Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the category “Mindfulness”

16 Jul 2008

The Balance between Listening to Thoughts vs. Feelings

This is very much a catch-up post. A statement of current feelings on a set of issues that have historically vexed, and continue to, vex me.

A series of thoughts captured in my Happiness System posts concerned a simple ‘brain-led’ set of principles to increasing happiness for me. Things that if I could set into habit, in my mind would make me happier. The problem – the resistance between head and heart. The failure to enter routine or habit. The lack of ‘draw-to’ the thing that I intellectually flag as being good for my happiness.

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Focus, Happiness, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
11 Jul 2008

The Growing of the Conscious Mind in Children

To celebrate the birth of my third child yesterday, a brief (bottles/ baby and child #1 & 2 to focus on at this time…) couple of thoughts as the seed of something bigger.

What struck me was: is it any wonder that we have a constant challenge with concepts of ‘ourself’ or ‘me’. Why is it a surprise to us that we find it hard to ‘manage’ ourselves (if that is what we try and do)?

I sit and see a homosapien offspring aged 1 day. A beautiful bundle of potential; at this stage though just a bundle of nerve endings and other-than-conscious reactions. Initial genetic pre-set programmes around food and reaction (crying) to more extreme sensory inputs (noise/ light) – I’m sure there are a lot more listed by experts.

And then the conscious overlay begins. Thoughts and knowledge. Habits, beliefs, states and behaviours. Sets of reactions and responses based on our map of the territory.

I can’t shake an image of layers of ‘material’. Like strata in a rock; residues from the ‘time and tide’ of life compacted by the heat and pressure of the moment/ that moment.

And then initially apparently so hard to mine out those conditioned layers in order to change.

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Habits and Routines, Mindfulness and tagged , , , | Leave a comment
08 Jul 2008
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Why does Relaxation lead to Creativity and Performance?

A whole heap of things have come together in my thoughts over the last 24hrs. They are primarily covered by the following:

  • Why does relaxing lead to more creative thinking?
  • Why does not thinking about an activity and sometimes just going with the gut or the flow often lead to better performance?

I started to think about these things because of the counter-intuitive way in which we sometimes work. In one of my line reports today I saw (what felt like) a classic case of ‘over-thinking’. I could virtually feel the heat coming from their brain….

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Creativity, Mindfulness and tagged , , ,

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