Last week, I pre-recorded a couple of radio shows to air in August while I’m away on sabbatical. In one of the shows, (which airs this Thursday), Dr. Aaron Turner and I talked about why it was that we seem to spend so much time trying to “do something” with our thinking instead of allowing it to flow freely and bring with it all the gifts of thought – fresh new ideas, inspired wisdom, and a rich, ever-changing parade of experience…
In his classic book The Road Less Travelled, author M. Scott Peck shares the following analogy:…
When I first began doing radio shows over seven years ago, I thought we’d have a shelf life of about three months before my “bag of tricks” was empty and people (including me) would start losing interest. My first attempt at addressing this problem was to expand my bag of tricks and put more tools into my “toolbox”, and I began reading at an ever more voracious pace to keep my head continually filled with whatever was a the cutting edge of psycho-spiritual thought…
The other day, I woke up feeling incredibly sad. In times past, when it still seemed to me like having a “negative emotion” was problematic, that feeling would have launched me into a search for what was wrong in my life and an even more enthusiastic search into my collection of self-help and psychology books for a solution that would eliminate the feeling of sadness and then eventually help me to upgrade my life to a point where I wouldn’t ever have to feel that sad feeling again…
With a slight sigh of regret and an equally slight sigh of relief, today marks the end of my “European tour”. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spoken about the Three Principles in front of 400+ people in London, spent five days coaching personal clients face to face, co-taught 80 people in Glasgow how to “wake up” to a deeper reality, done a number of press interviews about the inside-out understanding, and spent three days leading a beautiful “Learning How to Thrive” retreat in the Umbrian hills…