I’m reflecting on the recent mini-series I published, about the nature of insight. It was a behind-the-scenes look at the series of events and realisations that ultimately led to the creation of the Daily Reminders and all the work I do.
If you missed it (there were four parts), or have saved them up for a bit of leisurely weekend reading, I’ve pulled them all together for you, here:
Not a destination
Now, I know what minds are like, so there’s an important caveat that needs stating clearly. (You can think of this as Part 5 of the series.) Because a mind could quite easily have read all of that 👆🏻 and concluded:
📦🗣️: Right. I hear you. There’s something I’ve not seen here—some big insight to have—so we’d better get to work on that, hadn’t we? Because when we do have that insight, like the ones Giles mentioned, then everything will change. Just like it did for him. Hmmm… what can I read, or listen to next, that’s going to help?
Monkeys, they are. Monkeying little monkeys, I tell you!
🐒🧠🐒🧠🐒🧠🐒
This whole having-insights malarkey is not about some state you ‘achieve’, because what I described was literally just an experience I had, nothing more.
It’s like I’d written a series of four posts about a really nice ice cream I had that one time, and it blew my mind. (Joe’s, Swansea, BTW… and yes, I keep going back for more, whenever I’m in the vicinity.)
Don’t let the mind confuse the experience with the underlying principles. You can hanker after an experience (or ice cream), but it’s fleeting. Always. It passes and the mind body moves on to the next experience.
But the underlying principles are constant. They just are. What had me being so surprised and shocked and reassured and elated (all experiences, all fleeting) was realising the colossal, yet frankly boring, simplicity of that.
Oh! This is just how it works. I hadn’t fully appreciated that before! 🤦🏻♂️
1. Constant – they're always in play
2. Explanatory – they explain past situations & behaviours
3. Predictive – they predict the behaviour of something in the future
The gravity comparison
I’ve used the metaphor of gravity before, to get us into the right head-space for what’s going on here, because it’s such a close fit.
What happened over those 17 Days, is the equivalent of starting to do some open-minded exploration into how and why cups without lids can hold water, or what keeps that very thin layer of life-sustaining oxygen and nitrogen from just floating off into space.
And then someone pointed out how gravity worked to me, prompting the insight: Oh! This is just how it works. I hadn’t fully appreciated that before! 🤦🏻♂️
(Don't even need to be an expert in gravity—I don't understand it really, do you?—just have to know it's a thing.)
Now, if I'd been really fretting about the effects of gravity beforehand, and trying all sorts of tools and techniques to try and manage my experience of gravity (all innocently without understanding what was going on), then when it was pointed out to me that:
- there's this thing that we've labelled ‘gravity’, and
- it works all the time, and
- I don't have to do anything…
Well, I might feel quite relieved.
Potentially even surprised, shocked, reassured and elated, for a bit. And then I'd go about my business, same as before.
Gravity always was working, it always would be, and I could completely depend upon it. To all intents and purposes, it had nothing to do with me, other than the fact that I live under its effects. (Being aware of gravity doesn't stop my foot from hurting when I drop something heavy on it, yeah?)
But any fretting I'd been doing, or gravity-management techniques I'd been trying (maybe sellotaping money to my desk, ‘just in case’ it floated away) wouldn't make any sense any more – they'd just go away on their own.
Already ok
Everything I mentioned in that series, was simply the slow realisation that I was already ok. I always had been, and I always would be. In spite of anything the mind might say; no more complicated.
And it's the same for you too, because it's the same for all of us.
How cool is that?
✨
Giles
If you've done all the exploring, the reading, the listening, the watching and you still feel like you're stuck, then just doing more of the same isn't going to amount to a hill of beans (sorry).
It's probably time for some 1:1 support, which is what I do, bringing out hidden beliefs and helping you get the change you need, in a way that's just right for you.