Exhausting Thinking vs Quality Thinking [mind management]
It was 9:30 am and I needed a break.
I was already tired and yet… I haven’t done anything yet. Except for lots of thinking.
I know that the brain takes 20% of our whole energy, when working hard, but I was so mentally tired I really needed to take a look at WHAT was I thinking about.
The quality of the questions
This is when I noticed:
- I asked myself a lot of questions, that started from” what if”, “Shouldn’t she…?”
- I tried to resolve someone else’s problem.
- It was not my job at all to fix it. Meaning: I neither was hired to do this, nor I was in a position to fix the problem.
- I wanted to fix the past. Someone else’s past. I wanted someone make a different decision in the past to avoid the current problem.
Since we neither can fix the past, nor make decisions for others, not to mention make them in the past, no wonder I was getting tired. But most importantly:
The brain will always go to work, to find answers, if it hears a question. Useless questions make our thoughts spin and exhaust our energy.
For me, that morning, this path of thinking was a dead end and a clear reminder that:
The quality of our questions we ask, determines the quality of the answers we receive.
…no matter if the answers are coming from someone else or from our own mind.
Actually, we can learn this based on our inner dialogue.
Examples:
You probably experienced this yourself: what is the ANSWER you get from your own mind when you ask “Why can’t I lose weight?” And what answer do you get when you ask “How can I eat this week, to lose one pound?”
What ANSWER are you getting when you ask yourself : “What’s wrong with me, that I always start and never finish??” And what is the answer when you ask “What are the specific steps I need to take, to finish this project today, and be content with it?”
Can you feel and hear the difference?
Journal your way to better questions
One way to learn asking yourself better questions is to journal. I love morning journaling, though it could be difficult to fit into the schedule for some. If I find myself feeling frustrated, it’s usually because there are unmanaged thoughts running in my mind. Some of them – are the exhausting, low quality questions, that will never bring about anything useful. When I know how to ask myself a high quality question – I feel better and i do better that day.
Another way of getting high quality answers from your brain is to get coached. Coaches are trained to ask the right questions – and for us the clients – that means accessing clarity. Faster.