When we stay in our heads spinning the same thoughts over and over again, all it ever does is make us feel mentally exhausted. The thing is, we have no idea we are doing it. We think that if we keep thinking about something, we will figure it out.
When you lose your keys or your glasses, you think about where they could possibly be and it consumes you. When you stop thinking about it, at some point it hits you and you remember exactly where they are.
This is how the mind works — when it’s busy and cluttered we do not get new and fresh thought. When it’s clear, we see fresh. New ideas come through. New inspiration comes through.
Understanding how the mind works, allows us to work with it. There is this amazing capacity for new thought to come through us but when we are tense and strained trying to figure it out in the personal mind, we are stifling the creative intelligence that is within us.
I remember when I wanted to leave my job and I was trying to figure out what I would do next. I tried to brainstorm, journal about it and it was constantly in the back of my mind. I even lived in the feeling of that low, stuck energy. A mentor at the time said, “you’re not going to figure it out by thinking about it.” That comment sounded crazy to me because that’s what I knew. Just like we would sit in meetings for hours in the conference room at work trying to come up with a new business pitch idea or trying to come up with a new campaign idea for a client — what we didn’t know was when ideas get stale and we can no longer think straight, it’s time to step away from it. Let it go, let the mind settle, take a break and create the space for fresh thought.
When we do this, we come to it with a whole new energy. The answers to questions get answered. The solutions to problems arise. Great ideas emerge. And, things we could have never imagined appear.