[This piece is from an email to the folks in the Enlightened Business Intensive. It addresses the question of how to know what to do when there are a kazillion places to start, and you are running around in circles.]
There are two fundamentally different ways to use your mind. One is to use your intellect to figure things out. The other is to look toward Mind, the formless energy and intelligence behind all things, what you might call Spirit, or Source, or God. In other words, you can use your personal mind or access Universal Mind.
Our personal minds are great for adding two and two to make four.
They are good for making arrangements for a trip or putting together furniture from Ikea. (Actually, you might need to turn to Universal Mind for that one!) Our personal minds are not so helpful when it comes to choosing a mate or a career.
I think most of us recognize the value of turning toward a greater source of intelligence in certain situations, but I think we tend to underrate the practical value of turning toward this intelligence in all areas of our lives. When we are stumped about what to say on the home page of our web sites or how much to charge for our services or whether we should go to a networking meeting, we try to resolve the situation by thinking about it. We expect our personal minds to come up with the answers.
The problem is that the personal mind can only see what it already knows.
You can’t think your way out of a thought storm about writing copy for your web site or pricing your work. The more thinking you add to the situation, the more confused and uptight you become.
The remedy is to look in another direction. Instead of looking into what we know and thinking harder and longer about it, look toward the unknown.
What on earth does that mean?
It means remembering that there is a much bigger intelligence at play in life and assuming that the answers you need will arise when you get out of the way. They may arise in 30 seconds or 30 days, but it is guaranteed that they will arise if you let them.
Again, I think many of us recognize the truth of this, but we get hijacked by the belief that we need to know something now. Forgetting that we live in the feeling of our thinking and believing for a moment that our circumstances can affect our wellbeing, we get nervous about the consequences of letting go of the timing. When we remember that the only thing we are ever experiencing is thought, we aren’t so concerned about the externals.
The bottom line is that when you don’t know where to begin, the best thing to do is to relax.
If you have an inkling or an inclination toward a certain activity in your business, go for that. Don’t sweat the logic of it.
If you trust your inclinations and common sense, they will naturally guide your next step. Concentrate on the one step that comes to you in the moment instead of worrying about the fourth step after that.
If your thinking is too noisy for you to sense an inclination or hear common sense, don’t sweat it. Toss a coin to choose a starting point. Do that, and let the path itself teach you.
I’m interested in knowing how that lands. Please use the comments to let me know.
