Happy New Year

This was sunrise this morning at my mother’s home in Berkshire, and I raced upstairs to capture it out of the window. Having been pondering a New Year nudge, it immediately made me think of a fresh, new day in this brand New Year, and spurred me on to write. I hope you’ve had a good first week of 2024.

Thought is great…thinking is overrated

This thought has been playing around my edges this week as I’ve wondered what might be helpful to share.

As you’ll know from previous nudges (if you’ve been around for a while) I see Thought as a wonderful tool that helps us all to navigate life. Its very nature is neutral, ever changing and transitory, and will come and go unless our personal thinking breathes life into it…or gives one thought a particular meaning over another. Thus it can be used for or against ourselves, and when it’s the latter it can be less than helpful.

And I’m talking about when our thinking takes us off down rabbit holes of overthinking situations, or endless back and forths of problem solving, or making decisions, which can so often end up with increasing worry, anxiety and stress levels. And once we’re on those stirred up trains of thought we can quickly find ourselves going in the wrong direction.

Give the train to stirred up thoughts a miss

So how to stop all that this year. My message is simple (albeit not so simple to always put into practice…) give the train to stirred up thoughts a miss. Just like we can choose a train to a place where we’d like to go – the destination – and where we might get off en route. The train will pass through many thought stations, some we might want to jump off at and spend some time and others we don’t fancy, but it’s up to us to decide to jump off or not. And even if we do get off and find out we don’t like it, we can always take a different connection, or get on a new thought train.

Feeling vs thinking your way this year

Journeys used to feel so much easier when I knew where I was going, and I used to be a past master at needing to know! But these days, it’s so much nicer to simply head in the direction of what I feel like and then see what shows up. Take a step and then see what next step is revealed as I go. Trusting how I feel, rather than think, to guide me.

As I’ve shared in previous nudges, I’ve learnt we all have a natural, inbuilt guidance system that’s constantly on. That feeling of knowing, clarity, innate wisdom coming in real time, when our next step is just obvious. Living from that feeling rather than noisy, stressful thinking is way more preferable – not to mention reliable even if we can’t exactly control when we’ll know!

And you’ll know the difference between knowing and thinking you know by the way it feels. The latter tends to feel tight and constricted where the former feels spacious, enlivening and just right!

I hope you’ll tune more into your ‘knowing’ signal, inner GPS, this year, while enjoying the gift of Thought for what it is.

Until the next time, wishing you (and the world…) a more peaceful, gentle and joyful New Year.

All the very best for now

Tamsin

If you want to ‘live more in your life and less in your thoughts’ this year then I share more in my Living in the Flow mini series. Just click on the link and you’ll receive a short nudge over the next 7 days. See it as your quiet moment of reflection to start off your day, help keep you on track, and off the train to stirred up thoughts!

It’s been a while again since my last nudge, and I hope you’re keeping well. I don’t know about you, but, in these current times, I have found myself craving quieter moments, and am ever conscious and grateful for the freedoms available to me, which sadly, so many others in our world do not experience.

This nudge has been percolating for a while now as I notice more and more how hard it seems for people to listen to one another.

Habitual vs quieter listening

We all have habitual ways of listening, me too, and it was a revelation for me to learn I was not as good a listener as I thought! The following are some of those habitual ways:

listening to evaluate

I used to think it was an important part of my work to listen to evaluate…to analyse what a person said and then advise on strategies or techniques, or ‘how tos’ that would help the person to take action on whatever they wanted to change or was keeping them stuck.

Similarly, in my personal life often listening resulted in my own internal conversation going on at the same time: whether I agreed/disagreed with them, making assumptions and judgements on what they were saying, having critical thoughts or sharing ‘I know just how you feel’ similar stories!

listening for information

Intently listening for information, to take notes, to research and memorise what is being said. Absolutely fine as part of a learning process, but less useful when wanting to connect with people at a deeper level.

listening when distracted

Boy do I see this everywhere! What I call half listening when people are seemingly listening to you, but busy doing something else at the same time! Or they are preoccupied with what’s going on in their own heads…easily spotted as they tend to interrupt more, try to finish your sentences, or are in a hurry for you to finish or change the subject.

