Problem solving is something that is familiar to most of us, also boredom and changing our ways of describing difficulties. Living in human bodies we have to be very adaptable and often think on our feet. The lady next to me at watercolour painting today said ‘necessity is the mother of illusion’ I thought that was funny and commented ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. That got me wondering about her belief if it was about illusion and not invention.
Being adaptable in a body takes me various places with my laughter work. I have recently been sharing laughter with two quite different groups, each had about twenty people present. Firstly for the high care residents at Bupa Coburg and then for a team building day for the Cardinia Shire Council.
I enquired the theme for the Council team building day and was told it was ‘problem solving’ which inspired me to contemplate this subject and share with you some ideas and understanding that I have around it.
We have to adapt and be able to solve problems and often these can relate to feeling flat and bored, when we do the same thing or work or else it is simply mundane and not challenging.
Does your mind drive you crazy with thinking? Sometimes it is hard to get it to stop thinking, trying to work things out, go ahead in the future and back in the past. We put things into boxes, people also, so that we are unable to see people or situations anew because of the way that we categorise everything.
The mind works on different levels which I won’t go into in great detail now. Suffice to say, we can be doing things unconsciously with our habit mind and intellectualising with our rational mind and have a higher mind which is more intuitive, where we receive inspirations.
Our mental body is a wonderful servant and it is not good when it runs the show. It can help us to analyse, research, amalgamate things and we need to work with it with our emotions and to plan goals, it is hard to imagine without the various powers that are available to us for our entire existence what our life would be.
Let’s make it simple again. We need to think and I think we can all agree that most of us think too much and wish that we could turn the mind off. Even when we ask it to be quiet it still runs amuck. One lady at the end of the laughter session said that before the laughter yoga session, the back of her head was very tight and after laughing it felt relaxed. Do you agree that we need to do more than think, we need to learn to relax and we can do this by using breathing exercises, meditation and regularly laughing. I feel we need to do all three every day.
I have documents which I will email to you upon request. They are: Circular Breathing which helps one to be more relaxed and grounded in the body. This breathing exercise helps you to be more aware of the state of tension in your body and to slow it down with concentration and focus. Neuroplasticity, which you may have heard of, occurs on a variety of levels, it is when we create new pathways in the brain and laughter yoga helps to do that. The other document is a mindfulness exercise, which helps us to be present and feeling grounded in our physical body. Please email me for any of these documents, which are yours for the asking.
Back to problem solving. People these days are changing the word ‘problem’ to ‘challenge’, which is also now becoming over used. What about if we say that problems create not challenges, instead new opportunities? New opportunities to grow, to do things differently and investigate other ways of doing or implementing things. We have talked here about the tendency of humans to put people and things into boxes. Also that Neuroplasticity helps to create new pathways in the brain. If you Google about people with half a brain you will hear about how the brain can rewire itself. I was fascinated to hear about a woman who was born with half a brain and it is worth Googling. Here is the link to a coverage of Michelle Mack.
Now getting to the subject of this blog, try changing the words problem solving to new opportunities. We can think and think, brainstorm, create mind maps, dialogue, journal, research, create spreadsheets and do all sorts of things.
There is a reason that we reframe the words. When we use some words, they can be negative and are better to be turned around, or reframed into words that will be conducive to creating positive growth and change. Our subconscious mind will do our bidding, does not think or analyse and is automatic, which means that the more that we frame our words, thoughts and feelings into positive ones, the happier we will be and less stressed, creating new opportunities and experiences along the way.
Sometimes things come down to one’s gut feelings and if we are able to be in our heart, because of spending more time sitting quietly in meditation, doing deep breathing, laughing more frequently and whatever else helps us to get there, we can decide and know what to do in an instant. When I studied holistic counselling, it was referred to as the 4 second rule. In a relaxed state to be open to the flash of insight that comes to you.
I believe in reframing the words to opportunities and stretching ourselves, which is how we evolve, learn and improve. The heart really knows, however the challenge is being still enough to receive the impressions that we receive from our heart’s knowing.
A little example of trusting instincts. I am secretary of a not-for-profit business networking group called the Maroondah Business Association. We have been meeting at a particular place for ten years and for about nine months the committee were dissatisfied with the standard of service and lack of communication from the venue hosts. After much looking around, researching and finally analysing the database of members for the locality in which they lived, the committee was going to take longer to decide whether to go to the new venue or not.
What clinched the move to the Wantirna Club was our President saying that sometimes we just have to go by our gut instinct and so we did. It was the right decision, the meeting last Wednesday night was excellent and I firmly believe that somehow when we follow our instincts and knowing, we are far better off than thinking our way through living our lives. Sure we need to use the mind to a large degree only in the long run, it is not the ruler, our heart and whole being can work on developing its intuition and being open to inspirations as they flow through as we go about our lives, in whatever field, whether personal or professional.
Hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to email, phone or add yourself to my monthly newsletter database or ask for the information regarding Circular Breathing, the Mindfulness exercise or Neuroplasticity.
Love and Blessings.
Lynette Mitchell xx oo