“This” being massaging my aching legs, after a 70 mile ride to the south coast.
We both love these times, because
- I get my legs put back together
- She gets cash
- She gets quite reflective
- We have really good chats
- She thinks it’s funny when I howl in pain, as she puts the full weight of her 10 year old frame through the massage stick she’s pummelling me with
🥺
And something she said while she was doing this demonstrated the mind’s two greatest hits, that I mentioned the other day:
1. It tries to predict the future (badly)
First she said:
“If I could go back and have a conversation with a younger version of myself, I would never have even been able to imagine massaging my Dad’s legs! But here I am!”
The mind only has the past to go on. That’s all it has at its disposal. So it’s only natural that it can’t imagine stuff completely outside its frame of reference.
But stuff happens like that all the time! (Especially when you’re 10. And, from what my clients tell me, especially when you have Innate Health coaching 😆)
It also likes to prove itself right. So if you’re pretty much convinced that x, y, or z will ‘never happen’ then subconsciously your mind will be looking for the evidence—OMG it really loves to prove itself ‘right’!—and you’re likely to experience whatever you believe. (Worth remembering.)
My Zen teacher continued, with the next hit:
2. It predicts how we’ll feel in the future (even more badly)!
“And Dad, even if I thought I’d be doing it, there’s no way I’d have thought that it would be my kind of thing. But it really is my kind of thing!”
…and cackles again, as she goes at my aching calf with gusto, eliciting another involuntary yelp.
For me, this is the mind’s bigger ‘crime’ (if we can call it that – it’s all innocent; it’s a baked-in safety feature from the cave-people days): taking that situation it’s dreamed up, in a future that we’ll never experience, and telling us how we’re going to feel.
It’s crackers!
Do you really want to be basing any of your decisions on that?
REALLY?!?!
😱
Anyway, I love that she’s having these insights at 10 years of age, and sharing them with me.
And I love the way my legs feel… the next day, at least.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
Where the mind gets all its information from, when it's predicting both of these 🎣