Simplify My Mind

Centering

2012-01-20T14:01:00.000+10:00

Sometimes I feel off-kilter. I know I’m not operating at mybest. If someone close by were to nudge me, I might easily lose my balance.

If I focus my attention on my centre, which is the areasurrounding my belly button, my mind becomes focused and I feel more balanced.The same nudge would have no effect.

Our navel is the centre of gravity of our body. Its positioncan indicate sports success or otherwise. Connecting with our navel can be anempowering exercise.

So now when my mind is racing in all directions, I imaginelooking at my navel and feel an immediate release from distractions. Then I amready to deal with the matter at hand.

Flexibility

2011-12-10T15:31:00.000+10:00

My thinking has been too black and white lately. I’ll lock myself into a thought pattern, perhaps from previous times, and have difficulty in veering from that course. Sometimes that thought pattern hasn’t been the best way to go.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) encourages flexibility in interactions. If one way of being isn’t working, change it. If I have always done something in a certain way, then try doing it differently. Perhaps there is a better way.

Situations won't always pan out the way we expect. Accepting this, rather than trying to change it to match our model of the world, is the easier way to go.

Being flexible allows us to go with the flow in situations. Trying different approaches could give us an equal or better result. Adding shades of grey and even colour lightens and enriches our mind.

Influence

2011-07-10T17:47:00.001+10:00

I get a little titchy when I feel like someone is trying to influence me. But then I realise that perhaps I have been trying to influence them in a different direction.

Watching or reading something might not be on my agenda at the time but thinking about mind stuff might not be on theirs if I try to broach it later .

So I decide whether or not to do what is presented to me mindful that they will do the same when I air my interest. Sometimes I see the value in their request and other times I decline.

After all, it is a free world with each of us free to indicate our personal preferences. And most times that's just what we need to do.

Putting the past behind

2011-06-18T14:42:00.000+10:00

How do you put the past behind you? You do exactly that.

All too often thoughts of the past crowd our mental space. We lose the present moment dwelling on past events. If we can move the past behind us then we’re free to engage with what is happening around us.

Much has been said of the success enjoyed by athletes and sporting stars when they include visualisation in their training program. Since the mind does not differentiate between what is imagined and what is real, mentally seeing themselves succeeding in their chosen endeavour can translate into reality.

In the same way, mentally moving an image of a past event behind us can reduce emotional stress. When out of view it is harder for the mind to focus on it. The intensity is reduced. And the mind is clear.

Every action has a positive intent

2011-04-27T20:58:00.001+10:00

Sometimes people do things that surprise or even annoy me. Was it really necessary to do what they did? What were they thinking?

After my mind settles down, I remember a presupposition taught to me some years ago in a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) course. “Every action has a positive intent”. So I look for the positive intention behind the behaviour that surprised me.

We all have different thoughts about what happens around us. Conflict occurs when two people have differing views on a particular thought or event.

It is tempting to try to change the other person’s mindset so they will agree with us. But this doesn’t always work. An easier path is to look for the positive outcome in their action or thought which then provides a starting point for a constructive dialogue. Even approaching someone with a view to hearing their side of the story can go a long way in helping to ease a potentially difficult situation.

This doesn’t mean that we need to agree with the person. Instead, if we hear them out and let them know our thoughts about the issue then perhaps the best result would be to agree to disagree. But at least both sides have been heard and sometimes that is all that is needed.

Reincarnation

2011-04-19T12:06:00.000+10:00

I was in a meditation group in the early 1990’s and one night read a statement in a magazine lying open on the table. It said that if there is an area that you don’t get right this lifetime, you’ll have to come back in another lifetime to try again. This was an interesting thought to me and has made me more conscious of aspects of my life that I’m not quite gelling in.

Reincarnation makes a lot of sense to me. I can’t say that I believe it, because there’s no way of proving that it is real. But whether or not it is the way things work, the concept can be used to explain so much about what happens to us.

If we meet someone who feels familiar, perhaps there has been a past life connection. What might look like an unfair situation of someone receiving a lot of money leaving the other person penniless might be a karmic payback for a past reversal of fortunes. Phobias of heights, enclosed spaces and snakes could be the result of experiences in past lives.

The concepts of karma and reincarnation can help when we are overcome by strong emotions. If someone is no longer with us and guilt is playing on our mind, we can take comfort in the thought that there might be opportunities in future lifetimes to address any remaining issues.

It doesn’t matter to me whether reincarnation is real or not. I look for karmic explanations of what is happening around me but generally don’t discuss these explanations with others. Karmic considerations contribute to a more peaceful mind which is what I’m looking for.

Staying Positive

2011-04-17T17:14:00.001+10:00

In this world with 24 hour news cycles and ever-increasing working hours along with financial or health worries, it is almost impossible to maintain a positive view on things. If we’re not worrying about how things will pan out in the future, then issues from the past rise up to fill the gap.

I once heard of someone who cured himself of cancer by booking into a hotel room with a stash of funny movies to watch. He laughed himself to health. I could relate to this method as I have often searched for the funny stories or comedies on TV to sustain me.

