By Tom Lancaster
They say a change is as good as a rest, and in the next few minutes I’m going to do my best to explain why I believe that to be true. How a change of context can lead to both inspiration and transformation. How a step into the unknown might just be the best thing you can do for your business, your relationships, and your mental health.
The actual science is a bit sketchy in my opinion, but it is estimated that we have between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day, and that 95% of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts we had yesterday. So is it any wonder, then, that so many of us feel like we are stuck in groundhog day, dealing with the same set of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and problems, day in, day out?
So how does this play out? Dr. Joe Dispenza explains it like this. If we think the same thoughts, we make the same choices. The same choices lead to the same actions and behaviours, which lead to the same set of experiences, which lead to the same feelings, which cycles us back to the same thoughts. Think about it. you wake up on the same side of the same bed, you walk 12 steps to the bathroom, brush your teeth with the same toothbrush in the same way using the same hand, you make your coffee, you do your meditation, you get in your car that’s parked in the same spot, drive the same route to work, sit at the same desk, have the same conversation with the same people…You are like the needle on a scratched record, constantly playing the same three lines of the same song.
Do what you did yesterday, get what you got yesterday
Something I have noticed both in myself and my clients is a tendency to wait for the situation to change before we take action. We want to go to the gym regularly, but this isn’t the morning to start. We’re not happy in our relationship, but it’s never the right time to say anything. We want to make more money, but we don’t want to change anything that we are doing or risk the money we are already making.
I have always been TERRIBLE with money. Money in has always equalled money out, paycheck to paycheck, feast and famine, all that jazz. And for years I celebrated a big paycheck with fancy dinners, new stuff, big nights out…and then suddenly the money is gone and I haven’t earned any more, so I’m back to baked beans and fear of not being able to pay rent.
So this year, I decided to do something different. I decided to celebrate the windfall not with fancy dinners, but by handing over a large chunk of that windfall to a financial coach. Usually you’ll hear me talking about adventures in the wilderness, but this was a step into the unknown for me. A new frontier. It hasn’t been an entirely comfortable journey, but it has certainly created new thoughts, and therefore new behaviours, and new feelings around money. I now have a system in place to ensure that expenses are covered, bills are paid, and there’s some left over at the end of the month. I have a vision for what my financial future looks like.
This is what any adventure does for us. In this case the change of context was bringing someone in with the expertise required to change my thinking. But you don’t always need to spend thousands of dollars.
Michael Neill talks about urgency as an indication that you need to slow down. The more urgent a situation feels, the more time off you need, because that urgency is entirely created by your thinking. The same thinking you had yesterday. The deadline is looming, but you are spinning your wheels, unable to concentrate, unable to focus, unable to make any forward progress. So often we try and think our way out of these situations, which does nothing but speed up the loop, making us more anxious, more worried, and less productive.
So the more frantic you feel, the more you need to step away. Something as simple as a walk around the block can be all it takes to create the space for a new thought to come in. A ten minute meditation. A cup of tea with a colleague where work-talk is off the table. Even more powerful that that is to take an entire day away from your emails and schedules. We talk with a lot of our clients about ‘Black Days’. A Black Day is a day with no meetings, no clients, no emails. A day to get out into the wilderness and get the body moving. To experience the beauty of nature. To allow your creativity to breathe. Every one of our clients who uses these Black Days says they are the most productive days of the week. We agree. We get more done, we move the needle more AND we come back to work with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.
One of the things about problem solving is that the subconscious mind is much better at it than the conscious mind. When you’re faced with a problem that you can’t think your way out of, and you decide to meditate or go for a walk or take the day/week off, finally your subconscious is free to get to work. I know you know what I mean. I know you have solved problems in the shower, on a bike ride, while skiing down a mountain. We all have. And yet still we sit staring at our computer screens pulling our hair out trying to force a solution.
So my invitation to you is to change the damn record. Wherever you feel stuck, in your relationship, in your business, in your life, how can you change your context? Even if you don’t feel stuck, what magical ideas might arise if you allow them the space to bubble up? What possibilities might arise if you go on an adventure, even a little one?