Meet Will Works. Our ‘Will’ works very hard and finds his work downright exhilarating. He enjoys people and the demands of his business require that he engage people often and in very specific ways.
Little does Will know that, given what we now understand about mental processing, he is in effect programming his ‘Mind System’ to seek out more opportunities to work and to seek out more opportunities to engage people in the manner he is increasingly most comfortable with.
This has cost him. He is now bewildered. Although he is successful in his busines affairs, he is finding his life increasingly out of control. He senses something amiss frequently.
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Will: I feel guilty.
Diane: (Silence)
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Will: I completely forgot Tommy was going to T-Ball yesterday. I can't believe I forgot it. I'm so proud of him. Saturday we went to Big Five. I got him a ball and a mitt and he was so excited. I just f'in forgot it.
Diane: it's too bad that happened.
Will: No sh--, Sherlock!
Diane: (Silence)
Will: I'm sorry. (near tears).
Diane: it's OK.
Diane: You've got this pesky little thing I call a Mind System that you have to contend with.
Will: What do you mean?
Diane: Your Mind System has it's own kind of independence. It works behind the scenes to help you. For the most part it's working wonderfully.
Will: Oh Yeah, right (sarcasm).
Diane: Consider what you ask of it every day. Remember, it is working with you to keep the information that it thinks you will most likely need at your fingertips. Most of the time, it does it does indeed 'kick up' what you need. Just think of how many times it does that for you very well. It prioritizes what you tend to most frequently. As I recall, your working a lot of hours these days.
Your Mind System must tap it's own experience of what you do to calculate and determine your priorities. It counts what you do and how often you do it, not what you say what you want to do.
Will: So, because I work a lot I'm not going to be there for Tommy?
Diane: That could happen. It often does.
Will: I can count the number of times my Dad came to one of my games on one hand.
Diane: You missed this game. You certainly needn’t miss games in the future. If you are aware that your Mind System is doing its best to help you ALWAYS, you can work with it and help it do it's job.
Will: How? I'm really blowing it here.
Diane: For starters stop beating yourself up for how your Mind System works. You can never work well with your Mind System if you do that.
Short Run
1. Simply note, how frequently your Mind System well serves you. You will find there are too many times to count. The number will quickly run into the millions.
2. Value the efforts of your Mind System. It is you BFF
3. Note that, given how you spend your time for the most part, it will be primed to serve you well in those contexts, perhaps not so well in other contexts.
4. If some occasion or event is an odd case during the course of a given week, take extra care to give yourself cues. I use my IPAD alerts for 2 days in advance of an event if I'm likely to forget it. Then I edit the event to give myself 2 hour and 1 hour before alerts and then I edit again to give myself 30 minutes before alerts. This is all because I do care and I am aware that my Mind System might be assigning it's own priorities.
Long Run
As your Mind System experiences your respect for it, it thrives. Don't ask me how this works but it's true. It senses something qualitative about your relationship to it. It thrives and better serves you if your relationship with it is positive.
As you learn more about how any system works you can work better with it. You can better maintain it and better exploit the capacities it possesses to thrive and better serve you.
Written by Diane Kern, Owner of Phenomenal Mind Studios. Phenomenal Mind Studios is dedicated to a celebration of Mind. Cutting edge science in-forms a revolutionary conception of Mind. Classes are offered to teach the new science. Simple tools are provided to help folks quickly better understand Mind as an information management system and exploit its wherewithal. Six week series, Power Up Your Mind Basic begins this Thursday evening, September 19th, 6:00-7:00 PM at the Elks Club in Walnut Creek, 1475 Creekside Dr., 94596. First class $50. Six week series $300.