listening to diagnose

As a coach, I do not diagnose, but in the field of mental health listening to diagnose is common place. For me, I’ve come to see there’s a huge difference between listening to diagnose, based on a premise that people need fixing in some way, and listening for mental health…seeing that all people have an innate wellbeing and wisdom inside them, and pointing them in that direction, which allows the space for their own fresh thinking and insights to occur.

listening through our own filters

This is a biggie! And so often sub consciously happening whether we know it or not. Similar to listening to evaluate, conditioned patterns of thinking and habitual beliefs and values can hinder us from seeing another person as they really are. Rather, we see them through our own ideas of who we ‘think’ they are, sometimes long held and unquestioned. It is fascinating to scrub all that and meet someone afresh…believe me, I’ve seen miraculous things happen as a result!

Listening with nothing on our minds

I’ve come to see there is a different way to listen. It involves getting quiet enough to drop out of our own, often busy, thinking, and listen with nothing on our minds…to listen with ‘both ears’ as I heard it put recently.

In my own experience, I cannot over estimate the benefits of this kind of listening. It leads to a greater understanding and appreciation of the other person’s world. We get to connect at a much deeper level…heart to heart as the phrase goes…and we all know how it feels to be heard and understood in this way.

And ultimately it can help lead to a shift in consciousness that goodness the world needs to see more of at the moment…..

Being present as the route to better listening

As I’m often sharing, we’re either living in our life, present to what shows up in any moment, or we’re living in our thoughts. The more present I am when listening to someone, the greater the feeling of connection and understanding. From that space, of feeling truly heard and understood, the other person naturally gets their own new perspectives and fresh insights, which is an incredibly helpful and hopeful way to live.

Listening to yourself

A wonderful by product of noticing how you tend to listen, and choosing to listen differently, is that you can also start listening to yourself the way you’d like others to listen to you.

So, what do you think your habitual way of listening is, what rings true for you, and how might you choose now to listen differently? As always, I’d love to hear what you notice!

And, as one of my older mentors says, ‘everyone could do with a damn good listening to‘, and if that appeals to you, then do get in touch.

Until the next time, all the very best for now.

Tamsin

PS If other people spring to mind as you read through these different ways of listening, then do feel free to pass this nudge along to them! 😉

I received some really insightful thoughts and comments on my last nudge ‘What Makes a Problem a Problem‘. So interesting that we all come from our own unique perspective when considering this question, which, for me, only serves to underline how much we live in our own separate, thought created realities.

No one reality

I remember well the day I truly saw that there is no one reality out there that we’re all responding to during one of my coach trainings many moons ago. Up until then I just assumed if certain situations or circumstances arose that we all experienced them in a similar way. Of course with our own unique flavour, but very much from a belief, or ‘given’, that certain things were definitely a problem…such as being short of money, or having a relationship breakdown, or a health issue.

As one of my readers commented:

“One person’s problem can be another person’s non-issue. There is sometimes an action to take to nudge it along, but it’s amazing how much naturally sorts itself even if it’s not to everyone’s original design.“

And that’s been very much my experience too.

Where do you spend your time?

This got me thinking about another question I often ask in my work: where do you spend your time?

I’m not talking about where you physically spend your day to day life, but where you tend to spend most of your time mentally.

As the strapline says on my nudgeme website, we’re either living in our life or living in our thoughts, and the extent to which we spend time in either dictates the quality of our lives.

Missing from the moment

Put simply I’ve come to see that the more we find ourselves caught up in our thinking – and I should say innocently so, it’s not something we can control – the more we wind up ‘missing from the moment’.

For instance, have you ever taken a walk to clear your head, but found that by the time you got home you haven’t really been in the moment, in the present, aware of your surroundings? Then at another time, you’ve been more relaxed, in a better state of mind and spotted all kinds of things you didn’t notice previously. Nothing has changed about the walk, it’s just with a clearer head, less on your mind you’ve had a completely different experience.

Life is kinder than our imagination

As the comment above suggests ‘it’s amazing how much naturally sorts itself’ when we leave our thinking alone. I’ve come to see that if an answer to something is needed it’s more likely to come when your mind settles down vs going back and forth with imagined future scenarios. And it’s from that quieter state of mind that the thoughts can feel very different. Those out of the blue ones that just feel fresh and new and just right for the situation at hand.

