Has this ever happened to you? You were thinking about a problem, and no matter how hard you focus it seems that you are stuck. You have gone over the problem several times. You have tried to redefine it. You have looked at it from different angles. It seems that no matter what you do, and regardless of when you think about the problem, nothing seems to happen.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that your conscious mind can easily get stuck in a holding pattern. If you have ever taken a plane ride that was trying to land at a busy airport, you probably have experienced a holding pattern. Your plane would circle around a city several times delaying the moment of your arrival. When the runway clears and your plane is given the green light to land, your pilot will then break the holding pattern and start the descent. That is how planes work.
It is not much different with your thoughts. When your mind is burning precious energy trying to achieve some sort of breakthrough, and you find yourself at an impasse, it goes into a holding pattern. It is as if you cannot think of anything new. You just keep revisiting the same things over and over again.
When was the last time you lost your keys? I am willing to bet that when you were looking for your keys, you kept checking the places you checked before. At the back of your mind, you know that your keys are not going be there. After all, you just checked it a few minutes before, but you just can’t help yourself to keep checking again and again. You keep repeating this pattern over and over again. That’s how your mind works.
Unfortunately, this habit doesn’t get us any closer to the solution. How can it? You keep revisiting the same process. As the old saying goes, insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results each time. How can you achieve different results when you are going in circles?
When you focus on the present moment, you get the chance to target your issues right here, right now. In other words, you can train all your creative and imaginative resources to the right challenge, at the right time, and in the right place. This is definitely better than worrying sick about stuff that may or may not happen or, worse yet, crying over spilled milk.
By learning to use the present moment through mindfulness or meditation practices, you start looking at your situation differently. The reason why this happens is because your subconscious mind comes into play. Your subconscious mind is very powerful. It enables you to achieve breakthroughs, which you thought were simply not possible.
So use the present moment, and tap into the power of your subconscious mind any time you want. Your results will be astonishing. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings, “Let Go, and Let God!”