I used to enjoy reading the jokes in the Readers Digest. It was my way of dwelling in a positive moment that I seem to have perpetuated throughout the decades since. Signing up with Amway for a brief time gave me the positive tapes that Amway provided even though their message was mainly about selling Amway. Now my TV viewing focuses on comedies while scanning newspapers always reveals the cartoons. I have even done a brief cartooning course, not that I have produced my first finished piece.

Whichever method is available to me, I prefer to lean towards the positive. The good news stories might be few and far between, but if we persist in our search we can find the gem that soothes our soul.

What you think about me is none of my business

2011-03-31T13:49:00.000+10:00

What you say or think about me is none of my business. You might like or dislike me, my behaviour or what I say. It only becomes a problem for me if I hook into a response from you, imagined or real.

I sometimes hook into drama. If someone makes a comment about me twice or more, I start to question the motive of the comment.

Someone else believing that I’m doing something the wrong way can test me. Their way is the right way and mine is seen as wrong. Whatever happened to individuality? Have we now become like a herd of cows following others rather than striking out on our own path.

It becomes a marvellous example of how the minutiae of our lives can become a source of drama. Someone believing that a particular task can only be done a certain way might make a passing comment. And after hearing this message more than a few times, I will choose whether to buy into the drama.

And this is when I need to remind myself that what someone thinks about what I say or do is none of my business. We are each entitled to our own opinions and the determination of something being right or wrong is always a personal choice. Then it becomes a matter of how we respond the next time the topic is raised.

Sometimes honesty is helpful: “What works for you doesn’t work for me.” Of course, to use this one we might need to explain why it doesn’t work.

Avoidance helps if the conversation is going around in circles. “I don’t want to talk about this,” can stop the current flow of the conversation although it might end up delaying the inevitable.

Whichever way it is handled, I try to look at how previous interactions have panned out as it is helpful to consider where the person making the comments might be coming from. Perhaps a kind word or a concession might be just what they need at this point in time.

Missing Out

2011-03-31T12:41:00.000+10:00

An issue seems to be bubbling to the surface that I need to deal with. A few times in the past week I have felt like I was missing out on something, and the first two times I reacted badly.

To a Virgo who is almost pedantically precise, missing out doesn’t make sense. If I ensure that other people around me are treated fairly then can’t I expect the same? I seem to keep forgetting that life isn’t always fair. Just because I’ve made sure that all the people before me are served does not mean that I will be treated the same way by others who arrive after me. Byron Katie would be amazed that I still retain these crazy notions. After all, it doesn’t fit with reality.

So I’m working with myself to redefine my expectations. The phrase “You win some, you lose some” probably says it all, with The Free Dictionary’s explanation being: “You cannot always succeed”. I get that. Sometimes life will be fair to me and other times it won’t. Now I just need to remember it next time I notice that the scales are skewed against me.

I am not my thoughts

2011-03-11T18:08:00.000+10:00

An errant thought enters my mind and I start dwelling on it. My mind gets filled with thoughts about the thought.

Then I remember my version of a simple practice taught at a course some years ago. “Not that, not that,” I tell my mind.

This is a helpful practice. Just these few words tell both my mind and the universe that this thought is not important to me.

In what seems like a strange twist, we are not our thoughts and yet we are what we think about. A thought comes to mind and we make a choice. We either let the thought go thus displaying detachment, or we think about the thought and become attached to the implications of it.

The more we attach to thoughts that arrive, the more turbulent our mind becomes. Releasing thoughts leaves us with a calmer mind.

No matter which way we choose, further thoughts will come along giving us ample opportunity to practice detachment or experience the reverse. It’s part of the human experience.

Anger

2011-01-30T16:13:00.002+10:00

In my younger years, I suppressed angry thoughts to the point that I didn’t believe I could be angry. But a few people jangled my nerves enough to acquaint me with this foreign emotion.

It isn’t good to suppress anger or any other emotion. Suppressed emotions will always find a way out in what could be an unfortunate way either externally towards others or internally resulting in health issues. It is far better to deal with the underlying cause of the anger.

We might feel anger at ourselves or others through unreasonable behaviour or perhaps following the disappointment of a promise being broken. But feeling anger isn’t an invitation to respond immediately. Since the emotion of anger can be volatile, taking the time to determine how to handle the issue gives a better result.

I always try to see the other person’s point of view as well as my own. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), this would be called looking at the issue from first position (my own perspective) and second position (the other person’s perspective). It is also useful to look at an issue from third position, which involves stepping outside of the issue and looking at it as an observer would.

Sometimes looking at an issue from these viewpoints is enough to quell the anger. The simple act of standing in the other person’s shoes or observing the issue unfold as if on a movie screen can help to reveal the part that each side has played. Even if the anger is still there, understanding an issue from all sides is always beneficial and a great way to prepare for a discussion about what has happened.

I have found the best way to handle someone being angry with me is to almost match their level of anger. If I respond quietly then the other person might perpetuate the behavior. Almost but not quite matching their anger puts me on level footing with them and from there I can tone down my response so that we can resolve the issue.

