How flexible is your mind?

I have decided that Monday is the new Sunday, after all it’s good to have a flexible mind, right?

But how do you get one? Zen Buddhists would say: Meditation. Globetrotters: Travelling. Jamie Smart: Insightful Understanding. He is one of the leading figures in the world of NLP, but recently discovered a different approach for himself, Sydney Bank’s Three Principles. Sydney Banks was a welder in Scottland, but was lucky enough to become enlightened and discover the above mentioned three principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought. So he quit welding and travelled the world instead, teaching and writing about his philosophy. (I’m thinking about getting a welding job, too. It’s all about having a kick-ass bio nowadays.)

The easiest way to explain the three principles is comparing them to watching a movie: Mind is the movie projector (the universal energy that animates all life), Consciousness is the light that throws the images on the screen (the ability to be aware of one’s life) and Thought is what you see on the screen, the movie (the power to think and to create one’s experience of reality). The key assumption is that reality is what we experience inside our heads. (A bit like Matrix only without the computers.) Therefore we can change it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Understanding the three principles intellectually is only the first step, though. And this is where my beloved emotions come into play.

As Jamie Smart explains in his new book “Effortless Evolution” the learning and understanding we’ve been taught at school and university is purely intellectual. We analyze what we hear or read and then decide whether it fits in our model of the world or not. That’s why it’s not enough to tell someone with an eating disorder: “You have to eat more/less/not throw up after every meal”. They know that. Rationally. Just not emotionally. So how do we arrive at an emotional or as Jamie calls it insightful understanding of the world and ourselves? I don’t have the answer, but there are a few things you can do.

Patience for example. Remember how much patience you had as a child? That’s because the future lay sprawled out like the sea in front of your nose, no end in sight. Time? You had lots. As you grew older however people told you that the sea is more like Lake Ontario: It seems to be borderless, but it is not. (Of course the sea isn’t borderless either, but you know what I mean.) And you suddenly felt rushed, in a hurry. At least I did. The thing is that complex processes take time as I pointed out in my blog post “Why it’s sometimes best to do nothing” from June 12. New insights need time to sink in. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to have a psychotherapy session every day. You need the gaps in between for the new realizations to take root in your unconscious.

Then there is openness. You would think that the older you get the more rigid are your views. In my case the opposite is the case. In high school I was a true pighead. My model of the world was made of iron: unbendable, indestructible. In short – I was always right. (Yes, remnants of this are still alive, but hey – I’m still young!) It took me years and years to knock down the walls surrounding my cast-iron house. (Now I’m working on the iron itself – heat seems to be the best strategy; it simply melts.)

We all know that the learning is in the doing so yes, you actually need to practice patience and openness, ideally on a daily basis. A good starting point is to copy others: Why not give meditation and travelling a try? The former at least doesn’t require big expenses. And the latter can be done in your imagination if your budget’s too tight for buying an actual flight ticket – it’s all in our heads anyway, right?

Are you handcuffed yet?

Yes, I know, it’s Monday. Which means that I should have written this blog post yesterday. I do have a really good excuse, though: I stuffed myself with crepes and escargots. In Paris. Why should I be interested, you’re asking? (Sorry for the mind read, but unless you actually tell me what you think I have no choice.) That’s a good question. I will tell you the answer in a moment. Wait ... now. Actually – there is none. I just created an expectation inside your brain to hear a logical or at least convincing explanation for my faux-pas (I’m afraid there’ll be lots of French words casually slipped in today, I hope you don’t mind). And then deliberately disappointed it. Why would I do such a thing? To make a point, of course.

When I arrived in Paris a couple of days ago I expected to get lost on the way to my friend’s house. And I did. (She found me scrutinizing the mail boxes in the lobby of the adjacent house.) I also expected les parisiens to be very helpful, generous and charming. Which they were. This phenomenon is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. It means that our expectations (a direct result of our beliefs) make us look out for experiences and information that confirm them. So of course there were people with grumpy faces and “another one of these stupid tourists” looks around me, but I or rather my expectation chose not to see them. Pretty neat, eh? Unfortunately this also works in the negative as my above mentioned lobby adventure shows. The problem is that this becomes extremely limiting when we habitually expect failure. Do I really have a bad sense of orientation? Or do I just not have enough trust in it?

