How Our Irrelevant Thinking Makes us Mindless
A few years ago, an evening flight reminded me of an important lesson.
As is so often the case on evening flights, my flight was delayed. I was fatigued, and I still had a long drive home after my flight. The best way to pass the time was to find a relatively empty gate and take a nap.
I found a quiet place. As I sat down and picked up my tablet to check my email, a woman about forty years old sat down just a seat or two away. She, too, was looking for a quiet space—but not to nap. She was calling a girlfriend to talk about her latest boyfriend. How curious with all the empty space surrounding us she was sitting next to me.
My quiet spot was no longer silent. What should I do? Should I move? I needed to rest, but I restlessly listened to her conversation while checking my email. Her conversation continued, loud enough for me to hear. I was tired and disappointed, but then the questions came to me, Why was I treating her talk as if it were relevant to me? Isn’t my need for rest more important? Seconds after those questions arose, I fell into a deep sleep.
Having decided her conversation was no longer relevant to me, I no longer heard the noise.
I awoke about a half-hour later, head drooping but feeling refreshed.
A few years later, after that airport incident, I’m still learning that same recurring lesson. From the comfort of my home, my head can be filled with noise that is not relevant to me.
How much respect I pay to that chatter determines the quality of my day. What difference is there, in truth, between irrelevant external chatter and irrelevant internal chatter?
Too much of my thinking involves thoughts of low-grade thoughts of irritation. “Idle” thoughts have consequences.
The ego part of our mind values conflict. Our inner stories of conflict allow us to be the heroic victims. My story that night could have been how an inconsiderate person stopped me from getting needed sleep and how I, the “hero,” persevered anyway. Blah, blah. I may have been right, but I would have won the booby prize.
That night my conflict was resolved by changing my mind about what thoughts were relevant.
Admittedly, not all conflicts are so quickly resolved. Yet, in many disputes, our internal chatter, unnecessary judgments about someone else’s motives, etc., are unnecessary and impede a solution.
That night at the airport, from the chatter's viewpoint, there seemed to be only two choices, go storming off or be annoyed. There was another solution that goodness provided.
Our inner noise's goal is to convince us we don’t have a mind that can make another choice. Our ego’s goal is to make us mindless so that we only attend to our ego’s voice.
If we choose to believe in mindlessness, our ego’s voice, that’s on us. We don’t have to believe that voice. That voice is not who we really are.
Sometime today, tune in today low buzz of irritation, complaining, opinions, etc., running through your mind. Are you identifying with this chatter? Are you trying to resist the chatter? Are you trying to numb the chatter with habitual behaviors?
What do you have to believe to be true to make more of your thinking irrelevant?
What possible goodness is your chatter keeping from you at this moment?
Allowing irrelevant thoughts to pass harmlessly through your mind as clouds pass through the sky slows the velocity of your thinking. As your thinking slows, goodness takes center stage. That night at the airport, the highest need goodness could deliver was that I got some sleep. Other times it might mean I stop procrastinating on a needed task, or I reach out to others with kindness and compassion.
If you can observe the chatter, you can’t be the chatterer.
Your ego wants you to remain mindless by blaming others and circumstances for your failure to exercise your power of choice.
Who you truly are is what remains when the chatter is gone. Make space and peace, and love will fill the void.
___
If these ideas are intriguing, you may find my book The Inner-Work of Leadership to be a valuable resource. The Kindle edition is only $3.99.