Undoing bass ackward
In our race for success, all too often the countdown becomes, Go! Ready! Set! Instead of Ready! Set! Go! While thoughtful planning is almost always a requisite for a successful start for a new business or scaling it up, acquiring good study skills to become a top student, a good idea to begin an enduring quality relationship, look at the statistics of failed businesses, mediocre students and broken marriages that occur in the face of this obvious truths.
With all the good information available, why the failures? For a part of the answer I’m suggesting that instead of following our reflex feelings, many times we over think situations. Paralysis by analysis. Conversely, have you ever had an impulse to do something, but talked yourself out of it? Such as buying a stock, making a career change, making a follow up phone call to a person you just met, becoming silent when you had an opinion to express, missing a concert performance everyone is now still talking about. Of course these things happen frequently to everyone.
Some years ago my wife, Nan, and I spent a couple of months traveling through India. Some of this time was spent in an Ashram, where many highly respected teachers from all over the world had come to teach various disciplines, programs and philosophies. We were excited about all the options and possibilities. Like a kid in a candy store, I sat with the coordinator of activities, trying to pick the events in which I wanted to participate. I remember him looking me in the eyes and saying calmly; “Don’t just do something, sit there.” What a concept! Go with your impulse. That simplicity and truth for me, at that time in my life, was an epiphany that still stays with me. It is a basic concept that I have heard repeated in many ways for many purposes. Slow down; become aware of your instinctive, inner, gut feelings.
Gut reactions happen in your gut and brain. They take place in the primitive part of your brain (or probably, as Deepak Chopra writes, in every cell in your body). In the book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, after giving some very compelling evidence suggests that, “On straightforward choices, deliberate analysis is best. When questions of analysis and personal choice start to get complicated–when we have to juggle many different variables—then our unconscious thought processes may be superior.” This goes against conventional thinking that says we regard our snap judgments as best on immediate trivial matters. So how do you get in touch with this mystical magical internal influence? How do you read those feelings and impulses?
Every nationality has a language that millions of people recognize and speak. Poker players read the body language of opponents to get a “sense” or “feel” for whether the other player is bluffing or has the goods. The body has a language that bio feedback instrumentation can read (body temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, sweat production, etc.) And there are techniques (internal language or communication) that put our minds into a place where sensitivity to internal instinct can be understood. Here’s how to use more of it.
To engage that part of your brain, you must quiet the noise of judgment and conscious thinking by relaxing and letting your mind become as mindless as possible.
*Learn to relax. It’s not hard. That which is easy to do is also easy not to do. Do it. The benefits are extraordinary in many ways. Learn from me or from someone else, but do learn to switch gears and slow down the mental apparatus on command.
*In a relaxed state of mind, create the picture of a movie screen across the room from you. Imagine you have a remote control device in your hand and push the play button.
To create the momentum for your thoughts, see where you are stuck in any process now. Let your mind follow any thoughts that come. Don’t judge. Don’t try to make sense of anything. Just let the feelings, pictures and/or sounds happen like you were watching a movie. This is something you do all the time during the day and most of your time in your REM (dream) sleep at night. And as in our dreams, the pictures may come as metaphors, or symbols of what they represent. Let the scenario play out non-judgmentally. Don’t evaluate what you are seeing and feeling. See the pictures now; evaluate what you have seen later when you have either awoken from the sleep you may have drifted into or bring yourself up to full consciousness by taking 5 or 6 deep breaths.
*Hindsight is 20/20. Think about the options that had presented themselves. Either use the information or not, but inevitably you will have different perspectives from which to draw. Try it. What have you got to lose? What have you got to gain? This the same technique Edison used to invent, create and solve hundreds of problems he couldn’t solve consciously.
There are lots of techniques that engage the subconscious for decision making, memory, improving sleep and energy, changing habits and attitudes, managing pain, improving sports performance, enhancing health and vitality and so much more.