I was thinking…

One of the things that touched me about 30 years ago was to find out how thoughts are processed and lived.

I am not talking here about a scientific point of view, but from a humanist and spiritual point of view. It was so impressive that a consultant friend of mine during many years used to give that information to his clients.

It should be obvious that by understanding how the thinking process works, we could have innumerable benefits, such as: better decision-making, enhancing the leadership capacity, innovation, etc.

However, we don’t hear about people looking into that so much. Last time I heard a leader talking on the need of thinking (reflecting, contemplating), it was just before Obama was elected for the first time, during a talk with the French president of that time.

Our society as a whole acknowledges actions and results, instead of reflection and contemplation. Children receive marks when they are right, not when they are still thinking… And just try to tell your boss you are thinking of what to do about that project, in which you are delayed!

And that is really a mistake. Perhaps by jumping into action and solving things In a Ramboish style we have got many results, but as Peter Senge said in his first book, The Fifth Discipline: problems of today are yesterday’s solutions. By not giving time to human reflection, we were unable to prevent deterioration or the misuse of ideas.

If you really want to be a leader and provide long-term solutions, just do one thing: THINK!

The general process

Every human being has three main functions, in relation to the thinking process:

·         Archive. We store all experiences we have in our lives. These experiences will help us to make decisions when the same situations or similar ones come in front of us.

·         Mind. It is the “screen” where our thoughts and feelings are projected. It is the area of thoughts and emotions. When we say I am thinking, it means our minds are working on something.

·         Intellect. It decides what our next action. It takes into account whatever the mind has, your present state of awareness and your knowledge.

The internal process is easy to understand:

1.       An input comes from outside, sometimes unknowingly.

2.       This awakes an old experience, stored in the archive.

3.       That experience is taken by the mind; in relation to the present circumstances and consciousness, thoughts and emotions are generated.

4.       Whatever the mind has is given to the intellect, which has to make a decision in terms of a response to the input.

5.       The response is acted out. That turns into another input and is archived along with the experience for future references.

Our archive

It is easy to realize the archive is out of our hands. It stores what we experience and that is it.

But we can conduct our experience in a better way. For instance, we can learn from a bad experience, turning it into a good one and the opposite is also true, as due to a bad day we can make our experience going back home as bad as possible.

The trick is in one point specifically: to manage better our intellect.

The effect of making a conscious effort in terms of which experiences I really want to store is impressive:

A bad project can be the birth of a wonderful business. That is the case of Post-It, a glue that didn’t work.

Bad marks in school can generate a genius. Einstein, anyone?

A divorce can give you your best friend back. Look at your neighbor!

When the experience is polished, next time the same situation emerges, no need of thinking of a response, as it will be stored in the self already.

Controlling your mind

At a time where distraction is omnipresent, controlling the mind can be an advantage in pursuing success in life, and it doesn’t require much.

First of all, it is important to understand that at the extent we can control our mind, we can control our thoughts and their quality. Better thoughts create better words and actions. If we don’t control our mind, it will weaver according to the circumstances, giving happiness and sorrow despite what you desire.

The higher the quality of thoughts we want, more control we need to exercise.

·         Relaxation. It is the basic point in terms of controlling our mind. An easy trick is to create a nice physical environment, with some soft music playing, and thoughts will go towards it.

·         Reflection. The art of thinking purposely. Take a good thought, a book or even a quote and let your mind work on that, analyzing, synthetizing of just experiencing in the laboratory of your mind.

·         Contemplation. It means silence, in its deepest sense. Although it requires discipline, it works as a balsam for the mind, cleaning it of unnecessary and sometimes hurtful thoughts and emotions.

·         Meditation. Making your mind creative is very useful, and that is one of the roles of meditation. It helps to create a flow of positive thoughts and generate an impact in our inner archive.

·         Yoga. It means concentration and focus. Although it requires as much discipline as contemplation, it is extremely useful as it helps to change your inner archive. In a stage of yoga, you have total control on your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Focusing your intellect

The intellect is probably the most important faculty we have.

First of all, it manages our consciousness, which means it manages our own experience. It is the intellect that really creates our archive and helps us in our future experiences.

But consciousness comes as a fruit of knowledge and experience, and that is the key to focus your intellect and generate better decisions, and so better files in our archive.

·         The knowledge that comes to the intellect is not so much the literal knowledge of letters and numbers, but the deduction and inference that come from it. So, it does not work to know something by heart… It has to touch your heart.

·         Many times we assimilate a knowledge that is incoherent. For instance, your mother can tell you it is bad to tell lies, but she seems satisfied when you lie by telling her friend she is not at home. That creates a form of corruption, and so via reflection, it is very important to clean it up.

·         It is common we have an interesting experience we fully don’t understand. By going after a knowledge that explains that experience in a coherent way, we help our intellect to strengthen or even create another stage of consciousness.

·         Sometimes we have experiences that go against our common knowledge. That may happen with the knowledge we receive from our relatives or religion when we go for work. Reflection and contemplation can help to conciliate experience and knowledge, giving a sense of confidence.

Thoughts of a leader

·         They are based on reflection.

·         A leader’s response is not emotional, but it comes from the depth of their heart.

·         All experiences are good, either because they create pleasure or they teach the leader something different.

·         Every day the leader works on cleaning his or her mind, polishing thoughts and emotions.

·         Whatever the situation is, the leader’s intellect is making the best decisions possible as her or his consciousness is in a very high position.

·         Because the leader’s response is the best, his or her archive also is in optimum state, helping to solve critical scenes in life.