When people hear about my broad range of experience and what it took to learn and do those things, from Architecture, Psychology, Philosophy, Art, Music, Gourmet cooking, Writing, Business, Science, Astronomy, Teaching etc., They always have two questions:
One: How it is possible and true that I can do all of those things?
Two: You must be very busy, do you ever sleep?
The first question is: I have an extensive portfolio and physical degrees as well as people who know me that can back me up. And, that when you ask me any questions about any of those subjects, you will see that I know what I am talking about. Especially if you are an expert of a sort in any particular area.
The second question is: I actually get a lot of sleep and have a lot of free time to do and explore more new things. Because I have found that the more I have learned the less I know, so I need time to learn more.
So at this point, if you are the least bit curious, you might be asking these questions:
How is this possible?
How do you do it?
How can I learn to do it?
The answer is this:
First you have to understand that we have enormous capabilities in our brains, that we rarely tap into. Why? Because we have been conditioned to become consumed by "busy work." We get this throughout school and even how the classes and curriculum is constructed. We get it in sayings like, "The idle mind is the devils playground" (Whaaaat!!!), "If you work hard you will get what you want," it goes on and on. Even some employers think that if you are having fun at work, you are not really working. They dole out the fun time like it is a limited break from working and now you have to put your game face on and work seriously.
We are also conditioned to believe that unless we are entirely immersed in what we are doing, that it won't get done right.
This is all bogus. We have in us the ability to function in every way, without being immersed and preoccupied with what we are doing.
A good example of this is driving a car. If you had to think about every action that you were doing driving a car, you would either never want to do it and/or get in accidents all the time. In fact, many older people get into accidents, not because they are not thinking about their driving, but because they are thinking too much about what they are doing from fear of making a mistake. It actually becomes a distraction from just simply letting the body drive.
We become what we call mentally tired, because our minds are concerned with busywork and not being able to step away from these thoughts, let them work and solve things on their own, while you relax and do refreshing things for your mind. How many times have you had a difficult or seemingly impossible problem to solve and you get a good night's sleep and when you wake up, you find the solution? This is because there is an inner mind, that works all on its own to solve problems. All you have to do is clearly define the problem, ask the mind the right questions and it happens all on its own.
Here is a perfect example of how this mind works and I have done this with people who were falling asleep on their feet exhausted:
I am going to ask you a few questions and all you have to do is answer the first thing that comes out of you mind, don't hesitate for a second and answer, no matter how silly or ridiculous.
1. Imagine you are standing somewhere, either real of imaginary, where is it?
2. Someone is standing next to you, who is it?
3. They hand you a piece of paper, and it has one word on it, what is it?
4. Something flies by, what is it?
5. What is the weather like?
6. What are you wearing?
7. Why are you standing in that place you just made up?
OK stop!
I can ask you questions all day and your mind will have answers all day. Our tired minds are never really tired when it comes to our creative imaginations and how our inner mind is at work on its own, all the time. In fact the tired part is the part of us that feels it is responsible to focus and solve every little thing that come across our plate. It is not your mind that gets tired, it is you body and the tension of responsibility it feels it needs to take 24/7.
I used administer a MFA program at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. My MFA student were trying to do their thesis projects and they would come to me exhausted and unable to really start their projects. I told them that the reason that they were exhausted and stymied was because every time they started to work on their project, they looked at the whole project every time, instead of mapping out what they had to do, by when, and each specific thing they had to do each day. Once they did this on a daily calendar, building in two extra days, one for making up for things that couldn't be done in five days that week or getting ahead of schedule on their project and one day to veg their brains out without any work or self judgement, even if for some reason they were behind.
When these students did this, they were refreshed, energized, excited about their projects and produced the most incredible work before their deadline and before any other students that were not in my program were able to do.
So not understanding this inner mind creates a vicious cycle:
You feel like there is so much to solve, that you don't have enough time during the day, so you loose sleep and when you loose sleep, you can't get enough rest for your mind to solve problems, so you don't have enough time and you loose more sleep and solve less problems.
In the Mindmavericks.org workshops, you will learn how to tap into that inner mind, trust that it is actually there and functioning and carve out more free space in your mind than you know what to do with. In other words, you get an upgrade of more memory and ram in your own head.
If you say you have no time or energy to do this workshop, you need to do it even more. We will show you how to get more energy from our brain games, not less.
Thank you Jessica for bringing up this thought
