Master your Mindset, week 2
Week 2 of 6 Monday Morning Tools to clear your head and lift Your State of Mind
So here’s the 2nd of the 6 tools from my suite of 22, to help you clear your head and improve your State of Mind. I hope you got a lot out of last week’s 3 Body Breaths. Reading about them is one thing, however we find they tend to work best when they’re actually put to use!
Issue #2: Busy Mind
I can’t tell you the number of clients and friends I’ve had say to me “these techniques won’t work for me, my mind is busier than most peoples.”
Apart from that being pretty difficult to quantify precisely, it’s not the most helpful starting point if we’re wanting to learn tools to calm the mind, rest the body and improve our performance, in business, sport or home life. The truth is, thanks to fMRI machines (functional MRIs) we know most of us have 50-70,000 thoughts per day. That is a lot of noise in the mind for anyone to bear. How many of those thoughts do you think are original? How many are helpful? The mind is like a tennis ball machine, relentlessly firing thought after thought at us. We can however learn simple techniques to turn down the speed at which the tennis balls fire. After some time, the gap between thoughts becomes longer and longer, till a calmness prevails. Our best decisions can be made from this state.
Tool #2: Just Notice.
This is where we start to get separation between our ‘Self’ and our thoughts, by simply noticing what we’re thinking about. For some people this is a major revelation: oh I can step back and see my thoughts, they’re not actually me? So what’s the technique? The invitation is to find a quiet place for the next couple of minutes and for 60 seconds (time yourself), notice your thoughts. Just do it.
What did you see? Were you list-making? Was your mind jumping from one thing to the next like a pinball machine? Or was each thought unrelated to the previous one, seemingly random? Perhaps you were surprised by how serene it was in there? Bravo if so. Did you notice any change in your physiology just by taking that quiet minute? I invite you to try doing that at least once per day this week. Which of the images below reflected your State of Mind? Turbulent or calm?
To view the first module of the online State of Mind Capability program, please go here. There’s an Enterprise version for businesses and a personal version for individuals. Have a brilliant week “just noticing” and stay tuned for the next 4 tools on each of the coming Mondays.
Dr Samantha Graham has designed and delivered corporate leadership programs for 25 years, working across all sectors including blue chip corporates, NGOs and government. Corporate clients include Nestle, Mars, the BBC, Deutsche Bank, Lend Lease, Microsoft and the RBA, to name a few. Her work has been featured in the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend Magazine and on ABC television and radio. Her current suite of tools allow clients to manage their state of mind, whether needing composure under pressure, focus for productivity & efficiency gains, or to disarm the mind chatter that leads to fatigue and overwhelm.
(Photo credits to www.unsplash.com)
