Think

I love improvement, I love to learn, to explore and experience. I think that’s the goal of our life to learn from experience and get better. Of course, whenever the life throws at me situation that forces me to leave my comfort zone and make the effort to change. I get angry at first and I’m unwilling to jump into the deep watter. But once I do the first step. Once the wheels start spinning. Then the learning and experiencing new things give me immense pleasure and satisfaction. That’s probably why I like so much to watch conference videos, interviews, TED presentations. I love podcasts, blogs and books. But…

Sometimes when I’m at work wearing headphones and forget to click “play” on spotify, I think about what I’ve seen, heard or read lately. I like searching for common elements. Because it’s all secondary. The same ideas that different people in different situations have been repeating for centuries, in different forms. Sometimes differ in minor details but the concept is still the same. And in most cases, it looks something like this:

• Imagine that you have achieved success already ….
• think about why you are feeling that way?
• Think about what you want to achieve …
• Decide that from now on you will change your life.

You see the common element?

Think, think, think and THINK

You can hustle left and right, run, jump into deep water, make decisions, plan goals, follow your dream, learn, explore, but all this doesn’t count for squat if you don’t THINK first.

Think about it.

But thinking in our time is, at least not easy. Day by day we are bombarded with information. Television, radio, internet, our own phone, watch. I will not be surprised when some day I will look in the fridge and before the light turns on I will be forced to watch the 30-second ad of the nearby food-store. We move in a continuous stream of links, videos and other people’s opinions.

Those who do not like to waste time (yup, guilty as charged), double it by listening to podcasts or audiobooks while performing mechanical tasks such as driving a car (which at the present time is reduced to standing in a traffic jam), ironing, cooking, cleaning, running, walking, mowing the lawn, etc.

When you want to cut yourself off for a second, you put your headphones on and… play the music. It’s as if our brain need a constant dose of stimulus, like a bit of silence could end up with one big implosion.

In such conditions, it’s difficult to focus and not to mention think. Therefore we rarely form our own opinions, we don’t make the effort to think about what reaches us, to verify the information, allow the common sense to speak.

With social media, we accept what we get from others and without much thought we pass it on. We are not creators anymore or even consumers, we are repeaters.

That’s why I think it is worth stopping for a moment, turn off the phone, TV, computer, refrigerator :) … be alone for a moment with yourself and your thoughts. As little as 10 minutes a day … to experience YOU.