It will come to you via the medium of thought (because we can't experience anything else) but it will have a certain characteristic to it: it'll be new.
You've been batting away at some problem or other—mulling it over, trying to figure it out, brainstorming solutions, trying to find a way forward—and getting nowhere.
And then… inspiration strikes!
😯
It doesn't have to be like a flash of lightning or Moses delivering tablets of stone to you or anything, it's just a fresh take on things. A perspective you'd not seen before.
Now, here's the question that I want you to slow down and answer, honestly:
Really??
I say ‘honestly’ because it takes a little humility (something the mind is not good at) to relax into the inconvenient truth that no, ‘you’ did not come up with that new idea.
One minute it wasn't there, and the next minute it was.
Oh, for sure, you did loads of analysis and pondering before it happened (and if your mind is anything like mine, you'll have had a fair bit of self-satisfied thinking after it happened too), but are you open to the idea that none of that analysis actually caused the fresh new idea—something you could call an ‘insight’—to arrive?
😐
In fact, I'm willing to bet that if you did turn your attention to this matter and either examine past experiences or be a bit more aware of ongoing situations, you'd notice that ‘good ideas’ tend to happen under a number of commonly-reported situations:
- In the shower
- Waking up/falling asleep
- Driving
- Out in nature
- Engrossed in conversation
- Focused on something creative
…all of which have one thing in common: you're not busy analysing stuff.
Your mind's not fixated on the problem. The mind's not even there! (Certainly not the bit that makes out like it's driving the bus.)
So when it comes to the “…I won't get anything done!” argument, we can see it's actually more like:
💖: Life keeps you motivated. Presence comes up with the good ideas. Wisdom does all the hard work. Taking action is your essential nature.
And:
📦: If you carry on paying attention to the mind and doing what it says, then you will constantly get in the way of that natural process, immediately stifle good ideas, feel lazy, and remain stuck.
Which is why it's perfectly ok to ignore your thinking.
And you'll only see this for yourself, when you give it a go.
💟
Giles
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