I’m not saying that using our intellect can’t be helpful, but you’ll always know when it’s less so by the way it feels. When you start to feel stressed, or anxious or finding it hard to sleep or however this manifests for you, that’s the signal to leave your thinking alone as best you can. Trust that something will come to you from a calmer state of mind.

Kindness in our design

As I always say, please don’t take my word for it, test it out for yourself.

I now see that there’s kindness in our design, and that uncomfortable feelings are a useful guide, letting us know when we’re getting too caught up in our thinking. And nothing needs to change on the outside for that to happen, which makes for a much easier and nicer way to live.

So where do you spend your time? If it tends to be more in your thoughts, and you’re currently grappling with something, or feeling stressed, I hope you find this nudge helpful. And, as always, I’d love to hear from you.

Until the next time, have a good rest of your day, and all the very best for now.

Tamsin

I was thinking this morning how it’s been a while since I sent a nudge, and I thought what might be helpful to share in the current times.

I was looking though some previous nudges, and came across the following one on ‘what makes a problem a problem?’ I shared it back in 2018, and yet it feels more pertinent than ever today.

If I had a postscript it would be that I’ve put what I share below to the test again, and again and again, and, for me, it just rings even more true.

But please don’t take my word for it, test it out for yourself and see what occurs to you!

Problem solving can make things worse

For someone who has spent a lifetime believing that it helps to problem solve, that was a huge realisation when I realised that it often just caused me to get way more caught up in my thinking and further away from coming up with solutions.

I used to see it as an important part of my work, helping people to consider the issues and problems they were having, and then come up with a plan or strategy to help get them unstuck.

And sometimes it worked – or at least worked for a while, until another problem would present itself and the conversation to problem solve would start again!

Living less in your thoughts = less stress

Since coming across the understanding of how we create our experience, I now see problems very differently. I see that there’s the event, circumstance or situation that occurs, and then there’s all my thinking and speculating about them.

The more I’ve learned to live less in my thoughts, the easier it’s been to drop all that thinking. And in doing so, find that the answers inevitably present themselves. Often something I couldn’t possibly have imagined, or problem solved, occurs, and whatever seemed like a major problem at the time worked out in hindsight. It makes for a much less stressful way to live.

Newsflash…

So, my sister just happened to call while I was writing this, and we chatted through the idea that problems are illusory. In her inimitable way, she paused and said “Tam, that’s all well and good and I kind of get it, but I’ve been learning about this understanding about thought for a good while now, and even I don’t see that one…of course a problem is a problem!!” She went on to give this example. “If I’ve got to find money by the end of the week that I don’t have, that’s a fact it’s not something I made up. Any one of us will have experienced all kinds of problems today, and reading that they are illusory would quite frankly p*** me off so it could be the people who read this might feel the same way!” Needless to say, we chatted some more, the essence of which I hope I’ve now captured below.

Just seeing the transitory nature of thought is enough

For me, the fact that I’ve come to understand the transitory nature of thought, and that how much of a problem I make something is down to my own thinking, has completely changed how I approach all ‘problems’. Just seeing that it is my own thoughts that first create what is and isn’t a problem, and then all the next level of thinking about how I’m going to respond to that – which is also only more thought – is usually enough to give me a buffer before the ifs, buts and maybes take me in an unhelpful direction! These days, that gives me just the nudge I need to more easily catch myself before generating more perceived problems about the illusory problem!

All that said, of course I’m only human so does this always work? No, far from it! But just seeing that both the problem and my thoughts about it can only ever come from my own thinking, gives me a chance to pause. And it’s in that space between the busy thoughts that more creative thinking naturally flows in if I let it. Seeing that’s how we work is what has caused me to have more confidence, and trust that something will come to mind, that fresh thought will come in and provide answers I can’t yet see!

I’d love to know what this brings up for you. And if you have any examples of where you’ve seen that life has a habit of working out in retrospect, would be great to hear them.

That’s your nudge for today! Have a great rest of your day/evening.

All the best

Tamsin

PS This is the type of conversation I’m having with people in my work now. Moving away from helping people to problem solve to pointing them in a different direction of how our experience is created in the first place. It makes for some wonderful conversations and insights that no amount of problem solving ever did! So if you’re experiencing ‘problems’ in life at the minute, I nudge you to consider having a different conversation, and just see what new perspectives might occur for you as a result.