Tag Archives: useful thinking

DID CURIOSITY REALLY KILL THE CAT?

Ways of Remembering,

I remember as a child, being told by my mother, ‘curiosity killed the cat’, probably after I’d asked the umpteenth why. As children, we want to know more, find out about things, understand what’s going on. We ask our questions, explore things in innocence, without judgement.

And we are frequently shut down or told off, or told it’s not important or relevant. I’m sure we have all heard that frustrating answer to ‘Why?’ ‘Because I said so.’

Being curious originally meant being someone who cared (same root as curator). It is driven by a desire to extend our knowledge, our awareness, and it has no intrinsic judgement in it.

That desire in us is health-giving. It is how we maintain the plasticity of our brain and stimulate and extend our thinking. It also enables us to make more informed choices through having greater awareness, and offsets the likelihood of us having ignorant prejudices.

And of course, it’s often fun to follow through on our curiosity, discovering new and different ideas, things, relationships.

Without curiosity, we would have no inventions or innovations, we would stagnate as human beings.

So did it kill the cat? I doubt it and I am sure it is unlikely to kill us. In fact, the opposite: it enlivens our lives and our ideas.

So next time you find yourself saying: ‘I wonder if..’ or ‘I wonder what…’ or ‘I wonder how…’, follow it up – it’s your curiosity shining through.

GUILT IS A POINTLESS EMOTION

Ways of Remembering,

I’m sure we all say sometimes: ‘I feel guilty that I haven’t /didn’t…’. It’s an acknowledgement that we feel we got something wrong. But on its own, it has no benefit whatsoever.

Firstly, it’s always about something that’s already happened – or not happened – in the past, so it’s too late to change.

Secondly, it weighs on us and causes negative feelings, but leads nowhere except for feeling bad.

It is only useful if we take it as a starting point: if we feel guilty, what can we do about it.

If it is to do with our behaviour towards someone else, we may be able to admit our guilt and hopefully rectify the situation, or at least apologise. Fr example, if we snapped at someone unnecessarily, we can say sorry the next time we speak, and explain that we know it was us who was out of order, not them.

If it is to do with something we feel that we should have done, then maybe we could just do it now. For example, if we feel we should have finished off the task we were doing, when instead we sat and read a book for a while, we can plan in time to finish the task today.

And sometimes we will realise, when we look at our guilt, that it really is pointless – we’re just ‘should have-ing’ ourselves for no good reason. In this case, we need to shake it off and let ourselves off!

Feeling guilty on its own gives us nothing useful. It is akin to self-pity and is an indulgence in negativity that takes away the possibility of feeling good.

Don’t do it! or at least, do something about it – let it lead to something useful that makes us feel good again.

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR THOUGHTS

Uncategorized, Ways of Remembering,

We all think all the time. The question is: who is running the show, you, or your thoughts?

Our minds are an archive of all that we have experienced or been told or seen or read. They pull out a selection of thoughts based on our mood or attitude in quite a random way.

A great example of this is our dreams, you know, those really weird ones where the characters are both people you know and people from films or books, and the plot line is a random collection of circumstances where you are being chased or you’re the hero. It’s a story created from a whole mix of your mind’s archive that you know is not real.

But this is what our minds do all the time, if we don’t take control of the story. So how do we do that?

We consciously give our minds instructions. We set the tone for the type of thoughts we want, for example: ‘I want to remember the good bits’. And we tell our minds to dump parts of that archive in the trash bin: ‘put those negative thoughts in the trash – they’re no longer relevant or useful to me.’

We can re-organise our mind’s archive, so that the most useful and positive thoughts and memories are the most accessible. This means that they will be the ones that our mind goes to most often, thereby reinforcing them.

It takes a while – there’s a lot of mixed up stuff in that archive of yours! – but your mind would prefer to work well for you. You just have to take control, rather than letting your thoughts control you.

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE

Ways of Remembering,

I read an article recently that was bemoaning the fact that people want to show off what they know about and outdo one another on intellect. Where I disagreed with the author was in his conflation of intellect with intelligence.

To me, there is a massive difference between them. Intellect is linked to being able to accumulate knowledge, a left-brain activity. Intelligence is the ability to make connections between different things – it is more linked to wisdom.

