The Mistake About Quieting The Mind

After working in Manhattan at the heart of the investment industry for a year as an executive coach, I saw the dire need for quieter minds, to offset the understandable, yet overwhelming, mental noise of risk/reward analysis of investment.

However, this risk/reward mindset is not only found in the world of investment, but in all realms of life in the form of, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” Is this familiar to you as an entrepreneur or in your daily life? It can cause paralysis or worse. So what does quieting the mind mean and how might it help?

During that year especially, but also for years in my larger coaching practice, I’ve needed to address a misconception. Quieting the mind does not mean having no thoughts.

Thoughts may come and go, but the quieting spoken of here is often a result of a profound realization that, with thoughts or without, you are the awareness in which all thoughts rise and fall, actually untouched by their coming and going. When this realization takes hold even to a minor degree, one’s preoccupation with obsessive thinking begins to lessen – and in turn, wasteful thoughts begin to quiet due to your diminished devotion to them.

The benefit is that as these extraneous, repetitive, and often emotional thoughts – that you used to pay homage to – slow down, they reveal more calm clarity that gives rise to reasoned thoughts guiding decisions or actions with more presence, intelligence, and calm.

The noisy mind is ultimately rooted in the fundamental fear about survival of the body and our created identity that we mistakenly believe ourselves to be. If we think that we are our thoughts and the body and that we can somehow make them last forever, unfortunately we’ve already lost the game. This ole’ body will return to the soil from which it came. Nobody escapes this fate. While we’re on the planet, though, success and happiness are possible, but it takes very honest self-reflection to see self-destructive thinking. Are you game?

We live each day desperately thinking of new ways to try and survive our fate, to urgently control the universe, to force others to behave, to earn approval, and to “hide the wrinkles” so nobody will know this body ages – all in an endless attempt to survive as this limited and constantly reassembled concept of who we are. You may be familiar with this constant underlying state of fear and anxiety. It bleeds into many of our interactions and moments alone.

It becomes clear that these endless thoughts based in fear complicate, postpone, and can fully sabotage actually having a more rewarding life of love, health, serenity, success, prosperity, and making clear decisions with more ease.

Without this noise, we can more easily hear useful thoughts that are born of our wise soul in harmony with the universe around and within us, and which serve our happiness and success in life. These thoughts come with more caring, compassion, less judgement, and more intuitive impulses. Yet they can also come with passion, at times bold, boisterous, and vitally alive.

Thoughts are not to be seen as evil. But they can be seen as serving or not serving your joy, your greatest success and purpose, and ultimately your knowing the deepest truth of who you are: unbound awareness living this amazing life as you. Our task is to translate this understanding into our daily life, whether a millionaire, mother of three, or mastering entrepreneurship.

David Ellzey is a Coach and one of four global Sedona Method Instructors, a Best-Selling Author and Noted Speaker. Find out if Conscious Coaching is right for you.

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