You don't have to power-think your way through a challenge
Image: Sally Anne Carroll
By ignoring information in your environment, you miss important cues that are key to solving problems. — Tina Seelig, InGenius
For all of this year, I’ve been immersed in learning to pay closer attention to all of the various ways that my mind, body and intuition are taking in and offering up information. It’s been an incredibly rich exploration for me personally and dovetails perfectly with how I like to coach.
Bringing in deepening layers of experience — tapping into body wisdom, brain science, intuitive knowing, environmental cues — creates openings for new information to surface, and it provides more authentic and effective ways of solving challenges, making big decisions and dreaming into what’s next.
What’s clear is this: attention creates innovation. It drives change. And it can be a superpower for getting us unstuck.
When we’re actively observant (and not just in our heads), we see, hear and sense things that would be easy to miss. Paying new attention to the world around us can help us find new solutions to old problems and uncover ideas we hadn't thought before. It can surprise us.
Paying attention to the world within unlocks awareness of how we may be interpreting our challenges, what’s shaping our decision-making, how we are showing up or not showing up for our daily joys and challenges.
(Spoiler alert: All of this may also feel a bit uncomfortable at times, like training new muscles.)
This is why I am paying a lot of attention lately.
One of the ways I tend to "see" is to carry a camera with me. It’s a habit I’ve had for decades but it comes and goes in practice. It always delivers interesting experiences, though, because the lens provides a different perspective. I see different things. It allows me to be present in a more concentrated way.
The photo above is a good reminder of this. It came about on a past vacation when I was scanning the environment through my lens on my way to dinner, instead of the usual walking in idle conversation with eyes forward. In the grass, I spotted this furry little friend (hello, wombat!) having his own dinner. I would have missed this wildlife moment completely without the different lens.
It's all right there in front of us: how we feel, what we perceive around us, what our body is doing, what our mind is occupied with, what we did — or didn't do — today, what patterns are emerging in our environment, what we are seeing and what we're not.
When it comes to how we live and work on a daily basis, using simple mindfulness practices, tuning into the cues that our physical body is both sending and picking up is a powerful practice to cultivate. It’s like turning on a flow of new and multilayered information.
If you need to get unstuck, try bringing the whole of your intelligences online.
Paying attention helps us to make connections where we had not seen them before. Paying attention to ourselves, doing a little observation and open investigation with compassion, is one of the best ways I know to continually find more clarity. It’s essential before making any key decisions.
When we have more data to work with, the layers and patterns are so much easier to see and understand.
To focus your investigation, consider using this simple frame: Integrity > Needs > Wants. Basically, this means that when faced with decisions or when looking at what’s next, the best place to start is with the things that will keep you plugged into your integrity and authenticity. When you do the thing that keeps you true to yourself, you get more meaningful results. We all know integrity when we see it, and deep down, we know when we’re not there, too.
In my experience, paying attention to integrity comes down to a mix of what you value, what your strengths are, your personality makeup, your past influences (and the meaning you make of them) and what you see as your priorities or nonegotiables. When you tune into to these essentials, listening to what all of your multiple intelligences have to say, you have a lot of solid ground on which to build. If not, it’s a clear starting point.
You can also bring in your core needs. We all have them, and whether we like to admit it or not, until we decide to pay attention to them, they can be like the man behind the curtain, running part of the show. By paying close attention, we can also learn how to set things up for ourselves so that we effectively meet those needs, whatever they may be. When you pay close attention to what you need, you can eliminate a whole lot of unneeded stress and distraction.
How you’re currently meeting your needs is an excellent place to start when you feel unfulfilled, approaching burnout or even challenged by which path to take. Your body/brain will have a lot of information to share on this topic. Listen carefully and often.
When you’ve done this work, what you want tends to feel more aligned and shinier objects seem less attractive.
Of course, knowing what you truly want is important. A personal vision of where you're headed is motivating and pulls you naturally forward. It provides both purpose and benchmarks. When you’ve paid close attention to where your integrity is at the moment and whether your needs are being met, you're often halfway there. You’re more enabled to see more clearly where you already have what you want, how it fits into the whole, and you’re in a far improved position to naturally want more of (and build strategies around) what feels really right for you.
That’s the art of learning to pay attention to all of our multiple intelligences as well as to the environments we're operating within. Uncovering what you need to know about you is one big key to reducing stress and making smart decisions about where you’re headed and what opportunities you will seek out or create next (and what you let pass you by). Paying attention helps bring expansiveness and possibility— and self-knowing— to your next steps.
Try it. Instead of wrestling with a problem or a stuck place and trying to power-think your way through it, bring all of your senses to bear. What do you notice? What is your body experiencing? What are you intuiting on a “just know to be true” level? It may take a few times before your information reveals itself, so take time and come back to it a few times. Get creative with customized practices to support your awareness.
The more you make space to tune in, the more you’ll notice. This is not a quick fix, although sometimes, paying attention can offer up very quick data.
I'd love to hear what happens when you pay closer attention with all of your multiple intelligences. And if you’d like to work on this with a coach, I’d be delighted to support you.
