THE MIND BOGGLES!! |
Change Your Life | February 8 2024 No. 847 |
This Week's Reflection
People regularly take issue with my suggestion that all thinking leads to over-thinking - they assume that the thinking that they do in the workplace, where they are paid to think (or so they think!), is productive.
That is not so. Once an accountant has learned their "trade", they go through the routine of their daily work using... their Automatic Pilot. Of course they do. Once a banker thinks they've got that hang of how finance works (they only think that, by the way), they settle onto Autopilot. Worse than that, as we train in our respective professions, trades or activities, we train through a fog of though - everything we "learn" is filtered through formative learning.
So, when we employ our training in the course of our routine day, doing so automatically, not only do we only think that we know what's going on, we think that we're adding value. And, when something non-routine confronts us, we think we've encountered it before because we're operating on Autopilot. The financial crisis of 2008 is a classic example of bankers and financiers thinking that they knew it all... they were simply reacting, not to what was actually going on, but to what they assumed they could handle because they'd handled banking "stuff" before!
It's how highly trained electrical engineers mindlessly climb the electricity pole, mindlessly cut the wrong wire or forget to disconnect the live feed and... the rest truly is history. That's not a concocted example - I've worked with health and safety in the electical industry. They discovered that it didn't matter how much rules they had, didn't matter how much procedures they had, didn't matter how much training the operatives had - if they weren't present and focused they ended up doing themselves damage.
In short, it's not thinking that matters. Every situation should be met as if it is a new situation because it always is. No two nows are the same. We should meet every situation with a fresh pair of eyes. All thinking - even if we think it is the thinking that we're paid for - leads to overthinking.
Stop thinking - start doing.
This Week's Quick Tip
You're going to encounter lots of nows today. For starters, meet each now with a smile (there's lot of science behind that) and an appreciation of the fact that you are alive in the now.
Remind yourself to see, feel, hear, smell and taste this now as if you've never experienced it before... because you haven't - each now is unique.
Surely, that's going to over-tax your brain! No... if you meditated this morning and you've been meditating regularly and consistently, your doing mind will simply do all this for you.
See how important regular meditation is...
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