This week has been quite interesting for me, not only because I’ve started my annual holiday (which is at home this year!) but that it started with a new experience, in that on the hottest afternoon so far, I was being interviewed for an online business show.
I always love to do this kind of thing as I never really know what we are going to talk about, what questions are going to be asked, or more importantly how I’m going to respond — how will that innate intelligence that resides in all of us, show up for me in that moment!
Unsurprisingly, given the situation that we are all in, the conversation turned to how could we navigate these uncertain times, with requirements potentially changing, being unable to plan from week to week, simply not knowing how things will look next month let alone next year. Whether we run a business, are employed or have kids with looming exam results, no one seems to know how the world will look, no one knows what will happen.
I was reflecting on our conversation, and realised that this has been the core of many conversations that I have had over the past few months. How as humans we basically use the same approach in that when looking to our future, we recall all of our experience, the experience of others, our knowledge and any other information we can lay our hands on and use all of that to predict what will happen next. It’s a system that generations have seemingly used, but only now can we see that this too may be as unreliable as the future we are trying to predict.
What came to mind in my internet conversation, was essentially what I share with my clients, and that is to point to what we, as humans, are really made of, because the more we see of that, the happier we become with the unknown.
As human beings we are aware that we experience different states of mind, it’s part of being human, trying not to have varying states of mind is like trying to hold your breath indefinitely! Everyone reacts to change, this is normal, however, we don’t make great decisions when we are in a state of reaction, our minds lack clarity and may feel full of ‘what if’ or stress. When we notice that we are in a state of reaction it has the effect of pulling us up a little, and so often we’ll experience a fresh thought — even if it’s an idea of how we can calm down (like going for a walk or going to talk to someone).
It’s so lovely to notice that this is our system at play, that it gently guides us back to a state of equilibrium, and you might have noticed that when you have reacted to something unexpected, that after a time you settle and your mind becomes clearer.
When we are in this clearer state, we have more capacity for knowing what to do, we become more responsive to the situation, we may come up with a fresh idea or a creative solution and this is our innate intelligence doing the heavy work. It’s good to know that we are built for the unknown, that somehow, we always seem to be able to ‘figure it out’, that that is how we as humans have always worked, in fact how we have evolved as a species.
I find that knowing this helps us to be happier and more at ease in an unknown future, because we can see our own system at play, the more we see it working, the less we worry and fret about what is to come. We begin to see more how our reaction, whilst often loud and intrusive, isn’t the best gauge to predict or navigate our future, but that when we are in a quieter mind, which will always come, we’ll figure out what to do, because we always do.
Andrea Morrison is a Transformational coach, speaker and writer, who challenges the traditional Alpha ideology, encouraging her clients to become courageous, acting from their heart not their head. She is passionate about freeing the human mind to achieve potential whilst retaining life balance and enjoyment.
To find out more about Andrea you can visit her website at andreamorrison.co.uk or watch her captivating TedX talk ‘When I stopped trying to be confident I became unstoppable!’