Our minds need to have regular ‘updates’... just like that phone

IN AMONGST a life that doesn’t look like it did, the normal things still seem to happen – like phone updates. No sooner have I had one then another one pops up on my screen. I’m sure that you can tell, I’m not the least bit irritated by this. I’m completely fine with the fact that in order for them to happen, I need to leave my phone in charge overnight, which is something that I seem to forget to do as soon as an update is required. It then becomes something that I just don’t seem to do, a bit like a teenager being asked to tidy their room, the more my phone reminds me, the more reluctant I am to do it.

Because I’m me, I get curious about this, I love a bit of thinking to spot and reflect on, but with this I found that there was a little bit more learning than I had bargained for. What I saw was that human beings were a lot like phones. Clients come to me with lots of different issues, but often it boils down to a common theme – outdated, historical or habitual thinking that no longer serves them and that gets in the way of them living a life that they want to live, whether that is professional or personal. It was a bit like my phone before it was updated. Its programming was out of date, it no longer worked in an optimal way, and left alone

I wouldn’t be able to use it in the way that I wanted. As apps developed and moved on, my phone would be stuck in the past, no longer compatible with the current technology. Just like when we hold on to outdated thinking, our current life seems hard and difficult to us.

It occurred to me that we need to regularly update our thinking too, let go of these old patterns, beliefs and ideas, but how do we do that? How do we update our out of date historical, often habitual, thinking?

Well we’re not that dissimilar to our phones, the difference is that our update system is already built into our design, whilst it’s so beautiful in its simplicity we often miss it because we expect a more complicated solution.

Often our heads are so busy, they are like a cup that is overflowing, there is simply no space for any new thought to take residence. However, I’m sure that you’ve had the experience of when you’ve stopped, slowed down, your mind clears, things that you were worried about no longer seem to be such a huge problem, you have more perspective, more clarity and even the most gripping of insecure thoughts, don’t seem to be that gripping anymore. It may even be that a solution that you’ve been searching for suddenly comes to mind.

This is the space where we are ‘updating’. It’s a bit like emptying that overflowing cup making room for fresh, new thought to come in. We already have the answer, we just need space for it to come in and quiet for us to listen. We only really have one job, and that’s to recognise when we need to update. It’s easy to get really sucked into the experience that comes along with our heads being full of outdated thinking. However, in my mind, when we feel like that it’s telling us only one thing – we need to stop, slow down and update, and not be like a teenager who’s been asked to tidy their room.