Free your mind

Sometimes, we need to be reminded about things we already know, and learn those things at a deeper level. My coaching clients can sometimes get really frustrated and say “I thought I knew this stuff, why am I still doing it?!” I have to remind them that life is often like a spiral. We find ourselves coming back to the same lessons, years after we thought we’d learned them, but we’re in a deeper place and our understanding is different. We learn things in new ways, which open up new possibilities for us.

So today I want to talk to you about something you already know, but I want to take you a bit deeper into it. It’s something that’s easily forgotten in the busy rush of our lives…

Famously, we’re supposed to be the average of the five people we spend the most time with. We’re highly social animals. Your outlook is subtly shifted when you spend time with different friends, or members of your family, or colleagues at work. We all do this. Sometimes we notice it, often we don’t.

But it’s bigger than that. Our thinking is warped and limited by the context of our lives. If we spend a lot of time with people who all think the same way, we’ll tend to start thinking along similar lines. If you work in an office where work is pretty stable and dependable, people will think in the way that employees think: doing the assigned jobs, meeting targets, waiting for the weekend, talking about holidays, kids, family dramas. If you’re the boss, you’ll have completely different conversations with a totally different feel to them. You need to think differently, to be more dynamic and creative. If you’re a single parent, your thoughts will be different again, trying to navigate the momentary dramas and the long-term picture of your children’s lives. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s yet another way to think, feel and be.

Our surroundings and the things we do with our lives shape our thinking.

But it’s bigger than that.

In my forthcoming book (working title: 12 Words), I go into some detail about how our culture is so massively toxic, not just for individual human flourishing but for all life. It’s the longest chapter in the book. I lay out some of the most harmful cultural stories that we’re told, all sorts of subtle ways, from the moment we’re born, and I try to offer advice about how to combat them and shift them into positive, nourishing stories that meet our needs.

We move in a world that pulls and pushes our thinking, limiting our imagination, whispering to us that this is all there is. This is just the way things are. Our culture says that we need to play along, be passive, feel like helpless victims to our situations. Complain, but don’t take action. Only imagine that that the world is the way that everybody says it is. Numb yourself against the disappointment and the frustration that you feel, deep down.

You were born to grow. Squashing ourselves is bad for us.

I don’t know you. I don’t know who will read these words. But I know, with a pretty big degree of certainty, that you haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible for you. In every conceivable direction, there’s the possibility of growth. All that limits you, really, is your imagination and your willingness to take bold, uncomfortable, scary action.

Action comes second. Imagination is the key. Perhaps the most important thing that we all need to be doing, at this time, is making sure we pull our heads out of sand from time to time. Come up for air and look around. Remember that the stories that everybody around you tells are just stories. Be curious about what else is out there.

This can be very hard. It’s easy to fight against something you can see, but if we live in a stable and routine world (whether we enjoy that world or not), our thinking will be limited by the consistent stories that everybody tells. In the same way that fish wouldn’t be able to tell you much about water (because they’ve never known anything different, it’s just the way the world us), we can’t easily spot all the stories that limit our thinking.

We need to disrupt the stories so we can notice them. We need to make the record needle slip, shift the picture for a moment. Interrupt the constant reassurance that our lives give us, that this is all there is. As soon as you notice it, you have the possibility of making new choices, of setting a new course for yourself, of re-defining what’s possible.

The changes can be small. The bigger they are, the more they’ll disturb your thinking and give you a chance to explore, but you can start small. Listen to different music. Take a different route to work. Work from a new location. Start a conversation that you normally wouldn’t start. Listen to people in a new way: don’t anticipate their answers so you’re both repeating the same experience over and over. Try to hear the unique, beautiful, broken human underneath the smile.

If your story is to work frantically and keep busy, sit in the sun and feel its warmth on your face.
If your story is that you’re a lazy procrastinator, set yourself a goal and watch yourself meet it.
If your story is that you've got low confidence, choose to re-imagine yourself as brave and do something frightening to prove to yourself that you're right.
If your story is that you’re alone, reach out to another human, in whatever way you can and with as much vulnerability as you dare.
If your story is that you’re never alone, set boundaries and find a way to be with yourself for a while.

Each time you take a risk and do something that doesn’t fit with ‘just the way things are’, you open a small door into a bigger world. New actions lead to new possibilities. Taking one of those possibilities leads to yet more options. Step by step we find ourselves waking up to a much bigger, more exciting, more scary world and we look back at the little boundaries we once set for ourselves and feel confused and, most often, sad.

I have many clients who are in the second halves of their lives. They have spent years, maybe decades, living with ‘just the way things are’. They did what was expected of them, and they thought they were doing well.

Looking back, there is often so much regret that they boxed themselves in to such a tiny space. That they limited their thinking and believed all the little stories told to them by their friends, parents, colleagues, by society at large.

Don’t let this happen to you. Free your mind. Let your thoughts wander into new an unexplored territory. Dare to do things you’ve never done, even for a moment, to let your imagination take you to a future you’ve never ever considered.