Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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When nothing comes to mind
Do you ever get moments when you are trying to think of something, whether it's a present to buy for a friend, or how to express yourself in a particular situation, or a topic for an article, or a theme for a speech at a wedding, or an idea for an activity at the weekend, but no matter how hard you try to think of it, nothing comes to mind? Well you're not alone....we all get it at times. The thing to do, is having thought for a while, to drop it and do something else.
When we are thinking, "I don't know what to do", we are telling ourselves.....that we do not know what to do! So that is what comes to mind,....that we do not know. We consciously and subconsciously tell ourselves what we do not want because that is what we are thinking. We get what we think. If however, we tell ourselves, that we will have the answer to our question by 9.00am, or any other time we like, but be specific, there is a very good chance we will have our answer. But having thought this schedule for creative inspiration, we need to put it to one side so we're not constantly thinking about it; we should let our subconscious work it out. After all, it's had the instruction. It's the process of 'trying hard' that gets in the way. Coming up with ideas is the simplest thing in the world, if we just 'let it happen'.
To help stimulate the brain, it's good to go for a walk, observe your surroundings, go for a run, do the gardening, paint a picture, polish the brasses or shoes,....anything to get you moving, increase blood circulation and help avoid getting physically stuck as well as mentally. After all, the brain isn't much use without a body to feed it oxygenated blood and move it around, and a body isn't much use without a brain to control the muscular movements via the nervous system; the whole body works as a unified whole.
Dr Kawashima, author of Train Your Brain, discovered through examining brain scans of people doing various activities, that simple tasks such as reading, writing, reading aloud, and doing simple arithmetical calculations quickly, stimulate the brain far more than struggling with a difficult problem. (I have been doing his 60 Days To A Better Brain course and I'll report back about my progress soon.) But the lesson here in the context of situations when 'Nothing comes to mind' is not to struggle with the difficult problem, but to go and do a different activity instead of thinking about it, something that stimulates our brain. However, we should maybe just give ourselves the initial instruction, that we require an answer soon. We should be definite about it, visualise ourselves shouting "Eureka!", being happy with our novel idea, successfully doing the task, experiencing that happy feeling when it's all done superbly well. Then having done this little bit of visualisation, we should step aside, let our mind work on something else, and allow our subconscious to come up with the great idea that it is most capable of, from the depths of our lifetimes experiences.
A good time to do this is when you retire to bed at night. Just before you go to sleep, think for a few minutes about the type of solution you want, or just pose the question to yourself, that by the time morning comes, you would like to know what to do about this situation. Give this about 3-4 minutes, then turn over and put it out of your mind. When you wake up, turn over onto your back when you're still drowsy, don't force yourself to think too hard, don't wake up fully consciously, but let your mind wander around the topic of your enquiry and see what comes to mind. Do this before your mind is fully active as your 'intelligence' can get in the way and says "You can't do that!" But when we're still drowsy, your heart and inner feelings have more of a say in the matter, and that's where the best and most appropriate ideas for us will come from.
It all works so simply if we let it, and struggling can just get in the way. So next time you find yourself trying to think of something, but 'Nothing Comes to Mind, then pause, visualise the successful outcome, set a goal, believe it can come, and then switch to something else and let the magic work!
