I’ve just kicked off my latest series of Mindset and Clarity Workshops at work.

On Thursday, 31 eager and hungry colleagues joined me in person in London and online from exotic locations like Bristol & Edinburgh.

During the workshop, we talked about headspace, overthinking and the monkey mind.

As we explored how to turn down our mental chatter, I suggested that how might not be the most useful question to ask.  Just like when we’re tucked up in bed and ready to go to sleep, asking “how do I get to sleep now?” isn’t the most useful question either.  If anything, it’s a recipe for waking ourselves up. 

I floated the idea that calming our busy minds works the same way. 

Which prompted a question in the room:

“Are you saying we don’t need to do anything Tom?  I can’t just do nothing all day!”

This question neatly gets to the heart of the matter.

See, we live in a world where we it’s taken for granted that we need to “do” something in order for things to change or improve. 

So we instantly pull the trigger and leap into action mode.

We network to advance our career.  We go to yoga class to relieve our stress.  We save money to achieve financial stability.  We meditate to calm our mind.  We study to gain new skills.

But there’s another way to look at this.

Remember your first Christmas after you found out Santa doesn’t exist?  It probably didn’t make sense to leave a mince pie and a cup of milk out for Saint Nick any more.  Not because you read an article called “7 ways to optimise your Christmas Eve”.  But because seeing truth naturally led to different actions.

i.e. your actions were outputs, not inputs.

Put another way:

Change is not driven by action.  Instead, change comes from understanding, realisation and seeing more deeply & clearly about life.

So while I’m not suggesting we lie in bed all day or emigrate to Tibet to sit cross-legged in a cave for the next 20 years, I am suggesting that “doing” might not be the silver bullet we think it is.  And that once we see more about how life works, we’ll instinctively take the right actions.

This is why my Mindset and Clarity Workshops aren’t packed to the rafters with practical tips, hacks and strategies.

Nor are these daily emails and neither is my coaching.

If anything, my coaching is a quest to discover how life really works.

If you’d like to chew the fat, kick some ideas about, talk turkey and see what we see about life, here’s one action you might like to take:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That’s all for today.

 - Tom