Mental Performance
Mental Performance on the No-Name Brand Podcast by Brandsashka
The Value of Quiet
As we enter the time of increasing darkness, I think of the value of quiet. Since being introduced to the Three Principles, I have found on a number of occasions, when something unexpected happened that was overwhelming or (temporarily) frightening, a voice in my head saying loudly and clearly, ‘Time to get quiet.’
When the mind starts to rush and thoughts fly everywhere, your wisdom will often step in to remind you that there’s an eye in the center of that storm. When you look there, the noise of too much thinking will usually settle down. This returns you to a sense of faith and connection to a wisdom beyond what your mind can find through its frenetic searching. There, right in the center of us, is the answer we seek. In that quiet it reveals itself.
May you find your own wisdom in the months that lie ahead.
How the Single Paradigm Impacts Leadership Effectiveness
I’ve been coaching two sisters who have started their own business, helping the elderly stay in their homes. When we started, they described their lives as hectic and stressed. After learning about the Single Paradigm, they began to see big changes in themselves and in their business. “We were working seven days a week, sometimes 12 hour days. We were hiring caregivers and doing some of the home-care ourselves. We were in a state of constant stress. We over-analyzed and worried about every decision we had to make. We were on automatic pilot, and it felt like we were headed for a crash.
“When we learned about the Single Paradigm so much unnecessary thinking fell away. It was almost spooky at first to experience that mental quiet. But then so many benefits followed. We no longer over think things. When we had to fire a caregiver recently, we were able to do so easily and with grace, instead of agonizing over it as we would have in the past. And we were able to talk with her in a way that seemed to bring out the best in her – she owned up to what she’d done and we parted on good terms.
“Our business is growing so quickly now our main challenge is keeping up with all the growth. We’re starting to meet our financial goals. And the best part is, we’re having fun doing it!”
When unnecessary thinking gets subtracted from your day-to-day, moment-by moment experience of life, it frees your mind to work as nature intended – with mental clarity, and the capacity to respond well to work and life challenges. It’s all so much easier when you have a clear mind.
What Are You Thinking When you Say, “It’s Just My Thinking”?
I’ve recently encountered a number of people in the 3P community who have mentioned that they went through a rough patch, but then they realized it ‘was just my thinking.’ Sometimes they go onto say, ‘so I realized I needed to clear my head, or drop the thoughts, or think about something else.’
The statement ‘It’s just my thinking’ puzzles me, because thought is so powerful. It may be an illusion, but when we’re caught up in it, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Thought, as Sydney Banks points out, is the missing link between our psychological experience and the spiritual nature of life. Thought is a principle, and principles are very powerful – they’re forces of nature.
When you realize insightfully that you’re having thought in the moment, and it’s causing the experience you’re having (your feelings), you align yourself with the principles that govern your psychological experience – Mind, Thought and Consciousness. When that happens, the principles do the work – they clear your head of unnecessary thinking. This is very different from you trying to clear your head or drop your thinking, and the results are very different. People who try to do the work of clearing their heads often say that the same thoughts and thought patterns keep coming back. Mental calm and clarity, on the other hand, are a natural result of removing the misunderstanding of where your experience is coming from, and coming in contact with the inside out nature of life.
Magnetic Leadership: The Power of a Responsive State of Mind
Have you ever wondered why some leaders draw people to them, are good at decision-making, and gain your trust almost instantly? Other leaders, on the other hand, are difficult to get along with, engender a culture with high employee turnover, and make questionable decisions that negatively impact the future of the company? It has everything to do with a leader’s state of mind.
You’ve probably heard me use the terms ‘inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ before. ‘Outside-in’ refers to the way we all get caught in the illusion that events and circumstances cause your feelings. Just as when you lose your balance and instantly get an insecure feeling – nature’s way of alerting you that you’re out of alignment with gravity – when you’re caught in the outside-in illusion you lose your balance psychologically. What alerts you to that is a sense of insecurity or anxiety. Your mind begins to fill up with lots and lots of thinking in its attempt to make sense out of what’s going on from the perspective of this outside-in illusion. Since that’s impossible to make sense of, your mind will continue to fill up with thought, and you will continue to feel anxious and insecure, no matter how many times you try to drop your thoughts, re-frame them into more positive ones (as in cognitive behavioral therapy) or settle them down through observing them or focusing on something (mindfulness). An outside-in perception of life puts you on shaky ground, and as long as you continue to see life that way your mind will keep being overactive. An overactive mind leads to stress, and eventually to reactivity. That reactivity repels people because it’s unpleasant to be around, and can lead to poor decision-making, as your IQ literally goes down when you’re in a state of mental stress. (“Where Did My IQ Points Go?,” Relly Neale, Psychology Today, 04/29/2011)
An inside-out state of mind, on the other hand, is based on the fact that life only works one way – that the only thing you ever feel is your thinking in the moment about events and circumstances. Seeing this fundamental and consistent truth about your psychological reality calms you down and gives you a fundamental sense of security about how you go about your life. Your mind will settle itself and drop enormous amounts of unnecessary thinking, as the principles that govern your psychological functioning are designed to help your mind do this on a regular basis.
That mental spaciousness is what creates magnetic leadership – it draws good things to you, as well as giving you a heightened capacity to make good decisions, engender trust and have good rapport with the people you lead. There is tremendous power in a responsive state of mind.
Mental Clarity In a Minute– the Key to Leadership
Mental clarity is essential for leadership, because when your mind is clear you have more intelligence at your disposal. You have a larger perspective, are more open to new ideas and are more likely to receive the kinds of insights that can solve business challenges and move your organization forward. Your mind becomes more orderly and efficient. You also have a sense of well being when your mind is clear and are more likely to connect well with others.
Every successful leader I’ve worked with has found a way to access mental clarity regularly, through working out, running, letting their mind settle and clear on the way to work, cooking, or taking a walk around the park. While it’s helpful for people to experience mental clarity in these diverse situations, it’s not always practical. You can’t always get to the gym or on an airplane when you need a solution to a complex problem. Many leaders I work with wish their mental clarity was more easily accessed and sustainable.
The fact is, the mind is designed to achieve mental clarity in a minute. When we remember to factor thought into our experience, we align ourselves with the principles that are put in place by nature to keep our minds running optimally. Then even the most potentially stressful business challenges can be much less stressful, even enjoyable. As a woman leader in charge of re-structuring her company put it to me recently, “Understanding the role that thought plays makes all the difference. If I start to get bogged down, I remember that I have higher quality thinking available to me, and then I don’t grind away at things. All that unnecessary thinking that would normally get in my way just evaporates, and I’m back in the game feeling better and more capable than ever.
May you have increasing mental clarity in your leadership roles.
With Love,
Annika