Unlimited Hope For The Future

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Inspiration has a very close relative called hope. The two are inseparable; they go everywhere together.

This is important because when we feel stressed or overwhelmed with work or life, hope is the antidote. Going further, hope is also the solution to helplessness, resignation and despair.

If it was really possible to tap into an endless supply of hope, how much difference would it make to you?

In its most powerful undiluted form, hope is much more than wishful thinking. To have hope means ‘to expect with confidence’ – in other words, to count on a certain outcome. But given our inability to predict the future, how can this be?

Before we get to the answer, we need to remember where the experience of hope comes from. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ll notice a recurring theme: every experience we have comes from the thoughts we are thinking at the time. So the experience of hope must come from our thinking. So where do our thoughts come from?

Well, there’s no doubt that many of the thoughts you think are those you have thought before. Some are welcome, others less so. Either way they spring from your accumulated knowledge and experience. But what about new thoughts, thoughts you have never thought before?

Some people claim they bubble up from the unconscious mind but this is not very convincing. It implies that every new thought we have ever had and will ever have is already there.

Another attempt to explain where thoughts come from rests on the description of how the brain works by making new neural connections. But while this explains the biological changes that take place, it does not account for the origin of the content of thought.

In contrast, many spiritual traditions describe some kind of universal source of thought. They use different words – such as collective mind, universal intelligence, life energy, God – all of which attempt to point to the ever-present but formless source of thought.

Such a source is infinite and therefore gives us the potential for unlimited new thoughts. This is where we come back to hope. When you are not stuck on old thinking, new thought will always flow into your mind. You can be sure of this – you can count on this outcome.

Can you remember a time when you have had just the idea you needed ‘out of the blue’? It happened when you were not busy thinking about the problem but rather when you were thinking about nothing in particular, hence ‘out of the blue’.

So whatever problem or challenge you face, there is always the assurance that you can have fresh thoughts about it at any time. And these fresh thoughts are how solutions will unfold to you. This means that the potential solution is only a thought away. This is how you can be full of hope – hope-full. You are not on your own – you have an unlimited source of new thought to draw on!

All you need to remember is that new thought will automatically flow into your mind when you are not busy with the thoughts that are already there. A quieter mind is all it takes.

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Playing With Fire

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Trevor Hill

This post is all about how to handle stressful or difficult situations. It has been triggered by a recent conversation with a senior executive in a global organisation. He asked me for some tips on how to handle colleagues who appeared to be indifferent to his ideas.

What he found particularly infuriating were people who repeatedly tapped their pens or flicked through their papers when he was making a presentation. This behavior threw him so much off his stride that he found it difficult to even think straight.

I’d like to share my answer with you because it actually applies to any situation that you find stressful or annoying. But first, here’s an analogy.

We all know that fire is a powerful force. It can bring huge benefits: it cooks our food, heats our homes and powers our transport. But fire can also be tremendously destructive, even life-threatening – think here of forest fires, man-made explosions and volcanic eruptions.

Now, imagine a box of matches. When struck, each match becomes a tiny fire. If it is fed with fuel, such as petrol, it will soon turn into a major blaze. If instead it is doused with water, the water would put the match out although it’s likely to leave a soggy mess.

Whenever a thought enters your mind, it is like a match. You can give it the fuel of your attention and it will soon grow into something much bigger. Alternatively, you could pour water on it by trying to suppress it. The question is: which option is the best choice?

The answer can be seen by going back to the senior executive. It became clear from our conversation that when he saw colleagues shuffling papers or tapping pens, the thought that arose in his mind was ‘my work does not matter – it’s not important’. The trouble started when he gave this thought most of his attention, just like adding petrol to a match. The resulting inferno in his mind burned up all his concentration and motivation – no wonder he found it hard to continue his presentation!

Suppose he had tried water instead? Then his attention would have been diverted away from his presentation by the mental effort of trying to suppress the thought. And just as any firefighter will tell you, water can cause much damage all on its own.

Fortunately there is a third option. We know that when a match is struck, it only has limited life on its own. Its energy is soon exhausted because, when the matchstick is burned through, it will automatically extinguish itself. A thought is exactly the same. After it enters your mind, if it is given neither the fuel of attention nor the water of suppression, it will soon fade away.

