Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Conscious and Unconscious”

19 Oct 2008

Trial Run to Overcome Your Procrastination

Back looking at Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind and I’ve hit a brilliant point where our belief system is explored:

‘We possess a whole variety of beliefs, many of which are themselves unconscious or unarticulated, which specify, more or less rigidly, and in more or less detail, our character and our psychology. They define what kind of person we are, our personality or ‘self image’, and even how our minds are supposed to work.’

He goes on to query whether our beliefs about ability, and needs to protect self-esteem can also lead us to become more mentally clumsy when faced with a challenge that increases our vulnerability.

Back to the game playing psychology that I have explored many times here (see tags in sidebar to right), we can trick ourselves into activity.

By starting work on something as a ‘practice’ or trial run, we both overcome the procrastination build-up against starting actually do something ‘that we may not be good at/ may not be actually able to do’. But we also ‘open ourselves to the undermind’ and the creativity latent within us.

So the key is to just start. Have a bash. Act as if you can do it.

Posted in Action Orientation, Conscious and Unconscious, Game Playing and tagged , , | Leave a comment
14 Oct 2008

The Experience Economy: Possessions vs. Experience Now

Not the usual subject matter, but a quick thought.

Ben Elliot of concierge company ‘Quintessentially’ is quoted as saying, ‘people realise experiences are remembered more than purchases. What you hold in your heart is more important than what you hold in your hand’

This was quoted in the FT in a piece on possessions. A book called the Experience Economy was also referred to. 

I wonder, in light of the events over the past weeks and months, what the impact on corporations and their products will be? Will our internal valuation of things vs. experience have shifted? Will experience increase in value?

Just a thought…..

 

Posted in Business, Change, Conscious and Unconscious, Happiness and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
11 Oct 2008

The Conscious Analyser

A flow of thought post.

I’ve just stood back from myself while working. I noticed that I’ve started to work slightly differently. My reading on the relationship between conscious and other-than-consciousness has led me to redefine their relationship and has created a separation of their ‘utility’ in my mind (hard to refer to the concept of the mind in this context…..)

Put simply, I’m trusting my gut/ intuitive/ unrestricted freedom of thought flow. I’m then trusting my application of my conscious analysing/ sorting/ challenging intellect to the outputs from more of the other-than-conscious thought flow.

I’m deliberately stopping myself from getting in the way of myself (if you see what I mean…)

This appears to be having the following results:

1. Ideas are flowing faster, and more clearly. They are unhindered by attempts to assess/ categorise or action on the fly
2. At the stage of assessment/ categorisation, a next stage of creativity seems to be more easily triggered because of the focus of attention that my conscious intellect has on a body of information/ thoughts/ musings that my other than conscious has produced.

Working separately, but together appears to be creating a stepped value-adding cycle of:

1. Release flow of thoughts/ feelings and unconnected ideas
2. Evaluate connections/ gaps/ conclusions
3. Address outputs from evaluation stage 2. and produce required further creative response
4. back to 2.

I’m not deliberately trying to systematise this. I don’t think this helps the process. But there is definitely a process….

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Creativity, Focus, Learning and tagged , , | Leave a comment

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