Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the category “Psychology”

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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Our Simple Minds: Mind Tricks

Sorry that I’m struggling to shake the simplicity theme that underpinned the Play/ Game posts earlier in the

Person at Desk by Sigurd Decroos

Person at Desk by Sigurd Decroos

week. I feel this will be a recurring theme throughout my exploration of conscious vs. other-than-consciousness as it is at the heart of our self-management.

The whole idea about tricking or ‘blatantly’ nudging yourself into change is a strange one when you consider the supposed power of the intellectual conscious. Back to the ‘remembering to take something to work’ example that I have mentioned before and that David Allen uses so well: how could such an intelligent human animal really rely on leaving something by the front door in order to remember to take it into work the next day. Why is NLP and hypnotherapy so effective in enabling self-change when analysed, it is clearly so simple: all about beliefs and mental associations. 

I was struck this morning how we can trick ourselves into working. How we can fool ourselves into addressing challenging tasks just by being a bit dumb about it.

Put simply: if we remove the conscious barriers or layers between identification of the need for the action, and the action itself, then it appears that we get more done with less resistance. I sometimes think that Forest Gump is an ideal role model for all busy people who want to achieve more in their lives.

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