I remember going to a birthday party with my parents years ago, I must have been 8 or 9. There were lots of other children and soon we had invented a new game called “Lost in the forest”. It consisted of venturing out into the woods behind the house until we felt lost and then to find our way back anyway. How? By listening to our guts. The best part was the sudden rush of exhilarating surprise when we finally saw the house and the sense of “we’ve done it!” that came with it. Although we weren’t consciously aware of it our brain had stored all the necessary information to find our way back and would release it in the form of intuitions. This actually happens all the time. Try it out. Play “Lost in the forest” (or big city if you don’t have one nearby) or invent your own version of it and be amazed by your brain.

OK, back to the expectations. People with commitment issues habitually expect to be hurt or disappointed and therefore create a wall around themselves by saying that they have commitment issues to avoid exactly that. Which in turn creates the expectation in their dating partners to get hurt or disappointed. Which they do. The question is: What came first – disappointment or expectation? Fortunately this one is not as tricky as Plato’s dilemma; it’s the expectations. They narrow your attention to what fits. It’s a safety mechanism because it makes the world predictable (just as stereotypes do). And it’s hard to get rid of because we like what we know, but you can do it. It just takes a little bit of will power and practice. And you’ll be able to surprise yourself all the time.

Why it’s sometimes best to do nothing

I’m sitting in front of the computer wrecking my brain for something to write about in today’s blog post. And ... nothing. It’s empty. Or so it seems. How is it possible that my usually überactive brain feels like I’ve run an intellectual marathon with it? Because I have. In the last couple of weeks ideas kept flying through my window in a constant stream so that I could hardly write them all down. My creative part was on fire. I felt as if I had thrown in some of these pills the guy in “Limitless” is taking. I felt great. Two days ago, however, things started to slow down and today they finally came to a standstill. I’m tired and don’t want to do ANYTHING. My first impulse was to force an activity upon me nevertheless. So I grabbed my guitar and started playing scales, but soon found myself distracted. (The cats needed to be cuddled.) A nap, a walk around the block and a cup of tea later I still feel exhausted at the mere thought of doing something. What’s going on?

The answer is simple: I’ve come to the end of a creative cycle. Cycles are built into our bodies and brains by default – we sleep, eat, grow and menstruate (well, only half of humanity) in cycles so it only makes sense to assume that we also think in cycles. Unfortunately modern life doesn’t exactly support this part of human nature. It used to be engrained in our way of life because our ancestors were subject to nature’s cycles: The seasons determined everything – when to sow and harvest, when to hunt, when to go fishing, when to build or fix our homes and when to expand the family. Then came urbanization, the Industrial Revolution and finally the technology revolution of the 20^th century culminating in web 2.0. In the course of which we have lost our connection to the rhythms of the earth. Instead of interweaving our daily activities with nature’s ups and downs we’ve created our own laws. Which is not a bad thing per se. Not a single day goes by without me being amazed at the possibilities of the internet: Be it the accessibility of knowledge and the DIY revolution that’s following in its wake or the innumerable ways to connect with people all over the world. But I’m digressing. The downside of all these human-made rhythms (i.e. the 8-hour day and the 40-hour work week) and inventions (electricity that makes us independent of day light, cell phones and social media that make direct interaction obsolete – that is if you let them) is that we have forgotten how to be in tune with ourselves.

