Saving You From A (completely imaginary) Sequence Of Terrible Things

A while back, early this year, I was talking to a client about something I might help with.

I wanted to help. It was exciting. And felt good.

We were in midst of an email exchange. Some back and forth, you know how it goes.

We were at the yes / no point. ‘Shit or get off the potty’ time.

I got what would be the decisive email back. There it was. Landed in my inbox. Bold and black.

And I froze. Not all me, but some of me, froze.

I knew it was a no.

And I knew why.

And it hurt.

I was marinading in a pool of rejection like a cut of pork ready for the bbq.

Disappointing and disappointed.

All this before I’d even opened the email.

Mind Your Business

Our minds are awesome!

They are also lazy, crazy, needy and greedy, as one great teacher of mine put it.

Oddly, they seem to have a mind of their own. Maybe more correctly, they are a mind on their own. They are free to think, worry, plan, scheme and decide irrespective of what you want or need. You’re just a passenger on your mind’s express. Toot toot.

Giving you’re dancing to your mind’s tune, I’d suggest taking some time to familiarise yourself with the pesky beast. Know it’s quirks, it’s tunes, it’s wily ways.

Know that, for example, it responds to caring talk. Be nice to your mind and it’ll be nicer to you.

Know too that it’ll chat and worry and scheme always and for ever. But that makes none of it true. Or necessarily useful.

Crack of insight

My mind’s playing up even now. Writing this is pointless, airy fairy crap. Thanks, bug guy!

Learning to sit down, be quiet and meditate is incredibly useful. Not in a ‘you can be more productive at work’ way, as it’s sold and consumed in many companies, but in an everyday way. I might go so far as to say meditation is a truly revolutionary technology. A practise of quiet, of affording you the tiniest gap of insight between you and your mind. And in that gap, as wiser observers than me have noted, there is choice. The gap might be fleeting and often unseen. But it is there. And in that gap is choice. A choice to act or not act. A choice to follow or not follow. A choice to do or not do.

This is no mere tool for productivity. Followed even slightly diligently meditation is an opportunity to look somewhat afresh at everything you do, the work you do, the life you lead. In time, it frees you, slowly but definitely surely, from the noise of you.

Meditation is getting to know your mind.

It’s about finding that moment of choice between the crazy lazy madness of your mind and… action.

It’s about seeing how one unread email might give rise to an entire story of rejection and doubt and an inevitable demise to probable death (ok… I added that bit). Before you’ve even read it. Whether it’s true or not.

The mind is creative, amazing… and crazy, lazy, needy and greedy.

And it’s controlling your life.