Modern Day Mind-Turnings

Develop your ability to choose what is equally true and far more helpful

I’d like to share with you a trait that my mind has acquired through my 25 years of high performance mindset training (training which has changed in nature dramatically over the years!).

We’ll start with an anecdote from recent weeks, and then dissect it.

The Left Notebook

I attended an incredible workshop in Warsaw, led by a true spiritual master and music man. The workshop’s opening ceremony started at 6.30pm, and I arrived mid-afternoon.  I needed food so went out for an early dinner in the local neighbourhood. I found a place I wanted to eat at, and realized I had left my journal at the apartment, and I need that journal. I had things to write! So I had to go all the way back to pick it up. My mind immediately offered me the thought that I was a complete dummy for forgetting it, and then came the turning. I looked at my watch, saw that it was still 4pm and I had ages. That I love walking, especially to get my appetite up. And I love exploring new places, this district of Warsaw being one. The weather was great for late October!

 Now I was just on a pre-dinner stroll around my cool neighbourhood. Glorious!

The thing is, I was also still a complete dummy for forgetting the one thing I had brought with me on the trip. It just paled in comparison to these plentiful, uplifting truths about the case at hand.

If both versions are true, which one do you want your brain to spend any time on?

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My mindset training over the years has had a profound effect on my day-to-day life. When I encounter setbacks or challenges, and my mind begins bringing all the negatives into focus, my subconscious will act swiftly and accurately to offer up another perspective of the situation – which in turn completely shifts my feelings about it. This method encompasses reframing, gratitude, zooming-out and more… all powerful tools when used in the right moment.  And people sometimes grumble about these techniques, as if you might just be in denial about what you feel and choosing to distract yourself with something else. This approach I am presenting here, does not discount that there are negatives in the situation, and it points to that fact that there are other perspectives which are just as true and far more healthy and beneficial to you. Then you get the choice – do I want to focus on the perspective that brings me down, or the equally true one that lifts me up?

Let me give you a few different examples from my recent life. I’ve been keeping a journal, which has been helpful for capturing and then recalling these mind-turning moments that arose in my life.

The Tough Pineapple Piece

Over the summer I was hanging out with my best buddy, Stig. We were watching the Burning Man documentary, plotting our own first visit. I had brought a little picnic for us to enjoy, including some tea, dark chocolate, nuts, and the most beautifully succulent pineapple. After a little while I got a piece of pineapple that was tough, dry, tasteless. Not pleasant, not satisfying. My first thought was how shitty it was to get a bad piece in a box of delicious ones. Then the turning was – but that means Stig won’t get it. And suddenly I could be grateful that it was me – the picnic host – that took the pineapple hit, and not my ‘guest’.  Awesome, happy to take one for that purpose.

The Clay of Feedback

 I have been speaking to lots of people recently, about my new calling – Karuna Club. As you should, I was asking everyone for their reflections, feedback, advice. The thing with feedback is that even if you know why it is important and valuable, you know you need it, and you really do want it… it still feels uncomfortable to hear it!

So when my good friend that I have asked for feedback, proposes something I could consider thinking about, this is what my brain serves up first – every time, without fail.

‘Oh no no no, you don’t understand, I have thought about all of this and my idea is the best idea, and your suggestion couldn’t possibly help at all‘.

And luckily I know that my brain is crazy, and I should be very careful about believing what it is saying. So I remind myself of what I really believe, which is that you can learn something from everyone. That the feedback I have received so far has been incredibly useful. That I asked for this, so I better well open up to what the guy has just offered me!

And then I realised that I don’t have to take their idea wholesale, but I can often take something from it to add to my vision. I envisaged it once like they were offering me their bit of clay to add to the sculpture I was making. I need the clay to build the sculpture, and I get to take it from them and mold it where I want.

So many people get stuck on the first thought that closes them off – or any one of its hundreds of cousins – and don’t manage to make the mind-turning that will unlock all the gold that collective wisdom can offer you.