So my suggestion to the executive was to notice when he started to feel negative because a negative feeling is the signal that an unhelpful thought has been ‘struck’ (in his case it was the thought that ‘my work does not matter’). The critical point is not to pour on petrol by giving it serious attention; let it fade away like a single match with no fuel.

I know this works because I have done this in many different situations. By not fuelling the thought behind the negative feeling, the thought fades away and is automatically replaced with fresh thinking.

The good news is that when you begin to feel negative about a situation, you can choose how to respond to your own thinking – you can add petrol, pour on water or do nothing. Don’t just take my word for it – try it out over the next few days. You may even like to share your experience with other readers with a comment below.

Enjoy the experiment!

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Do You Live In Black And White?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Imagine you’re watching old film, with people moving around in monotone. Do you, like me, get drawn into thinking that these people actually lived in a world that was black and white?

Of course, their reality was just as colourful as ours. The sky had a thousand hues of blue; the grass was as fresh a green; a lover’s eyes still sparkled like a kaleidoscope.

Our ancestors shared with us the same human perception of colour. It may surprise you but this can be a guide towards our most inspiring mental functioning.

You see, our ancestors shared with us an interesting trait: the perception of colour varies throughout the day. Check this for yourself – sometimes you are acutely aware of colour and other times you miss it completely. When did it last happen to you?

Perhaps you see your car catching the sunlight in the car park and notice that the shade is nearly the same as a car nearby, but somehow the colour has more warmth in it. In contrast, you stop to buy a coffee and do not register the colour of the vendor’s clothes. We all do things like this. We tune into and tune out of colour every day. I’d love to hear your examples (you can post a comment below).

So, what does this tell us about our general mental functioning? Well, obviously we detect colour through our sense of sight. We could describe this in terms of the physical structure of the eye and the optic nerve that connects with the brain. But this misses the key point: our sense of sight is turned on or off by whatever else we are thinking at the time.

This is how you can walk past a friend in the street and not notice them (perhaps you remember the toe-curling embarrassment?!!)  We apologise with something like ‘I’m so sorry – I didn’t see you there – my mind was somewhere completely different’. And this commonplace expression captures the truth beautifully.

It’s true with our other senses too – which feeds the old joke that when a man is reading the newspaper, he goes deaf!

The more serious point is that you’ll inevitably turn colour on and off. This is not a problem in itself but it is an indicator of your mental landscape. When you are in tune to colour, the indication is that your mental activity is relatively light and spacious, excellent for creativity and inspiration.

But when you are tuned out to colour, and living in black and white, the indication is that you are preoccupied mentally. This is a warning that you may be stuck in a mental rut.

Now here’s the key principle – awareness brings choice. Becoming more aware of when colour is on or off brings the opportunity for you to choose. You could think of it like traffic lights: colour ON signals a green light to continue; colour OFF is a yellow ‘mental rut’ warning – do you really want to follow your current line of thinking or drop it?

The good news is that you don’t need to make this another task on your list; simply notice what happens. With growing awareness you’ll find that you automatically tune into colour more often. You will literally be coming to your senses. And with this you’ll spend more time in your most creative and inspiring mental space.

Let me know how it works for you…

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You Cannot Be Serious!

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Trevor Hill

If you are of a certain age, you may remember tennis champion John McEnroe and his famous protests against the umpire’s decisions – ‘You cannot be serious!’ Of course, McEnroe did not challenge every decision, only those he considered to be against his best interests.

Now, even if you have never played tennis, there is something important here. When it’s in your best interests, you can challenge your own umpire! This could be at work or at home. It works like this.

We know that many things we do are habitual. Habits can serve you well; they can streamline action and conserve effort. You also know that some habits work against your best interests (you can fill in the blanks here!).

The most insidious habits are habits of thought, well-rehearsed mental pathways that lead in a downwards spiral. You know the kind of thing – you clip the kerb on the drive to work so you criticise yourself for slipshod driving. Then you go on to recall other cases where your action has been less than excellent. As the list builds in your mind, you begin to see a clear pattern of careless and slapdash behaviour. The only conclusion is that there is something wrong with you. It’s obviously deep-rooted and you’re never going to be able to fix it. And that fills you with bad feelings.

