Mindfulness
If you are currently plagued by over-thinking, take comfort in the fact that you are still just like everyone else. As a pre-language child, it was your naturally healthy, confident, quiet mind, that allowed you to extract incredible amounts of practical knowledge from your direct experiences.
Examples of experiential learning are things like walking and talking or, for many people, acquiring a pre-schooling ability to read. Those are fantastically complex things that your brain discovered how to do quite quickly, without anyone really trying to teach it to you, and without you even consciously trying to learn it. That’s how smart you are.
We cannot re-achieve that state of mind if we’re not fully accepting the evidence regarding how confident and capable we all are when we’re Present. If we don’t interfere with the natural process of awareness by busying our brains with word-based over-thinking, then that incredible ability continues throughout life.
Presence is a natural state. Any word-based, self-engagement with our own ego creates an illusory state in which we are taught to manufacture unnecessary, counter-productive, busy-minded thinking. The challenge is that, because our societies tilt so strongly towards a word-based interpretation of reality, everyone’s brains quickly develop the habit of over-thinking.
I was only saved by that fate by my accident, and I have lived with the enormous benefit ever since. As my students know, their word-based thoughts are often disruptive—like when we’re trying to understand someone else for example, or when we personally attempt to allay our own fears. Or even when we’re just trying to fall asleep.
To seek the peace, confidence and wisdom, as well as the other advantages of the greater awareness that comes with Presence, our only option is to replace our word-based thinking with more time spent in an open appreciative form of active silence.
That is the same state of mind we were in as children, when our rate of learning was fantastic, despite the fact that we were constantly trying some of the hardest things our brains and bodies will ever try.
Fortunately, I am uniquely qualified to teach people about how to find that state of mind because I have a lifetime of experience of living in it. Thanks to a very serious accident in childhood, my beneficial brain ‘injury’ meant that I never developed the universal human habit of filling my head with word-based thoughts.
I was a successful writer, filmmaker, and TV executive in my 30’s before I realized that everyone I knew was talking to themselves for the entire day. It was that shocking revelation that quickly explained why so many people seemed so troubled and unhappy. It was that realization that led me to create this website and to start doing this work.
Over-thinking is the opposite of good mental health. And yet almost everyone does it all day, for no purpose, despite the fact that it causes those people’s own lives to be filled with thought-based regrets or fears. That does not have to be how we live. There is better way.
Following my revelation, I finally understood why everyone’s suffering always seems so much worse than mine. It’s because all those word-based thoughts interfere with people’s ability to absorb the larger, often more comforting reality that actually surrounds them.
Rather than seek evidence in Reality that they’re okay, people use the power of their thinking to create painful illusory realities that they then find themselves confined within.
A good example is that most people spend a lot of time beating themselves up with word-based opinions that they interpret as being who they actually are. Yet, in reality, those words describe someone far worse than our friend’s opinions of us.
But what if you stopped resisting a better idea of yourself? Can you imagine how much nicer life would be if you liked yourself, and approved of, and accepted yourself, as much as your friends do?
Living with a quiet mind since childhood, I now know I can quite distinctly hear the difference between people’s considerations of actual Reality, versus their thoughts ‘about’ the illusory reality that the Buddhists speak of. And that unique type of listening is necessary to be able to train my students to learn to lower their personal thinking, and increase their sense of peace.
Fortunately, once people are taught to recognize it, the ways that go about creating these illusions are quite scientific and definable. By gaining a better understanding around how we create our thought-based reality, students are freed to live with less intrusive thoughts, and a greater sense of awareness, appreciation, and control.
The solution to most people’s problems isn’t some massive change. It is merely a subtle adjustment to our understanding of Reality.
The trick is, before anyone can teach us to see Reality, they have to be able to see it themselves. But people like that are nearly impossible to find because everyone else grows up with a world defined by words, in a culture of over-thinking. Even I can only see it by accident.
I see many earnest, caring attempts to teach people about over-thinking. But these lessons are mostly made up of superficial and ineffective techniques, when what’s really required is a shift in understanding that truly changes our sense of ourselves and the world around us.
As with Buddhism, living within the grace of this understanding does tend to feel profoundly spiritual, even though in practice it functions as a science-based form of practical philosophy.
The result of living this way is that we naturally become keenly interested in nearly everything. This means that, when I teach, we can develop metaphors from almost anything, including subjects as far-ranging as nature, genetics, parenthood, history, geography, engineering, art, religion, physics, chemistry, biology, education, morality and ethics, math, or even the law, or quantum mechanics.
We can talk about cars, or stars, or candy bars. I’m interested in pop culture, industry, finance, sociology, anthropology, and behavioural economics. Reality is everywhere. But so are the countless layers of illusion that keep people suffering. Fortunately, I can only see Reality,wherever it is. So you can pick a world you know well, and I’ll show you new things there.
In my training, we discuss the use of the mind in extremely practical terms. Meaning: students often leave with a practical, personalized assignment that helps them actually sense their motion toward greater awareness, and the better mental health that goes with it.
If that sounds good to you, and if you’re earnestly looking for a quieter mind and the peace that comes with that understanding, then I may be just the guide you’ve been looking for. You can read the testimonials on my site to get an idea if it feels like a good fit.
If you think I might be right for you, write to me at scottis@relaxandsucceed.com and we can arrange for a no-obligation conversation. From there, you can assess for yourself if you prefer this conversational approach to achieving mental health. But regardless of whether you would like to work together or not, I wish you all the very best.
Enjoy your day!
peace. s
NOTE: If you want to know more about my background and/or my approach, the links in this note will get you to further information in that regard.