An intellectual may wish to demonstrate how clever they are, but someone with intelligence is more likely to consider the impact that may have on others. Their left-brain activity is balanced by the right brain’s ability to put things into a broader context.

Furthermore, the two aspects of thinking do not necessarily occur together. I have met intellectuals who are what we call narrow-minded – focussed on particulars but quite unaware of the possibility of other perspectives. And there are many people who have limited formal education yet display an enviable level of intelligence.

We talk about the wisdom of elders: those who have learnt from experience how to weigh up facts and opinions, how to put things in perspective, how to use intuition and feeling as well as facts. This is a wisdom we can all develop and is what gives us intelligence.

Being intellectual can be useful in specific contexts, but developing our intelligence is far more useful when navigating our lives.

APPRECIATE THIS DAY

Ways of Remembering, , ,

I am old enough to know that this could be the last time that I see this friend, that I visit a place I love, that I see an amazing movie or play or concert, that I have the joy of the season’s flowers in my garden.

I wish I had realised it earlier in my life, so that I ‘squeezed the juice’ out of all the wonders and delights that we rush through when we are younger.

Today, I can wish I were a young woman again, I can try to clear all my emails, I can be cross because it’s raining. Or I can enjoy a slow, peaceful start to the day, watch the birds at the feeders, read some of my book, and notice the soothing sound of the rain on my conservatory roof. My choice.

Do I notice the negatives in my day, or do I appreciate the good things that I can easily find if I care to look for them?

If I treat each day as if it were my last, each visit as if it were the last, my life becomes full of riches.

So today, stop for a moment and notice the beauty, the wonder, the smiles and laughter, and truly appreciate them. Choose to make it a good day.

I WONDER

Ways of Remembering,

I prefer the phrase ‘I wonder’ to either ‘I hope’ or ‘I fear’ when we are talking about future possibilities.

Hope and fear both express doubt to some extent, but are also an emotional investment in the outcome. They mean we are attached to a particular result.

On the other hand, wondering what will happen expresses curiosity, and interest in the outcome without a drive for a particular answer,

Notice how differently our minds react, in simple everyday things: ‘ I hope it doesn’t rain all day’, or ‘I fear it’s going to rain all day’, as opposed to:’ I wonder if it will rain all day’.

With the first two phrases, we will be disappointed if it does rain all day. When we wonder, we aren’t looking for any particular answer, and are just curious to see what happens, ready to be surprised, no matter which way it goes.

There is a lovely line in a Paul Simon song: ‘This is the age of miracles and wonder’. It conjures up the magic of not always knowing or understanding, but being able to delight in whatever turns out.

Children are great at wondering, being fascinated by whatever happens, because it is inherent in us as humans. If we didn’t wonder, we wouldn’t create or invent or innovate; life would be very boring if everything were predictable and as it has always been.

Originally, the word meant surprise, astonishment – recognition of the unpredictability of nature, of people, of the future. How lovely to be constantly surprised by how things are rather than relieved or disappointed.

I think wondering is wonderful!

TIME AND MOTION OR HUMAN?

Ways of Remembering, ,

There was a period in the 1950’s and 60’s when organisations were obsessed with time and motion studies, to supposedly improve efficiency and productivity. The researchers observed people at work and recorded how they wasted time and moved unnecessarily, then making recommendations to reduce their ‘waste’. It certainly had an impact, but not the desired one.

They had missed one vital element out of the equation: these were not robots, they were humans. To be effective as human beings, we need to interact, be comfortable, stop sometimes and take a break, and feel good about what we are doing.

Yet sometimes we all do a time and motion study on ourselves. We set ourselves inherently impossible targets and then feel bad because we don’t achieve them, but we have forgotten to take into account the fact we are human.

It may seem logical to assume we can deal with 50 emails in an hour – after all, some of them will just need to be deleted. However, it’s a very boring task, and it only takes one that’s more complex to deal with to put us off, make us decide we need a cup of coffee, or that something else is more important.

The same thing applies to cleaning the whole house, weeding the back garden, writing the whole report in one go. Logically, they needn’t take long, but we’re human, and feelings also come into it.