This type of thinking is not rational; neither is it helpful. It may be a pile of nonsense but we take it seriously. Because we have rehearsed these mental habits over the years, the results can develop quickly. One minute we are driving along quite happily, next minute we are feeling terrible at the bottom of the spiral.

But what happens if we recognize it for what it is – simply a stream of thinking. Then we have a choice. We can either believe that what we are thinking is the undeniable truth or we can choose not to take the thinking so seriously. The thoughts may linger briefly but without the oxygen of attention they will fade, replaced by different thoughts.

In recent months, I’ve found that sometimes I can catch the very moment I’m about to step down into the spiral. Recognising I could choose to carry on investing in my train of thought or I could use McEnroe’s famous line has enabled me to avoid unnecessary suffering. Even when I miss the first opportunity, the growing bad feelings are a sure sign that it would be in my best interests to stop taking my thinking seriously. When I do this, the downward spiral becomes more of a quick dip than a deep plunge.

As human beings, we think all of the time. Perhaps the ultimate choice you have is how you relate to your thinking minute by minute – whether you buy into it or whether you challenge the umpire. Either way, the consequences are yours.

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The Last Gasp of Winter

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Grape HyacinthsAs I write it’s snowing so hard I wonder if the universe has a sense of humour –  this time last year the UK was basking in unbroken sunshine with temperatures in the twenties!

The weather right now is so unseasonal that somehow I can’t take it seriously. If it were the depths of January it would be different because then the days are short, the nights long and dark and all nature appears to be dormant. Thoughts of spring would be far away.

But now, at the end of March, we know that this must be the last gasp of winter. Under the white blanket there are daffodils and primroses in flower; the buds on trees and hedges are ready to burst open; and the birds have already been practicing their courting songs.

If the seasons are a metaphor for our own lives, we all go through periods of winter. We experience these as cold and dark, with our life-energy close to zero. It can seem that winter has become permanent.

But if we take our winter thoughts less seriously, by giving them less attention, we’ll begin to see signs of life. We’ll rediscover that under the snow there are the shoots of new growth, buds swelling with fresh life and brave blooms already showing. Then we can feel confident of coming out the other side.

We can be sure that our personal winter is a passing phase, soon to be succeeded by the warmth and joy of spring.

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It’s Never Too Late

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Sometimes it seems that it’s too late to change. Even when we long for something new, something refreshing, we can feel defeated before we begin.

Life can take us so far down a certain track that retracing our steps seems impossible. After all, we’ve invested much time and energy reaching where we are; we have relationships embedded into our way of life; we have financial commitments to meet. Life can become molded like a worn-out shoe; it may not be comfortable but it is familiar.

The good news is that there is hope! My favourite quote from George Eliot gets to the heart of it:

It’s never too late to be who you might have been

You see, what actually stops us making the changes we want is not the circumstances we are in but the thoughts we have about those circumstances. If we think it is impossible to change path, then impossible is exactly how we experience it. If we think that a relationship stops us making changes, then that is what we experience. If we think it is too late to change – it is!!

Liberation comes from realising that at any time you can have a new thought. In the blink of an eye, you can have a new thought and there is a never-ending supply of them. And for each of us, all that keeps new thoughts away is the attention we give to old thoughts.

How can you know if you are giving lots of attention to old, stale thoughts? Because if you are, you will feel stale. Your feelings are a great indicator of what you are thinking.

So whenever you feel dull, listless, drained or defeated, you are re-thinking old thoughts. They may seem so ‘important’ that you ‘have to’ keep thinking them. But when you withdraw your attention from them, you immediately open up space for new thought. And with new thought comes new possibilities.

This is what inspiration really is: fresh thinking that awakens, energises and motivates us. We all have the built-in ability to be inspired because we can all receive fresh thoughts. It’s only our obsession with worn-out thoughts that keeps us stuck. It’s never too late…!

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Solve Your Biggest Problem

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Problems are part of life – we all experience them. Some are bigger than others and press us for a solution. Your biggest problem right now is likely to be frustrating and stressful. This post is all about your natural ability to create a solution.

As an example, let’s use a typical problem from the work context – a difficult boss (although what follows applies to any problem). The first thing to notice is a crucial distinction. The behaviour that your boss shows is a fact while the problem you experience with that behaviour is individual to you. In other words, problems are not objective facts; they are subjective experiences.

