Which Passenger Should I Listen To?
I had a conversation with a client a few days ago. They were trying to figure out how to know when they were overthinking something. In effect, they were trying to think their way out of a “situation” they were already thinking too much about. But the following recipe is always true. Too much thinking plus more thinking on top of it can only equal confusion.
Listen for a rested mind
Clear answers don’t come from a mind that’s frantically overthinking; they come from a mind that’s been able to slow down, at which point, the clear, fresh answer presents itself. The answer doesn’t come through a mind that’s spinning too fast, it comes through a rested mind.
Rather than let my client waste their time trying to think their way out of overthinking, I reminded them they already knew the answer, but had lost sight of it, just as I do sometimes. They needed a hint, so I reminded them the answer had to do with something that was built into them and everyone else.
“Is it the way I feel?” They weren’t quite sure, so it was posed as a question, but they were right. The way you’re feeling at any given moment is simply the “felt” version of your thinking. A feeling can only ever be a reflection of whatever you’re thinking.
The “felt” version? That’s what you’re physically experiencing at any given moment. It’s a function of your larger real-time responsive wisdom. You don’t even need to know what the thought was that made you feel crappy. Feeling crappy is your alarm going off. It’s reminding you that your thinking is going in a direction that won’t serve you. If you think that way, you’ll feel that way. That’s simply a law of nature.
When we feel off, it’s common to try to examine what we’re thinking as the key to why we don’t feel right, but it never helps; in fact, it just gets us more wound up in the thinking that made us feel bad in the first place.
Rather than focus on thinking, a much more dependable place to look is how you feel. Our minds are very good at making up things that aren’t true, but our bodies don’t lie, because they can’t.
Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re driving somewhere you’ve never been, and it’s important you get there on schedule. Let’s also say you have two passengers in the car you can depend on for directions (you can think of these as two different GPS systems). What you know about these two people or systems is this; one always tells the truth, and one tells the truth some of the time.
Why would you ever listen to the one that only tells the truth some of the time when you’ve got another one that can only tell the truth?
We all have both systems, the “feeling” one that can only tell the truth, and the “thinking” one that tells the truth some of the time. Why would you listen to anything other than the one that can only tell the truth?
