The Not Thinking Experiment
What might happen if I stopped thinking about what to do?
I have a little portable guru inside me — a kind of priest or rabbi module inherited from aeons of religious mindware — who whispers daily words of wisdom into my head and wants me to write them down. I can’t figure out if this guru is a genuinely enlightened part of me or a sermoniser who needs to turn every insight I have into a pithy aphorism, like one of those authors of edifying advice that Victorians used to hoard in their bathrooms. But this part of me is good with words, so I am giving it some space.
“You are a being with a life of its own,” he said to me this morning. I was lying in bed reflecting — as I often do — on the paradox of how I seem to be two people at the same time: there’s me — who thinks and has goals and ideas (and likes giving advice); and Me — a primitive being with a life of its own, who doesn’t care what I think and rarely does what I tell him to. I sometimes call this part of me my inner teenager, because of his charming spontaneity and lack of respect for me, his adult friend. But really, he’s all of me that’s not my mind — and he’s capable of doing everything I do, except the thinking and worrying.
For example: a few weeks ago I started climbing trees. I had been ‘thinking’ about climbing trees for years, but it had only ever been an idea. Then, just a week or so before lockdown, my body started vaulting up the sides of elms, beeches and bay trees — anything with branches low enough to haul myself up onto. Likewise, no matter how hard I pushed myself to do certain tasks at my desk I had no motivation or energy for some, while others — like writing — just started happening naturally.
So I’m starting an experiment. Having spent the first few weeks of shutdown trying to create online content as fast as I could so that I wouldn’t miss out on a huge opportunity (along with all the other coaches, actors, teachers, gurus), I have decided to furlough my thinking mind, stop trying to make things happen and just do whatever Me feels like, for a week. And if it goes well I will extend it to a fortnight. Or forever.
If this sounds familiar to you, and you’d like to join me in my experiment of not thinking (or more accurately not forcing, strategising, stressing) you can start by joining one of my new weekly sessions. In The Art of Having No Idea we spend an hour at the start of the week connecting with I Don’t Know and finding out what it has to offer in the way of insight and creativity before powering into action and old ways of doing things (to find out more please message me).
Or you can simply ponder this…
What might happen if I stopped thinking about what to do? What is already happening completely on its own that is new, positive and enjoyable?
Finally, thanks to artist Steve Chapman for this week’s image (above) — drawn during our Art of No Idea session earlier this week. You can find more of his work here.
Laurence
Ps, This is not to say that thinking doesn’t have a place — it does. It’s just not what we think it is.
