Caryn Reddick: Success Statement

Whales and dolphins are usually portrayed as intelligent animals. I recently learned more about them from the book Instant Genius: Fast Food for Thought by The Knowledge Commons, and I now realize they may be smarter than I thought.

Just like humans, whales and dolphins must breathe oxygen from air. They also need sleep. Since these mammals live in the water, how do they sleep without drowning? This is where they get smart: When sleeping, they shut down half of their brain and close one eye at a time. Every two hours or so they switch to the other side. This way they are still partially awake at all times. Brilliant!

I wonder what would happen if humans could just pick and choose which part of our mind to “access” at a given moment? In some ways, we can. I have done a lot of work on what I call “intramind mediation”. Author and life coach Martha Beck talks about the “social” self and the “essential” self. Your social self wants to please others and look successful; your essential self wants to quit your job tomorrow and live in a house by the beach (or something like that). Intramind mediation is a way to use mediation techniques to made decisions that satisfy both your social and essential self (i.e., the different parts of your mind).

For example, let’s say you accept an invitation to a networking event because you feel you “need” to go to grow your business. However, every time you think about going to the event, you feel like you are choking and you suddenly lose all ability to utter a coherent sentence. This is a classic scenario: your social self wants to play nice, your essential self does not want to play along.

So what do you do? One way to approach it is to start analyzing the thoughts that are causing you to feel like you are choking. The thought could be something like, “if I don’t go to the event, I will lose an opportunity to network and I’ll never grow my business.” Once you have found the thought, ask yourself:

What is a better thought that is more true, and that makes me feel good instead of bad?

An example of a better thought might be, “If I go to the event I will be so miserable I won’t make a very good impression. This will not represent me or my company very well.” Or, more simply, “if I go to an event that makes me miserable and unfriendly, I will be less likely to attract clients.”

Now, your social self realizes that to get what it wants (clients), it might want to rethink its strategy. And your essential self breathes a sigh of relief because it doesn’t have to go to the networking event.

This sounds easy, and it is easy (sort of) once you get used to it. Maybe it would be even easier if we were more like whales…

Filed under: Books, Coaching Tagged: | Martha Beck