Remembering to Forget
August 26, 2010 by Andrea J. Lee
Filed under Andrea Recommends, General
Imagine for a moment your home. Lovely in its way, whatever that is, and most importantly, yours.
Now imagine it for a moment with no garbage cans. The can in the kitchen is gone.
The smaller garbage containers in the bathrooms and your office, all gone.
If you’re brave, imagine your home with no sewage system.
Right, let’s move on quickly from that.
Now come with me and think about your brain. (I know, it’s a little like tickling yourself, but give it a shot anyway.)
Do you have the proper waste disposal system for your thoughts?
How cluttered is your brain after all these years of thinking, especially if you’ve never cleared it out?
Unlike our homes, we can’t move out of our brains and start fresh, so it’s imperative that we actively create and pursue a disposal mechanism for our thoughts. The alternative is slow death by too many thoughts – more popularly known as overwhelm, analysis paralysis, procrastination, and even, sometimes, plain old depression.
Have you ever read the story about the medical condition that – perhaps fictionally – cannot forget anything? One of our brain’s greatest gifts to us is the act of forgetting. Think of it – of all the data that enters our lives minute by minute, the hourly task of sifting through what we experience and throwing away almost everything is a critical life skill.
So how about giving our brains a hand in this critical task and actively remembering to forget?
Instead of using our brain as a storage facility like some dilapidated shed, let’s learn to use it as a thinking facility.