Because all our experiences are created first by the thoughts we are thinking at the time, for a problem to exist means that you have to be thinking a certain way. You already know that when something ‘takes your mind off it’ the experience of your problem temporarily goes away. Only when you start to think about it again does the problem become real once more.

The solution cannot lie within the thinking that creates the experience of a problem; keep thinking problem thoughts and the problem just gets bigger! This is at the heart of the well-known quote from Albert Einstein:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it 

The solution can only come from new thinking – inspiration. So the question is: how do we get new thinking?

Well, this is where you can rely on your natural ability because new thoughts will always come when you stop crowding your mind with old thoughts. So if you want a solution to your problem, give your mind a break. This means a proper break, not simply moving on to think about another problem.

Start the break by framing a question such as: how can I best deal with the behaviour my boss is showing? And then leave it alone; go and do something completely different, preferably something you know does not need lots of thinking.

As your mind becomes less busy, new thoughts will begin to occur to you. Let them arrive without over-analysing them, as if you’re watching them pass by. You will recognise the solution thoughts by the good feelings that come with them – feelings often referred to as heart-warming or gut instinct.

Perhaps, as you have been reading this, you have remembered a previous occasion when you found a solution to a problem. At the time you may not have been aware that you were using the mechanism described here but you can be sure that all the ‘circuits’ are present. Your natural gift for creating a solution is just waiting to be activated!

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Inspiration Is An Inside Job

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Trevor Hill

Have you ever been inspired in the presence of natural beauty, a piece of music, or a work of art? Or maybe you’ve been inspired by a particular quote, some grand architecture or a special companion?

I can say yes to all the above and, of course, there are hundreds of other possibilities. Yet, paradoxically, we can learn more from the anomalies – the times we are inspired for no apparent reason. Has this ever happened to you? Here’s a story of how it happened to me.

It was a dull, wet morning and I was attending a course in London. This was the third day that I had been commuting and because it was now Saturday, instead of the weekday crowds, there were just a handful of people waiting for the train.

Collar up, I sheltered under the canopy. Outside its reach was a dirty puddle, its surface pock-marked by each raindrop. On the opposite platform, the greenery that clung to the fence was soaked and bedraggled and, in the gulf between, the tracks lay dark and greasy.

Then, completely unexpectedly, I was overwhelmed with the joy of being alive. It was if my senses were suddenly switched to full volume – I was thrilled by the scent of freshness; I was able to hear the exquisite singing of a blackbird; I could feel energy surge through my body. My eyes welled at the sheer beauty of the scene; I felt so glad to be part of it.

At the time, I couldn’t explain how this happened and for many years afterwards it remained one of those anomalies. While it ‘made sense’ to be inspired at the top of a mountain, this didn’t apply to an ordinary railway station!

But over the last year or so, I’ve come to realise that whatever experience I have is created first by my thinking. Whether this is conscious or not doesn’t matter – my thoughts are the origin of my experience. This is true for you too and every other human being.

As being inspired is a particular type of experience (a very rewarding and life-affirming one) this too must come from our thinking. Somehow, at that rain-soaked station, my thinking led me to the inspiring experience.

Now comes a tempting but ultimately fruitless folly – to attempt to control the thoughts we have. We can’t – by the time we realise they are thoughts, we’ve already thought them! Neither can we think ourselves into inspiration by will-power – I guess you’ve already proved this to yourself – becoming inspired is not an intellectual process.

Fortunately we have another priceless human characteristic – a built-in bias towards inspiration. Whenever our thinking gets less busy, our nature is to find inspiration, just like a compass needle will naturally find north when interfering magnetic forces are removed.

This is what happened to me waiting for the train – my interfering thinking died down enough for my natural bias towards inspiration to be revealed. Whenever you are inspired, the same is true.

Remember that you are the creator of inspiration. Rather than your world inspiring you, you inspire your world!

 

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The Ultimate New Year Resolution

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Trevor Hill

All around the world people have been making resolutions for the New Year. You may even have been one of them. If we reckon the global population is 7 billion, how many different resolutions do you guess have been made?

