Tag Archives: useful thinking

MORE IN COMMON

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In these times of so much conflict, hatred, division, it is more important than ever to remind ourselves that we are all human beings. When will humankind recognise that we are so much more alike than different? I sometimes despair at the prejudice against people who are considered to be ‘not of our tribe’, whether that be to do with colour, creed, politics, way of dressing, or just not from here.

It would be so much easier to live with each other if instead we had a prejudice towards others who also share our emotions, our basic needs, our common humanity.

Of course, there are differences. Even with one group, there will always be those who are outside the norm for one reason or another, and there will always be what are now called ‘bad actors’ and heroes, as well as the rest of us. But the rest of us are the majority, and our differences create interest, variety, and an opportunity to learn from each other. Life would be very boring if we were all ‘Stepford wives’.

When I was younger, I moved to Birmingham, to an area which was primarily Pakistani and West Indian families. I didn’t know much about any of their cultures, and at first, I was a bit worried about how we would fit in.

What I discovered was kindness, generosity, and a great chance to expand my horizons, through learning about their worlds: their food, their traditions, their approach to life. And how much we had in common. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

We call ourselves human beings, yet we still regard some others as ‘aliens’ – not really human like us. Come on world, wake up to the fact that we all deserve to be treated as fellow human beings.

TRUST YOUR BODY RATHER THAN YOUR MIND

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Our minds are great collectors of stories about what’s right or wrong for us, good or bad. Most of those stories don’t come from our own experience, but from our cultures, our upbringing, the media.

And many of the stories are fear-inducing, to keep us from stepping out of line – all the things that could go wrong if we do. This is not generally useful to us. It’s the equivalent of saying to a young child, ‘Don’t wobble or you’ll fall off, when they want to walk along a garden wall – they inevitably wobble!

The more useful alternative is to listen to our inner knowing, our gut reaction. Gut reaction is not a myth. We have neuro-transmitters in our guts and in our hearts as well as in our brains, and these are more accurate at identifying what does or doesn’t work for us at this time. This happens before the message gets  sent to our mind and put through the filter of those stories.

You will have felt the bodily reaction when you have a spontaneous ‘yes’ to something, a felling of expansion and lightness. You will also have felt the bodily reaction when you say yes because you can’t put your finger on why not, a feeling of contraction and tightening.

We know our intuition is accurate, yet we let our heads rule, because we’ve been trained to.

So let’s listen more to our bodies instead of our minds, and trust our own intuition. It is so much more useful.

DAILY GLIMMERS

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I firmly believe it is important to pay attention to the good bits in a day, and acknowledge them. It helps to keep things in perspective and remind us that there are always things to appreciate and be thankful for in our lives,

This is especially true at the moment, when the news just tells us that the world is lurching from one crisis to another.

But sometimes it can be hard to find something you’re thankful for when you’ve had a shitty day. I find myself repeating the same things: at least I have a home; I have food to eat; I have friends…

Then I came across a slightly different approach that really appeals to me: noticing the glimmers in a day. Just as you see glimmers of light in a shady wood, every day has glimmers in it, even if just for a moment.

It may be noticing a bird singing its heart out, or a beautiful plant catching your eye,or the taste if a good cup of coffee, or the cosiness of putting on a warm sweater, or stroking a pet for a few moments.

Our senses do get little glimmers no matter how tough the day may seem. The only time it’s not easy to notice the glimmers in a day is when there are so many, we lose count!

So next time you’re having a hard day, look out for the glimmers around you – they will remind you that it’s not all bad, there is light around.

BOTH/AND

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We have become more and more polarised in the way we look at the world. We either like or dislike, hate or love, fear or look forward to, etc.

This does not reflect how the world really is: there are more shades of grey than just black or white. It limits our thinking and our reactions to circumstances and to people.

When we look honestly at most situations, our feelings are more nuanced, more ambivalent, so instead of choosing to come down on one side or the other, it is useful to allow for both. This gives us more choice and more leeway to choose a different path.

For example, I may be nervous about attempting something different, and at the same time excited about the possibilities. Similarly, I may find my first impression of somebody somewhat off-putting, and at the same time sense something I like about them.

Navigating our way through these apparent paradoxes is what makes life interesting, and is far more likely to lead to new learnings, new possibilities.

Even with Trump – a difficult one for me! – I can believe that in person he is charming, funny and considerate – just wish it showed up in his public persona as the president of the USA!

By not jumping to conclusions, on one side or the other, we can enrich our lives. So next time you realise you’re running to an either/or choice, just stop a moment and see if it could more usefully be a both/and choice.

DID CURIOSITY REALLY KILL THE CAT?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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!