There is an alternative. Set yourself a target that is easy to achieve in a small amount of time. And we are often so pleased with ourselves that we go beyond the target and feel even more chuffed!

Allow yourself time for breaks, for not really being in the mood, for having a chat with someone, and you will get more done and feel better about it.

You’re not a machine, so allow yourself to be human.

ONE STEP IN FRONT OF THE OTHER

Ways of Remembering,

Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the long list of things we have to do, and end up paralysed by the enormity of the tasks ahead. When it feels like this, we tend to spend more time and energy worrying, telling ourselves it’s impossible, and resenting it than we do on getting on with it.

In these circumstances, it’s useful to just take one step at a time, doing the next most necessary thing – and then take the next step. This sounds obvious, but it has some useful nuances.

Firstly, it takes you away from the puzzle of where to begin: you start with whatever’s right in front of you, staring you in the face, or shouting at you.

Secondly, it’s about what’s most necessary. That may be paying the bill that’s overdue, but could equally well be having some breakfast, or stopping for 5 minutes for a cup of coffee.

This word necessary also reminds us that, as we go along, we may well realise that some of what we had n our list isn’t necessary today after all. We all tend to add in more ‘I must’s’ than are really in that category! Mowing the lawn could wait a few days, the clutter accumulated on the coffee table could be pushed to one side for now, there’s no rush on responding to that email – you know the sort of thing.

Thirdly, this approach gives you some momentum. You make a start somewhere and then take the next step – you’re moving rather than paralysed by the thought of what you have to do.

You may not get everything done that you had on your list, but for sure you will have done more than you thought you could when you were feeling overwhelmed.

You will also feel more energised at the end of the day, and can be proud of yourself for what you have achieved.

We don’t climb mountains by dreading it and then trying to push ourselves on. We do it by setting off and putting one foot in front of the other.

‘I’VE BEEN WORKING FULL-TIME ON LIVING’

Ways of Remembering, ,

A dear friend said this to me when I was bemoaning the fact that I hadn’t done much that day. What a perfect reframe for those days when neither your body nor your mind are up to doing much, so you read a bit, watch a movie, call someone up for a chat.

Actually, it’s a great way to look at your day-to-day life altogether. It puts a different value on everything you do because it poses the questions:

 ‘Is this a day when I listened to my own state?’

 ‘Have I felt good today, or have I pushed myself to do stuff?’

‘Have I taken pleasure in what I have done, or has it felt more like duty?’

 ‘Have I been doing, or have I been being?’

There are so many parts of our day-to-day living we don’t value, especially when retired or on holiday. Allowing ourselves a slow start to the morning, enjoying a wander round the garden, chatting with a neighbour, tidying out a messy drawer, doing some on a hobby we have, or just sitting with a good cup of coffee or glass of wine and being peaceful.

We feel as if we have to prove we have done something productive, ‘important’, so we don’t waste time.

Yet all these moments in a day have immense value for our spirits, our being, and need to be seen as such. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have positive answers to those questions I posed every single day! It would mean that we were doing a good job of living, the most important work we will ever do.

I am revising my assessment of my days to give value to all the times I feel good about my activity or inactivity, the times I feel like I’m living and being, not just doing. Care to join me?

RADICAL INCREMENTALISM

Ways of Remembering,

I recently read a book (4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman) where I came across this phrase, and I just love it! It is the perfect expression of something I have been working on for a while.

It is about the easy way to get big jobs done: do a small, time-limited amount every day, stopping before you’ve run out of energy or enthusiasm. By approaching it in this way, you don’t put off doing the next piece because you haven’t pushed yourself previously, and by consistently doing a bit of the task, you clear it easily and without effort.

You can use this method to do things like de-clutter your home, clear your garden of winter debris or weed the flower beds, sort out holiday arrangements, clear emails – well, almost anything!

I have long been an advocate of turning bigger jobs into projects, where success is counted, not as finishing the whole thing, but as completing one stage of the project. This takes it further – it’s radical. Now success is: ‘I did my 15 – 30 minutes today.’

And of course, if you have several different things you’re applying the principle to, you can feel really good about yourself when you say: ‘I did a bit of this one, and some of that one, and a bit of the other one too.’

So next time you have a job you’re putting off, consider using radical incrementalism to get it done the easy way.