Think for a moment about the variety – resolutions to lose weight and to gain money; to start relationships and to end relationships; to move forward in a career or to move back to a simpler life; to take on a fresh challenge or to find a nourishing retreat, and so on.

But behind every goal and resolution, there is the same ultimate aim.

The reason behind all of them is to get more good feelings (which is equivalent to less bad feelings). Look at your own life – if you pick one of your goals and trace the reason why you chose it in the first place, isn’t it because ultimately you want to feel good?

This being so, where do feelings actually come from?

In fact, they can only come from one source – they are a direct result of what we are thinking at the time. You can prove this anytime you like – if you think sad thoughts you will feel sad; if you think happy thoughts you will feel happy.

Because feelings come from what we are thinking, then resolutions and goals are only helpful when the thoughts we have about them are positive. Only then will we get the good feelings we want.

For example, if a goal gives you a sense of purpose, energy and enthusiasm, it is because you are having purposeful, energizing and enthusiastic thoughts.

Obviously, being human, we have fluctuations in our feelings because there is a constant flow of thought in our minds. But if you frequently feel good about a particular goal, it’s a pretty clear indicator that the goal is worthwhile. The opposite is also true; a goal that frequently feels draining or like a chore may well have outlived its usefulness.

But the best bit of being aware that our feelings come from our thinking is that we do not need goals or resolutions to feel good. We will have good feelings whenever our thinking is positive. However, this is not an invitation to set a goal to ‘think positive’ because this is counter-productive.  You see, we already have a natural bias towards good feelings whenever we have less thinking going on.

So over the next few weeks, join me in an experiment. Simply notice the times when you feel good for no obvious reason. The ‘no obvious reason’ will be because your mind is quieter and your natural gift for feeling good will be revealed.

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True Freedom

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Trevor Hill

What would you do if you were completely free to choose?

When I played this question in my mind recently, I thought of myself lying in a hammock slung between two beachside palm trees. Pina Colada in one hand, I could feel the heat of the tropical sun, tempered by the gentlest of breezes, and I could hear the waves lapping the golden sand.

I realise that this must be my version of escape from a freezing winter’s day in the UK. Yet I have a friend in New Zealand who longs to spend Christmas here. Even though he can easily drive to half a dozen gorgeous beaches, he wants to escape in order to feel the invigorating cold and to experience frost and snow!

When we think about escaping our circumstances, whatever they are, we often confuse two things. We blame our external situation for how we are feeling. It’s an easy mistake to make. It appears that a grey day in London makes me feel low and a sunny day on a tropical beach makes me feel great.

But hang on a minute. Not everyone in winter-grey London is low – what about those that have just had some good news – a promotion perhaps or the birth of a new child? And not everyone on a tropical beach feels great either, such as those who are worried or lonely.

When we see it like this, it seems obvious that our feelings are not caused by our physical surroundings. Looking more closely, we can see that it is our thinking that causes our feelings. Think worried thoughts and you feel worried; think happy thoughts and you feel happy.

So let’s revisit the original question. It would actually make more sense to ask: what feelings would you like if you were completely free to choose?

Typically, people reply with feelings like happiness, peace of mind, hope, contentment, fulfillment and love. In fact, all our dreams and longings spring from the desire for feelings such as these.

When we see that our feelings come from our thinking, we have the key to true freedom. We can see that it is not the external circumstances that create our feelings but rather it is our internal mental landscape.

So if I deliberately think ‘palm tree hammock’ thoughts, will it work for me? Yes, up to a point. If I vividly imagine I’m on the beach, and I work on the sights, sounds, sensations, tastes and smells, I can create quite a realistic experience in my ‘mind’s eye’.

Yet it’s as fragile as an egg shell; it can be cracked by any intrusive thought. New thoughts can materialise at any time and disrupt the tightest mental regime.

But if I know that any thought of freedom creates a feeling of freedom, I don’t have to restrict myself to ‘palm tree hammock’ thoughts. The scope becomes much wider and this is how true freedom is attainable. I can watch out for whenever the thoughts I’m thinking create a feeling of freedom.

There’s no limit on how many ‘freedom thoughts’ I can feed by giving them my attention. By the same token, I can drop imprisoning thoughts by withdrawing my attention from them. I find this simple shift in emphasis works wonders – it is truly liberating. It works for me and it can work for you!

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