Where's Your Head At? (Part One)

Which came first – thoughts or (in)actions? Where’s your head at? This is an important question because so much will flow from it, consciously or unconsciously. It’s good to cultivate a focussed mind if we can, rather than one that is scattered all over the place, overcrowded by thoughts which fill us which anxiety and dread. This will help us to put things in perspective and get things done in some sense of order, maybe even to get things done at all. I suggest we don’t really want to be “all over the place”, left hoping we’ll somehow manage to do something useful. We want to achieve, preferably by design. We want to have a target because otherwise we can’t hit it. 

If we notice our minds are dashing all over the place, buzzing around and unable to stay with one thing, we need to recognise that it’s happening, be calm with ourselves, decide we want to focus and then do it without moaning at ourselves or calling ourselves stupid or useless or whatever. We don’t want to stop thinking, we just want to order it. Maybe pause your thoughts, count to ten and say “right, I’m back in the room” and determine to decide what is most important to you now. Out of all the competing thoughts, worries, cares, excitements, which one needs your immediate attention? You may even find the answer to this is “none of them”! Get pen and paper (or some technological equivalent) and make yourself a list of the things you were thinking about. Then next to each one rank them by priority. Write down when they need to be done. Write down how difficult you expect them to be. You’ll probably find out, on reflection, that some things don’t even need to be thought about in advance – they are so straightforward they will take care of themselves when you come to do them. I’ve been like this often in the past, thinking through in detail how to do something which is just so obvious and easy to do that my angst was unnecessary. 

It’s helpful to declutter your mind, to realise that you don’t need to overthink most things. You can try to drop some thoughts which are unhelpful – you don’t have to cling on to thoughts just because you’ve had them. 

If you’ve now got your list, here’s an interesting experiment. Put it aside and do something for the next 30 minutes which isn’t even on it! Something you enjoy. See if you can do that thing without even thinking about your list. You may just find out that the world doesn’t collapse! Then go back to your list and reassess it. And relax.