Snapshot: Will Works has Trouble Sleeping

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 business affairs, he is finding his life increasingly out of control. He senses something amiss. 

Will: I can’t seem to get to sleep. If I do get to sleep, I wake up every two hours. 

Diane: I’m going to take a wild guess; you’re very busy during pretty much all  your waking moments. Is there any down-time?

Will: Sure. I relax.

Diane: How do you relax?

Will: I, uh, I play games, watch a little TV.

Diane: Do you play games on your phone?

Will: Yeah but not too much. I like to work.

Diane: Do you take a lunch break?

Will: Yea.

Diane: What do you do while you eat?

Will: Make phone calls, that’s all.

Diane: And evenings? When do you get home?

Will: I get home at 7:00. We have dinner and I help with the kids.

Diane: What I hear is that, for the most part, all day everyday your Mind System is ‘fielding one ball after another’. You are engaging others and the requirements of your business with flexibility. You rise to the occasion and well meet the demands of your customers tending to administrative matters pretty much as you go. 

And then you are doing your part to help with the household. You’re doing well in most respects. Correct?

Will: Yeah

Diane: Good job but unfortunately, your Mind System is doing it’s best to help you but it gets little or no ‘air time’. As you lay down to sleep and are, for the moment, not ‘fielding balls’, your Mind System seizes the moment to force you to pay attention to ‘it’. What you are seeing as ‘unable to sleep’ is your BFF (Best Friend Forever) working hard to share with you, the fruits of it’s labors on your behalf.

Your Mind System works on your behalf 24/7. It processes every moment of your experience during the course of your day, continuously 1) prioritizing what ‘data’ to keep accessible (you will soon need it), 2) linking new experience to old experience in ways that ensure you benefit from past lessons learned and 3) creatively assembling all of the above to suggest to you solutions to problems that arise.

Your Mind System is your ‘BFF’, your Best Friend Forever and it is demanding your attention.

Working With Your Mind System

Short Run 

When you can’t sleep;

2) When your Mind System experiences significant blocks of air time and therefore ‘knows’ that you are creating space for it’s input, it will not regularly demand your attention when you are trying to sleep.