Every complex cognitive or emotional process is cyclical. Why? Because of the involvement of the unconscious mind. In his book “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presents the findings of his 30 years of studying creativity. He interviewed a bunch of creative people – writers, painters, musicians, scientists, thinkers – and asked them about their work habits and general life experience. All of them described periods of incubation: Their conscious mind can’t solve the problem they are working on (be it a mathematical equation or how to depict the modern day loneliness in a sculpture) so they hand it over to their unconscious mind. How does that work? On way consists in engaging in a repetitive activity like swimming, gardening or even washing dishes – anything that keeps the conscious mind busy, but leaves enough cognitive capacity and energy for the unconscious mind to do its job. Or you could just do nothing at all. Lie on the beach and look at the sky, the changing configurations of the clouds and the stars. Or sit in the shade of your favourite tree and meditate about ... the sound of running water. (If that makes you want to pee, you can choose a different topic.) We need these phases of restoration and processing just like a computer needs to be shut down every now and then in order for newly installed updates to work.

So instead of obsessing about how to deal with your new boss or how to find the best piano teacher for your child (or whatever it is that you’re worried about at the moment), give your conscious mind a break, sit back and relax. And the answer will find you.

It’s all a matter of attitude

I’m sitting in the park breathing in the delicious fresh air, listening to the cavalcade of sounds – birds, children, cars (I just imagine them to be gigantic bumble bees), the wind playing with the leaves – and wonder why things can’t always feel as light and easy as now. Wait – they can, isn’t it my choice what state I want to be in? I don’t know if you have ever thought about this, but when you use sentences like “You make me angry” you are – strictly speaking – telling a lie. Unless somebody has a direct line into your brain like in The Manchurian Candidate nobody makes you do or feel anything. You decide how you want to react, which thoughts you want to think, which words to say, what to feel. But we humans like to lay the blame for our misfortunes at the doors of others, be it our neighbours, the Gods or fate.

It doesn’t make it easier that we were taught to distort reality like this from an early age. Our parents and teachers did it and so we assumed that it must be right. It’s like what they say about shit: If millions of flies think it tastes delicious... (Millions? Probably billions. Come to think of it there are very likely more flies on this planet than humans. I should google that.)

Of course it’s painful to admit that every single bad mood, every time you fly into a rage, every listless and unmotivated day that you squander away has been your own doing. BUT it also means that you can change that. You can decide here and now not to be annoyed by your overwhelmingly talkative co-worker any more, not to be seduced by ads to buy things you don’t really need, not to let the weather get you down. It means that your attitude makes all the difference.

I’ve always admired people who stay calm no matter what. How do they do that? Are they never in a hurry when they are behind one of those snail drivers that seem to slow down when they have a green light? Do their computers never freeze? Their babies never cry? No, they experience the same frustrations as I do, but they choose to react differently. Why? Because them getting worked up wouldn’t change anything. It would most likely only make it worse. So they stay cool. Wait it out. Hum their favourite song. And that’s a very smart strategy.

In my last blog post I wrote about motivation and how ineffective a lot of the strategies that we use are. Take tidying up your room or doing your taxes for example: If you are determined to make these mosquito bites into broken legs then that’s what they’ll feel like. (I used to be an expert in this.) Including the cost for the cast and the weight of it slowing you down in everything you do. But wouldn’t it be better if you could just get them over with without having to argue with yourself for half an hour first? (Which is a stalling technique anyway.) Well – change your attitude. Be a bit like Pollyanna and see the positive, maybe you can even detect an adventurous side to what you have to do or a playful one. A good opportunity for you to flex your creativity muscle.

My father used to say that I should always aim for something a bit higher than what I actually want to achieve. So if your goal is to be more patient, train under the hardest circumstances. Think of the most boring or obnoxious person that you know and then spend a whole afternoon with them. Without snapping at them or cutting them off or showing any other sign of annoyance. If you don’t want to be moody all day just because it’s grey and rainy (yes, I am affected by the weather a lot so choose a sunny day if you have bad news for me), go out into the rain and find something fun to do. Put on your rubber boots and splash through every puddle on the way to work. So that the next time you are woken up by the sound of rain pattering on the window pane a big smile starts spreading on your face.