Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the category “Habits and Routines”

Learning Strategies: Can the Conscious Teach the Unconscious?

Black Label by Zsuzsanna Kilián

Black Label by Zsuzsanna Kilián

Accepting the principles that we have:

1. a conscious intellect which we feel that we control

2. an intelligent unconsciousness: as well as the running of things we know how to do (get dressed/ clean teeth/ drive car), increasingly it is seen as the place where our creativity/ intuition and problem-solving resides. This is believed to operate independently of conscious control (even though we may think we’re consciously controlling…)

I wonder whether with practice we can improve our ability to call on or apply our intelligent unconscious in whatever direction will be of use to us?

I think that simple approaches of consciously thinking about an issue or question without coming to a conclusion or answer, and then allowing thoughts to percolate or marinade over night is recognised as an effective strategy.

But what about training the conscious mind to use unconscious resources by habitually and routinely consciously and mentally debating unconscious issues?

Is it possible to grey the border between the black of conscious awareness and the white of unconscious resources (creativity/ problem-solving) by having unconscious characteristics and behaviour as your subject matter of focus?

So far I can’t find any writing on this matter, so is a good experiment to question those practioners/ passionate about the relationship between the conscious and other-than-conscious about their views on their own learning?

Emails away….

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Thrashing and Power of Focus: the simple truth

Power by dfu

Power by dfu

Nothing has struck me more since I began my pursuit of self-development a few years ago, than the apparent power of focus.

Struck about ten years ago with a real curiosity about the qualities and benefits of mindfulness within Buddhism, it feels like part of the end game for a lot of self-development challenges includes the ability to master the power of focus to the best of your abilities.

With my ‘simple mind’ investigations that I am now undertaking, I am now struck by the double-challenge of that mastery:

1. To be able to focus is a challenge in itself. I always remember a quote where someone said that the secret of their success was their ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one matter with absolute focus (for something crazily short like 15 minutes (would love to get this correctly sourced…..)

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Play: the Most Serious Aspect of all our Activities?

Laughing Clowns by Craig Jewell

Laughing Clowns by Craig Jewell

Game playing and playfulness to deliver personal change and also enable creativity and problem solving has been on my mind the last couple of days.

Some conclusions? More a general shift in my feelings, and a shift to even greater certainty about something I believed at the start of the week.

Mainly, that we are both a hell of a lot more and less sophisticated than we make ourselves our to be. I think we consciously weight and interpret the less impactful but more seemingly sophisticated: our ‘intellect’ and equation-solving/ focused style of creativity. At the same time, I think we allow some of the most powerful (and sophisticated) tools to run along in the back ground – in most cases unnoticed. Here I think about the game play I have been examining over the last couple of days.

This game play or playfulness appears to have many facets. One of the things that has most impressed me is the view of play as enabling the modelling of multiple perspectives and scenarios. I think I have merely scraped away the icing sugar on the tip of the iceberg: particularly when you consider some of the diverse resources and investment of time and thought taking place. Whether our dreaming and relaxed mental playfulness allows this unconsciously will be an interesting route to investigate in the future.

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