I liked my gentler approach in earlier years as it felt easier to maintain harmonious relationships. But as the occurrence of significant issues became more frequent, I knew that I must deal with them. I still feel some resistance when approaching a difficult topic. But I also remember how disastrously events can turn out when underlying issues aren’t resolved.

Angry words are no longer a reason for me to flee. Instead they are an opportunity for reconciliation. But please don’t cry wolf and get angry with me for no good reason. I still aspire to the gentler life and appreciate it when others conspire with me to make it happen.

Goal Setting

2010-11-05T18:38:00.002+10:00

I have never really got the concept of setting goals. Once in a while I have listed things on paper but rarely looked at them.

I’m currently reading “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. She mentions that the Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once suggested to his students that they write down the three things they most want in life. Any clashes between the items on the list mean future difficulties. Harmonious items would enable a better focus.

I thought about the three things most important to me and found that it was easy to focus on these as all were areas that I wanted to advance and there were no clashes between the items.

This is manageable. I have thoughts about exploring areas that I have read about or studied but haven’t had the energy to fully integrate them into my life. I’m starting to think that now is the time.

The danger is that I might end up over committing myself to too many projects, which I’m sure is where I’ve become unstuck in the past. There must be a way of handling this so that I can do the things I really want to do while ensuring that I also do the things that must be done. Plus I know that I need rest time in between. I’m probably asking a lot of myself to navigate a path that I haven’t successfully handled in the past.

But I like the idea that it’s not so important for me to write goals down. The magic of this approach seems to be in its simplicity. An extensive list of items needs to be written down and then perused just because it’s impossible to remember it all. But three items can easily be retrieved from the memory bank on command.

Fortunately it doesn’t matter what’s on my list. What matters is what I do with my time in order to progress these items. And my first note to self is to down tools and turn the computer off much earlier than I have in the past. This sounds easy to do but for a long-term computer person almost sounds like hypocrisy. But once I click the save button on this post, I promise I will do exactly this.

Hiccups

2010-11-03T20:45:00.000+10:00

Today I got the hiccups just after I had enjoyed my lunch. I tolerated them for a little while, thought briefly about getting annoyed with them, and then said to myself, “Okay, that’s enough”. And the hiccups stopped. Now I want to know why. If I can work out what I did right here, then I can do it again.

Alternative ways of handling the hiccups had popped into my mind before I fixed it, or was it the universe responding to my request. I like both reasons so perhaps I’ll never know how…

I’ve read (somewhere that I can’t remember where but will try to find it) that one solution is to find a mirror and stare at your eyes in the mirror and the hiccups will stop, which they have sometimes in the past. I didn’t think to try this today as I was right in the middle of a task and didn’t want to stop my train of thought.

Another remedy is to have someone nearby plug your ears with their fingers while you drink a glass of water. Well, fat chance when there’s no one else around. But even when I have tried it out with my version of flexible limbs, which I really don’t have, this idea doesn’t really work well.

Well, whatever I or the universe did today worked as there’s been no sign of those pesky hiccups since.

Road rage

2010-10-28T19:44:00.006+10:00

Somebody cut me off when I tried to merge into the other lane and I felt angry. Cars parked ahead blocked my lane and generally the person in the other lane will slow down to allow me to merge in, but not this time.

Somehow I had developed an expectation that this would happen – that people would be as courteous towards me as I am towards them – and I had to rewrite that expectation. I also remembered the rare occasions when my good manners deserted me, whether from having too much on my mind or feeling fractious about an earlier occurrence.

I realise that it’s insane to assume that everybody will “do the right thing” by each other. The Golden Rule says to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. It’s the ultimate guide in how to be in harmony with other people, and yet it’s highly unlikely that anyone can be in that place all the time.

I’ve accepted that it only affects me if I hold onto anger or any other negative feeling about how someone else treats me. They move onto their next social engagement or experience possibly without considering how I felt. If I hold onto the anger then I’m stuck and they’re free. It’s a stretch to let the anger go but it feels so much better afterwards.

Experiencing Byron Katie’s work has really helped in letting such emotions go. A simple question of “Is it true?” to a grumble that the other driver should have allowed me to merge would have me admitting that it isn’t true as I have no idea what the other driver’s state of mind was at the time. Perhaps the road or weather conditions required such a slow response or maybe it was the best the driver could do at the time.

I first heard about Byron Katie at a Relaxation Centre film night. While driving home the car in front of me was going slow which gave me the perfect opportunity to practice what I had been listening to that night. I wanted to protest that the other driver was driving too slowly but I heard the question “Is it true?” in my brain and knew I couldn’t respond positively.

It was the beginning of a six month journey listening to tapes and watching videos of Byron Katie’s work which was a great leveler. Other followers of Byron Katie’s work have commented that after a while the appropriate responses come naturally to them, which I certainly found. There is, of course, so much more to her work than these three little words, but asking “Is it true?” is a great first step in checking out a negative feeling.