The Relief of Shared Humanity

This example is a little different, since I needed a helping hand to get to the turning. The impact was more powerful than even I could have imagined, though.

This past year I was struggling with something at work which was very foreign for me, and came out of the blue and with quite a force. For a period I noticed that I was ruminating on everything that was coming up, much more than I ever usually do. It was clearly weighing on me. I was due to have a conversation with a colleague and I was mentally preparing my whole argument for it. It was defensive, and I knew it, but felt the moment called for it.

I have a close relationship with my sister and she was fully briefed. Then on a call she told me that so many of her friends had experienced something just like me. She helped me see that these struggles are par for the course for the kind of contemplative + independent path I was beginning to follow. Suddenly my body was flooded with relief. This is not unusual. I’m not an oddball for being in this kind of situation. Others like me have experienced very similar things. Wow, that’s helpful.

Then I considered the conversation that was coming up. Suddenly I had no need to defend myself. No need to understand everything that was going on under the surface. So what did I want to focus on instead? I decided that protecting the relationship I had with the person was the most important thing, and that what I wanted to do was to focus on that, not all the other crap going on.

It ended up as one of the more beautiful conversations I have had in my life.

The power of recognising that others have suffered in similar ways to us, that it is par for the course of being human. This is the mind-turning of shared humanity.

This also points to the importance of having caring others around us, helping us to find these mind-turnings. And this is why I believe so much in the power of bringing men together in safe spaces to share and open up about their experiences of life (check out Karuna Club if interested to learn more). Anyone can have the impact of a guru by helping others see things from a different perspective. Since difference is naturally built into us, that can happen through a simple sharing of life experiences.

You will hopefully start to see from these examples what I am getting at here. The greatest cause of unnecessary suffering in the world is not disease or poverty, it is over attachment to our thinking. Most of us are brought up to believe that our thoughts are chosen by us, that they represent us, and so we end up believing many of our thoughts to be true or to be real, when they are nothing of the sort.

My own experience with performance psychology when I was a professional athlete, showed me in very clear terms how often our brains are not actually on our side. My brain would tell me all sorts of harebrained stories about what disaster would strike if I lost this match, about the referee plotting to kick me out of the competition, or it would send me random thoughts about what to have for dinner that night when I am right in the middle of a goddamned knock-out match!

Just because a thought pops into our conscious mind, doesn’t mean that we need to take any heed of it. In fact, more often than not, that first thought is not the most helpful, or relevant, or even true. Even if it is true, or could be helpful in some scenario, there are always other perspectives at play.

This is where awareness comes into play. If you are running on autopilot then you get stuck with the first thought. You don’t even really notice it coming, or the fact that you spend the next 5 mins worrying about some abstract thing in the future that will almost certainly never happen. You need to be aware of what is happening in your own mind in order to consciously decide whether a thought has value to pursue or not.

The return on investment from becoming more aware of your own inner dialogue is phenomenal. As in the examples above, you can switch in a split-second from a real downer thought, to one that is truly uplifting.

Life is rarely black and white, so this is not just about changing your perspective on something, or reframing it to help yourself feel better. This practice is really about becoming more conscious of your inner life – more able to choose your response to events which hold both black and white within them – and then noticing how that impacts your outer life.  

You can try it for yourself anytime. Once you have a negative emotional reaction to something, spend a moment to consider if there is a different angle to view it from. You can try out these questions for a start.

-          What else is equally true here?

-          What value did I get from this experience that I could not have gotten otherwise?

-          Who else has been through this kind of experience before?

-          If I zoom forward 6 months and look back at this experience, is there anything in here that I might end up feeling grateful for?

We have all had negative experiences in life which turn out to be the best thing that could have happened for us. Given that understanding, you can make sure that anything unpleasant that happens to you becomes the catalyst for something good – by choosing to focus on a different truth which has more energy and uplift in it.