Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott
I am sure you are like me, and have areas of your life that seem to flow easily. Yet there are others where you struggle to make changes. For some of us we might have an easy time with success at work and yet can’t seem to lose weight. Or we might find being a parent relatively smooth, but can’t seem to stick to an exercise programme.
When I look at this in my own life, I see very clearly that those areas where I ‘struggle’ (and I use that word for want of a better one), I have A LOT of thinking about them. My mind loves to chew them over. My intellect likes to think it will get to the answer, if I only think about it some more. We end up feeling like we are down a hole, trying to get out.
From the new paradigm of understanding how our minds work, when I remember (!), I see that the more thinking I have about something, the less useful this is. Putting things on the ‘back burner’ of our minds and allowing our consciousness, or wisdom, to give us new thinking, is another direction to look in. Noticing when we are ‘up in our heads’ with an issue, trying to figure it out with our intellect, is the first step to taking a step out of the hole of our mind.
It’s perfectly OK to do this. Our society has placed such great importance on using our intellect to solve ‘issues’. And yes, sometimes this works. But most often we end up in circular thinking that gets us nowhere. Our intellect is great if we are learning to drive a car or work out how to use the new fridge….not so great if we want to change a long-standing ‘issue’ in our lives.
So if there is something that you are struggling with, I invite you take a break from mentally chewing it over (put it on the back burner) and see what arises within you. And to consider what if we have it back to front? It tends to feel like we have lots of thinking about something because it is important. However, what if it’s the volume of thinking that we have about the issue, that makes is SEEM so important??
Enjoy the exploration of this for yourself!
Learn more about Lindsey here: https://www.lindseyelliott.co.uk/
