As I increase my own self-awareness, I am developing the ability to observe my internally generated negativity from a third person perspective. Standing in the place of an observer of your own thoughts and feelings can sometimes be enough to interrupt them and allow you to shift to a higher, more positive energy level. But this past week I struggled a little longer -- unable for several days to let go of my critical thinking about a number of issues: several relationships, my coaching business, finances, my children. This thinking did nothing to improve any of these issues and certainly created low-level anxiety and somberness.
I have been studying and learning more about how humans use thought, and conducting numerous informal experiments with my own experience with thinking and my observation of others. While our minds are one of our greatest assets when used in an intentional, focused fashion to learn, study, reason, communicate and solve problems, it is also one of our greatest liabilities. If you haven't noticed, your mind bombards you with approximately 65,000 thoughts a day. You may think you are in control of your mind and thoughts, but it is really the other way around. The mind runs on incessantly, on autopilot, unless we affirmatively develop practices and techniques to quiet it down.
When the mind is in the autopilot mode, it is at best an unfortunate, unconscious barrier to connecting with our intuition, inner creativity, wisdom, and the peace and lightness that accompanies being truly present in the moment. Instead of focusing specifically on the task right before us, whatever it is, we run through our list of things to do, or the conversation we need to have with our partner about the kids' schedule, or the lyrics of the song we just heard on our iPod. This kind of thinking doesn't result in any real negative experience or feeling association, but it does deprive us of a very peaceful and joyful sense that we would otherwise experience by being completely focused in the present moment.
Farther down the spectrum, the mind actually creates incredibly negative interpretations and stories that we grab on to as truth about otherwise neutral facts and circumstances that we observe through our senses. While we might be able to readily acknowledge this statement when we see someone experience some pretty severe paranoia, we probably don't see as easily the ways that we create negative, false interpretations about everyday occurrences -- the email our boss sent us, the tone in the help-desk technician's voice, our partner's quietness, our friend's failure to return our call, the neighbor who never says "hi" when we pass on the sidewalk. The degree to which we engage negative interpretations about people and circumstances, and the events that trigger this thought process in us, depend in large part on the often unconscious assumptions and beliefs that we have developed about the world over time.
One objective of the coaching relationship is to bring to a client's awareness their assumptions and beliefs about themselves and the world that are serving as obstacles or roadblocks to their development and achieving what they desire. Even without a coach, we can begin to look generally at whether our world-view assumptions and beliefs serve us in a positive way. What I mean by "positive" is whether your thoughts cause you to experience the world as a safe place, filled with abundance, and full of possibility. Or do you see the world as unsafe, with scarce resources, and fraught with obstacles and limitations? Do you believe that people are basically good or evil, coming from a place of goodwill or ill intent? Even if you believe that you fall on the side of "positive" thinking, you can still increase your effectiveness in the world and experience more joy and less negativity by closely watching how you use thought, and by developing practices to become more present focused.
Fifteen minutes a day of quiet, present moment contemplation can have a tremendous, positive impact on our moods and energy. Doing yoga, tai chi and other similar mind-body integration practices have the same effects. But for those that can't seem to make room in their day for these activities, there is another practice you can develop that doesn't require any more time and will yield some of the same benefits.
Throughout your day, as often as you can, focus only on what is immediately in front of you -- the task or activity that you are at that moment engaged in. In the shower each morning, bring your awareness and focus to each of the discrete tasks you do rather than the meeting you have later that morning. If you are in the car, turn off the radio (and the Blackberry) and focus specifically on everything associated with driving: the feel of the steering wheel, the hum of the motor, the cars directly in front of you. Turn all of the most mundane tasks -- unloading the dishwasher, folding laundry, mowing the yard, taking out the trash -- into opportunities to practice present moment awareness. I predict that you will find it very difficult to do. But the more you practice, the easier it gets and you will start to crave the sense of peace and relaxation that flows.
Contemplating and undertaking change in our work and life is a challenging process that can be navigated most successfully with increased awareness of ourselves. Noticing how we use thought and developing practices to turn our mind off "autopilot" will greatly enhance our effectiveness.
Wishing all of us sunny skies and warm-weather thinking.
Teresa
No comments:
Post a Comment