Two Minds
A few years ago when I was wrestling with making the decision about what I wanted to do professionally, I was torn between moving in the direction that I was passionate about and earning a steady income. The two are not always mutually exclusive. Once I did decide on a career path which in time has developed into two career paths that I am working to combine, someone asked me if my head and heart were in alignment, as it is one thing to know what you want in your head, but another for your heart to be engaged to the point that you can feel yourself doing this work.
A few years a-go when I was wrestling with making the decision about what I wanted to do professionally, I was torn between moving in the direction that I was passionate about and earning a steady income. The two are not always mutually exclusive. Once I did decide on a career path which in time has developed into two career paths that I am working to combine, someone asked me if my head and heart were in alignment, as it is one thing to know what you want in your head, but another for your heart to be engaged to the point that you can feel yourself doing this work.
Only in the last two years have I gained clarity around combining my two career paths and aligning my head with my heart. However, is this enough? Is knowing the direction in my head and heart going to help me help others, or more crucially help others to help themselves? After all I know how and why I want to help people help themselves. I can see and feel myself in this work. I have the conscious goals, interests and passions confirming my direction.
Recently, I read a book called The Honeymoon Effect by Bruce H. Lipton. While primarily a book about creating and maintaining good intimate relationships, The Honeymoon Effect explored how as humans we can create heaven on earth in all areas of our lives including careers. Although I did not agree with all of the writers’ explorations, my take home from this piece of work was our two minds: the conscious and subconscious. The conscious mind is creative and aware. It helps me to understand who I am and what I want. All my dreams, interests, desires and wishes. I know what I want? Right? I know what direction I want to travel in and how I want to get there. However, it is not quite happening the way I thought it would. Or it is taking longer than the timeline I had envisioned. What am I missing? The subconscious mind: if I am not aware of its influence (and for a long time I was not), that I am playing out programming and patterns of behaviour that may be at odds with my conscious mind.
At first, I thought my subconscious mind is working against me. It is sabotaging what my conscious mind wants and the effort I am putting into achieving my goals. Yet I have allowed the patterns of behaviour to play out and have been doing so since childhood. Although, I don’t wish to go further in the conscious and subconscious minds, the aha moment for me came when I realised that as large as the subconscious mind is, there is no need to continually play out patterns of behaviour that sabotage my efforts. Awareness for me is the first step and now when I catch myself ‘playing out’, I think about how I can approach a situation from a different perspective and explore how I can short circuit my at times stinking thinking. I don’t have all the answers, but I would be interested in your thoughts. Perhaps you may have words of wisdom that you can impart for me and possibly for others who are consciously on a similar journey?
