Ultimately, we are a pleasure-seeking species and we want to feel good.
Do you want to feel good?
A wonderfully organised, tidy mind can do that for you! To create order, you have to know what you’re working with. After all, what you are aware of you can control, and what you are not aware of controls you.
My chat with Tracy Ross, professional organiser, made me think about organising the mind, which is a great metaphor to illustrate what the coaching journey is and what Debitching Your Brain™ can do for your sanity and your confidence.
In order to manage your mind you have to be brave and vulnerable enough to pull back the curtain, let the light in, and see what’s going on in all the nooks and crannies. You’ll find out where you’re wasting energy. You’ll discover what you truly believe and leave a tonne of baggage out for the recycling. You’ll understand what your boundaries are, where you’re not holding them – and why. There will no doubt be some surprises along the way, both good and bad. You’ll find out how you’re letting the bitch in your head – call it ego, call it monkey mind – hold you back from living the life you want.
The concept of having a tidy mind versus a chaotic one is wonderful, isn’t it! To find out more about how you can tidy your mind, let’s pretend you have an office and a filing cabinet in your head for all the different types of thoughts you have:
The messy thoughts
These are the ones that tend to be repetitive and drain your energy, like ‘what shall I buy from the supermarket?’ or ‘what should I wear?’. They are really just noise, getting in the way of your clarity. Feel free to pop them in the recycling – they are not urgent and will not be forgotten without the paper reminder.
The neatly filed thoughts
The neatly filed thoughts represent the ones that are buried deep in your subconscious, that have you rooted in your belief system without you even realising. They are your markers for good and bad. These thoughts are what make you choose one thing over another. They’re neatly filed away because we rarely pay them any attention, tending to focus on the needs of others first and doing the things we think we ‘should’ do.
Thoughts for the shredder
These are the ones that are not serving you, and there’s probably a ton of them. Like shredding in the real world, you’ll have stacks of them all over the place and the Imposter Bitch will be a regular feature. They are the root of your ‘I can’t’, ‘I am not good enough’, ‘it’s not fair’ story. Your malleable mind absorbed all this stuff when you were a kid but you are a different person now, and it’s time to move on.
The to-do list
Your thoughts on the to-do list are those that you deem too hard to tackle right now, so as they pop up you disregard them. This is all down to your Procrastination Bitch, who would rather Netflix and chill than be assertive and step into her power.
Thoughts in a dark box that you’re too afraid to open
Those thoughts that make you squirm at the mere thought of opening them – the ones that might drive you to therapy as an adult. The strange, fucked-up, bits of our childhood that really need a professional to tell you ‘don’t worry, you’re not insane/a weirdo/a bad person, you are in fact HUMAN – welcome to the club’. Incidentally, the sooner you address the dark box, the sooner you can own your own story and move on.
You don’t need to keep your old thoughts. They are like old bank statements and old lovers; they have served their purpose. Move on.
If you want to delve into managing your mind check out this week’s solo ep.