Remembering to Forget
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.
Yep…sometimes I feel like I need to take a plunger to the ol’ noggin. My packrat tendencies extend to ideas and plans, as well as actual things.
After meeting with you the other week, I have been practicing forgetting. I find the most rewarding way is to do something…such as whip out a couple of quick articles I’ve been storing in my head.
When I focus on completion, not perfection, and think of it as freeing up a little elbow room in the brain, it makes it easier. Very freeing and rewarding…and a great way to get into action as well.
Hello from beautiful Montana:
What a great article. Sometimes we store the most mundane stuff (like our first telephone number) and then forget our cell phone number because we never call it. But then, why should we remember it?
Love the way you share tips and techniques to make us think. Keep on keeping on.
Judy H Wright
I love the “idea” of what you are sharing, however, I have stopped all “fighting” in my life. To me, everything is God/Spirit/Divinity/All That Is… Creator/Source is experiencing itself as everything. So we all carry around cancer cells in our body and they only manifest into cancer in some people. YET they are STILL God. I teach people how to bring their bodies BACK INTO BALANCE instead of Fighting Cancer, doing Battles inside their own beloved body and “kill the enemy”. It no longer makes sense. I am only FOR things. So for me, I am for Inspiring a Peaceful Mind, and releasing those unnecessary thoughts. Creating balance and peace in my mind and it does not require “fighting” anything.
If one can wash dishes, or eat a meal, or pet their cat and ONLY FOCUS on what they are doing ….. the smell of the water, feeling the water, washing each dish as if it were a baby Buddha, … sensing all the smells, flavors, tastes of the food, feel and hear yourself chewing, ….seeing the cat, hearing the cat, noticing all the physical details, being one with the cat. If your can practice Focusing only on what you are “doing” your mind can be clear of all those extra thoughts. There is no need to “fight” anything. If the thoughts come in, you thank them and go back to focusing on what you are doing. It is a loving relaxing experience.
With Love & Grace & Magic, Morgine
Good post, Andrea. About 3 months ago I started using the GTD (Get Things Done) system for managing my various ‘inboxes’ at home and work and that system is all about getting stuff out of your head and onto paper. Whereas before I used to have 400 to 500 emails sitting in my inbox at work and about 200 at home I now regularly have zero inboxes several times a week and all outstanding things actioned too.
You can ‘feel the freshness’ of having a mind ready for creating once you’ve learned to resolve, discharge and store information somewhere else other than in your conscious mind, can’t you? I don’t think it’s just about thoughts though – it’s also about any feelings you have linked to those thoughts that also need discharging otherwise the feelings will keep retriggering the thinking attached to them.