Entrepreneurs: Something to NOT think about

What if I asked you to stop thinking and empty your mind?

Most people, especially entrepreneurs and business owners, find it incredibly difficult to “think of nothing”. After all, if you’re not thinking who are you? How will you accomplish anything?

Being able to just exist in a moment without swirling thoughts is called mindfulness, and it means being conscious of where you are in this moment in time without any emotional involvement.

But why is this important? What benefit is there to switching off when it’s all on you to keep things moving and put out fires? If mindfulness seems like an indulgence, it’s a very good indication you’ll find it beneficial!

Quieting our thoughts allows us to realize who we are beyond them. Though it may seem so, we are NOT the constant critic—that chatterbox with an opinion about everything and everyone. WHO we are is that being at rest; the one behind the thought with the capacity to observe ourselves and our own thoughts.

Indulging judgmental thoughts can become habitual. It actually wires your brain to have more of them. Imagine a large marble rolling down a hill, followed by another one, and another, and so on. Eventually a groove will form and it will be difficult to train one of those marbles to take a different path. The negative thoughts will take an express route to your consciousness, and the constant noise, with all the judgment, becomes normal. Like it or not, we are then programmed to zone in on this groove, leading us to reject good ideas, lowering our own and our team’s morale, and using fear as our basis for decision-making.

Think you’ve escaped the judgment trap? Just for fun, next time you’re reading your emails, write down all the thoughts that pop into your mind. Some may be practical ( “Let me put that into my schedule”) but many may be judgments (“How did I let this slip through the cracks?” or “Why hasn’t this been handled already?”). Those judgmental thoughts carry a heavy weight. Not only do they drain our energy, but they reduce the options available to us. We become at one with the judgment and ride the emotional waves they produce, up and down; up and down.

But there’s great news! You can create a new normal; a way of thinking that trains neural connections to bypass this judgment zone and take you to a productive place that doesn’t seem like work at all! YOU have the say over which thoughts dominate your own thinking!

In my teleclass, “Mastering Emotions” we discussed a simple, two-part strategy to remove yourself emotionally from any situation. By developing mindfulness techniques, you will not so much empty your mind, as re-train it. You’ll use the phenomenal power of your own brain to rewire your tendency to indulge in worry, stress, or fretfulness.

One of these practices is to become acutely aware of your critical thoughts and worries. Bringing these to full consciousness is essential as it bears witness to their frailty. You see, our mind can be a torture chamber. Left to its own devices, it falls into that groove I mentioned and terrorizes us over and over again. Take control! Write down all the judgments… the fears. How real are they when brought to the light? What’s another way to view them so as to CREATE energy rather than zap it?

The other trick is to simply focus your thoughts, for as long as you can, on your surroundings. At first you may only be able to focus a couple seconds. That’s perfectly okay! Remember, no judgment. Just observe, and make a mental note of what is around you.

What is the temperature? What sounds do you hear? How is your breathing? What does that plant look like? And instead of evaluating, make completely neutral observations. Try to do this for longer and longer stretches each day.

In this very basic exercise, you will have shifted from an inward to an outward focus, intercepting that marble and knocking it out of the groove. Once your mind is free from that old, habitual pattern, there’s no telling where it will take you!