How To Have A Quiet Mind

Once upon a time I had a very, very, very busy mind. Replaying the past. Trying to predict the ‘right’ future that would give me everything I desired. Working everything out. Being afraid of things that hadn’t happened yet. Imagining futures that can never be… you name it, I did it with my head!
It was so busy in my sweet little head that I was doing almost nothing except thinking. Which was wonderful when I inhabited the world of thinking with all the other thinkers. I fitted in just fine! Until the day when the rest of my body also desired to have a say in my life.
“Oh? What do you mean I have a heart? Arms? Legs? More energy than I know what to do with? What??? When did that all show up? Was I blind? What now?”
It was more than a rude awakening! It was a catalyst for changing almost everything in my life. And I’m beyond grateful. Being a headtripper meant I was missing out on SO much of life!
I went through the first 25 years of my adult life thinking I had everything… not knowing there were these other playgrounds beyond the mind that would make *everything* way more fun!
Favouring my head made the rest of me almost dead.
When I was almost 40 that created burnout on a scale that I didn’t know existed. For the first time in my life I was incoherent, speechless, unable to make simple decisions. I temporarily became dead in the head! Which left me like a stranger in a strange land. I didn’t know who I was, what I was, how to create, or even how to move forward with my life. Over-thinking killed everything I thought was me and opened the doors to so much more.
I knew I thought too much. I’d been trying to change it for years. I’d tried 7 years of meditation, three times a day. I’d tried scheduling my time so I wouldn’t think so much outside of work. I’d tried standing in the shower for an hour or two at a time (it worked great, but you don’t get to have much of a life!)
I experimented with yoga, being mindful, focusing on other things (which ended up just being a different brand of thinking). None of it gave me the peace I was seeking. None of it gave me the joy of blissing out and not worrying about any and every tiny little thing!
MIND. BE. QUIET!
After many crazy experiments, I discovered about three things that work wonderfully for me and most people. The choice that is accessible everywhere and with everyone is the joy of PLAY.
When you watch little kids play, are they thinking too much? Or are they totally present in the moment? Are they working out what they are going to do next? Or are they leaping joyfully into the next choice, without trying to get it right… You can’t play and judge. It’s a magical space for being creative.
We learn to think once we start school. Up until then it’s all about pirate adventures, mud-pies and creative magic. Once school starts we have to start learning to be an adult. And doesn’t that suck! All of a sudden fairy visits take a back seat to multiplication tables and learning to write. You learn logic, rather than going with the whimsical awareness that you had been using very happily.
You get told what creativity ‘should’ be like or look like, rather than expressing your creative brilliance in your uniquely beautiful ways… you weren’t born boring. But someone along the way told you your mind was the only valuable expression of you. What if that is simply not true?
How else could you express your creative brilliance? Would you be willing to play like kids do? Even when you are at work? Even in the most serious of circumstances?
There are things you desire to have in your life. I know this because you’re not dead yet. What are they? How could you use PLAY to invite them into your day? Have you noticed you can’t think things into existence. But you can play them into existence and daydream them into existence too!
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY?
Most people I meet tell me they don’t know how to play. If this is you, here’s how you start. And it’s mostly not a ‘how’. It’s a choice to act different to what you normally would.
1. Go hangout anywhere there are small kids or animals (seven or younger) or find a Youtube video where kids are just being kids. Watch how they play together. Embrace the fun energies you observe.
2. Seek the most frivolous ways of creating whatever it is you are playing with. “If I was playing with this, what would I choose right away?” is a great question to ask.
3. Be joyful. Be generous. Be curious. Be magic. Be extreme. Be delighted and delightful.
The only way to remember how to play is to start. And to keep expanding this energy in your life. Hangout with playful people. Go to the beach when you ‘should’ be working. Play tug-of-war with a puppy. See everything in the world as if this is the first time. What are you aware of? (Besides how serious everyone is…)
*** Coming Soon *** Living Beyond Burnout — the book. Let me know in the comments what you would most love to know about preventing or transforming burnout! More at www.CreativeAlchemi.com
