Thinking Slow And Thinking Fast

When we have racing thoughts, it can look like we need to slow them down. Yet another thing to manage. But when you see that your racing thoughts are being managed by yet more racing thoughts, that makes less and less sense.

When you come from a place of awareness without judgment, your psychological immune system comes into play and things naturally reset. There's nothing much to do. Join me as I explore this topic from a new

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A transformational life coach.

I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today's episode is called Thinking Slow and Thinking Fast and it's come from me noticing really with more than one client that there is a keenness to slow down the thinking.

I think it almost goes through more than one phase really in that I think there's a phase of life which I remember,

I don't remember really being in it,

When I was in it I don't really remember what it was like but I clearly had very very fast thinking.

I still think quite fast but in a very different way like I'm quite sharp witted and fast thinking and find solutions quite close to things but that's not the kind of fast thinking we're talking about so I'm not talking here about your ability to do things well and think quickly that way.

What I'm talking about is when we're very sped up and we're overthinking is another way that people might call it.

So there's a phase isn't there where we've no idea that our fast thinking is one of the problems that we have because I think when we're fully in the outside in idea about how life works,

The outside in paradigm we believe the world works outside in it looks like that the agitated stressy horrible feelings in our body are coming from the outside world and if the outside world just stopped being so ridiculous and the other people in it stopped being so ridiculous we would be okay.

So I think when I had I know I had racing thoughts,

Very fast thinking when I was burning out or and probably for many many years before before that when I was stressed most of the time because I guess my head was never in the present moment because when you're in the present moment there's there's a lot less to think about isn't there because there's just what is now and most of that racing thinking is past and future thinking making up stories about people and their behaviour,

Shuddifying ourselves which we'll talk a little bit more about in this session I think.

So there's that phase when we've no awareness that our thinking,

Our fast thinking is the problem.

We think it's everything else and something else or maybe we do think it's something wrong with us but what happens when we start to become aware that you know all our human experience that the good bits and the suffering bits are created by our thinking we maybe want to start changing that.

So I speak to an awful lot of people who who are both people who are struggling and people who are trying to help people who are struggling who think it's a thing to guide people towards changing their thinking for better thinking which just doesn't work it just doesn't you you can't change your thinking you can you can focus your attention better or in a different direction perhaps better is not the right word but you can't change your thinking but the other thing that people really want to do is slow down their thinking and there are many many ways that you can do that so clearly meditation is probably the most popular one at the moment.

Mindfulness activities people will do things like going for a walk I know lots of people who do things like running in order to almost like by speeding up the body the mind slows down not sure how that works but anyway people do run don't know who are feeling who've got you know fast thinking they will go running.

So and then I think what happens is once we've kind of got a two-hole technique that seems to work for us we start to experience that slower thinking and we go into that comparison so we start to prefer thinking slowly against thinking fast so then it looks like that's a thing to manage all the time now I'm not saying don't meditate I never say that I say do what you what makes sense to you but here's something that I said to somebody the other day and it's the first time I've really said it like this and it was I said this this person I was communicating with was saying I had sped up thinking and she kind of said I've been trying to slow it down now who's the I trying to slow down the thinking because to me they're one and the same so what I said was the trouble with trying to slow down your thinking is the the thing you're using to slow down your thinking is your thinking and as your thinking can't be at two different paces it's all fast so then you've got more fast thinking because actually your thinking isn't really fast it's just there's lots of it coming close together I heard Rudy one of my teachers once say that when you're thinking feels slower it's I guess it's because there's a thought and a full stop and a thought and a full stop and when it's fast it's thought comma thought comma thought common there's not there might not even be any commas really just be thought for for for there might be the odd comma but it's that it's it's the quantity really which makes it feel fast but it's seeing that your thinking is trying to deal with your thinking now to me now that seems like trying to do your own brain surgery which I understand is inadvisable even if you are an actual brain surgeon I hope my brain surgeon if I ever need from this very calm enough I don't know why that popped into my head but um but you know it it's doing something with the something doing something to something with the same something that you so it's trying to fix something with the thing that's that you're seeing is broken so just sit with that for the moment if I'm going to say it again in a slightly different way if you're thinking as fast and you're trying to slow down your fast thinking the only thing you have inside here if it's to do with thinking it is more fast thinking your thinking can't be at two different paces you can't like you can't like access some kind of slow thinking realm while you're fast thinking it's all going to be fast then what happens then if we're trying to slow down our thinking because we we prefer thinking slow to thinking fast then we're we are adding more fuel to the fire really now I think all of that needs to change it comes from a place of judgment we judge the fast thinking as wrong and then we judge there's something wrong with us probably and then we kind of need to do something about it we need to get rid of it we kind of think that something's going to terrible is going to happen if we don't sort it out we're trying to sort it out with the same things that's causing it so it doesn't really work there's a real difference between coming at something from kind of awareness plus judgment and coming at something just from awareness so judgment will say that's wrong it's not okay it shouldn't be like that I've got to do something about it even just saying that you can hear there's more and more thinking going into the mix now awareness says hmm I seem to have some seem to have a lot of thinking at the moment I seem to have some fast thinking that I seem to have sped up thinking at the moment and then there's nothing to do because once we are aware we we're in a different place there's there's I feel often like a little step backwards where we were in the thinking trying to sort the thinking out with our thinking and then there's oh you know like when I do that now I can there's nothing there it's just a little disconcerting when I'm in the middle of a live just go oh there's nothing there but there is something there there's some something will come from that space it always does as you may have noticed because I can prattle on for a while can't I with nothing in my head but when we as soon as we do that even if our thinking is very sped up it's the awareness that's that you you then become you already are the awareness but you then see that you are that awareness you're not you're thinking anyway that's doing its own thing that it always does so I'm like is that character from the Addams Family I don't know what I'm on this morning probably needs some more sleep but you it's it's seeing that you're not you're thinking as soon as you step into that place of non-judgmental awareness it is okay for you to have sped up thinking welcome to the human race sometimes we all have racing thinking in the human race it's normal it's natural doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you and and and something magical happens once you step into that space of awareness sometimes it just takes a breath and your feet on the floor to be in that space of awareness and once you're in that space of awareness the system naturally begins to reset you might need to be patient like don't rush try to slow down your class thinking again that need for it to be different now is fast and revved up the observation of it the noticing of it isn't and I love what Eckhart Tolle says about anything like this he talks about being in the present moment and noticing when you're not I guarantee that if you've got sped up thinking fast thinking as opposed to thinking slowly you are definitely not in the present moment guaranteed so noticing that and going oh that's what's happening now it allows you to naturally fall back into the present moment because you've got this amazing system that's always ready to reset you it's a psychological immune system it's quite amazing so that's just something to be aware of um slowing down your thinking doesn't actually slow it down take care lots of love thank you so much for listening there's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm this has been the calmcast with Claire Downer,

Queen of Calm,

Take care and keep listening.