5. On the day when the decision is to be made, give yourself some time—half an hour to an hour is ideal—and some space—either where you meditate regularly or in any quiet area. Make sure you can be free from the telephone and other possible distractions. Take with you any notes you have made and any other material you have gathered. Also, take a pen and some paper in case you want to write on it.
6. When you sit down, begin by reviewing your research material and in this way refresh all the knowledge you have of your subject. If you do not have written material go straight to the next step.
7. Consciously relax your body and calm your mind. This will be a familiar process if you have some experience of meditation. The aim is to relax your body and to calm your mind so you are in a better state of mind to progress into contemplation.
8. Once relaxed in this manner, focus your attention on consciously reviewing the facts as you remember them.
9. So, in our example, you might recall the style of food you have been eating, the broad issues relating to why you are considering changing your diet, what different people have recommended to you, what you have read in different books and so on.
10. If at any stage you become distracted or your mind wanders off onto other thoughts, as soon as you recognize this, be gentle with yourself and simply come back to concentrating on issues relating to food and diet.
11. This first part of the process then is clearly a rational, “left brain” exercise. You actively think about the topic and all issues relating to it. You are actively focusing on the topic and thinking it through.
12. What happens next, as you continue to concentrate on the topic, is that at some point your mind will automatically shift into more abstract, intuitive, “right brain” contemplation. It will be as if all the facts you have been reflecting upon and analyzing, all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle as it were, come together and now you can clearly see the bigger picture. This will give you a new sense of comprehension and understanding and usually leaves you with a clear sense of what to do. This can all come with a moment of clear insight, almost like an “Aha! I’ve got it,” moment of revelation.
13. The more you practice this technique, the more reliable it becomes. It is a wonderful and dependable way to solve problems, develop creativity and instigate lateral thinking. (As another aside, this is an excellent way to prepare for and complete creative writing.)
14. Once the sense of clarity dawns, usually it is best to write the ensuing insight down. Perhaps you can remember having the experience of a moment of insight like this before. Perhaps you were in the shower, or was it when you were half asleep, and suddenly like a bolt out of the blue, it seemed as if you had the perfect solution to a problem you had been wrestling with. Yet by the time you got dressed and ate breakfast, it had flown from your memory! Insight during contemplation sometimes comes like that too, so it is best to write it down. I always do this exercise with pen and paper close by and as soon as the answer begins to form write it down.
This contemplation technique can be used to solve any problem. It leads to a clarity that is backed by a deep sense of your own inner wisdom. As a result, the directions that come with it, the goals that emerge from this exercise, will feel very “right” for you.
So when it comes to contemplating food, we may think through specific issues like whether we will eat tomatoes or not, and whether we will cook them or not. Or we may arrive at a more comprehensive overview and, for example clearly understand why eating organic food makes sense and come away deeply committed to doing just that.
People often ask me, “How can I trust the result of an exercise like this?” Well, if you come out of this exercise with no clarity and are still clouded by doubt, all that has happened is you have spent time simply thinking about the issue. No harm done, but no profound insight, either! The insight we are talking of has as one of its features the confidence of certainty. It comes with a deep inner knowing and no doubt. You really know what to do with the tomatoes! No one else will need to confirm such an insight for you; it will be easy to feel confident about, easy to commit to, and it is highly likely to work well.
But what if you do all this and you still have doubts?
Step 3. When in Doubt, Do Something!
It would be nice to think we will arrive at a point of certainty before making all the decisions in front of us. Maybe we will. But doubt remains a real possibility—and does that mean you are unable to set a goal effectively?
One of the benefits of contemplation is that it does clarify the choices. When you reflect on this, with most things you either do them or you do not, or you put them off. Now, while there is the old Irish saying, “If you put something off long enough it will take care of itself,” maybe we need to be a bit more proactive when it comes to cancer.
Faced with lingering doubts, what many people find works well is to accept the doubts and make a decision anyway. With a decision made in this way, it is still useful to decide to commit to whatever it is you are planning, make the commitment, and to embrace it. But then it is always healthy to review your progress from time to time and adjust accordingly.
Here it is helpful to appreciate another facet of how the mind works. As we have established, the mind is a goal-oriented, decision-making tool. In this regard, however, it is more like a heat-seeking missile than an arrow. Pardon the warlike images but they serve as useful metaphors here. When an archer takes aim and lets fly an arrow, the arrow is at the whim of the archer’s aim and the elements. If a wind begins to blow the arrow off course, it has no self-righting mechanism. A heat-seeking missile is quite the opposite. A heat-seeking missile locks on to its target, and then receives feedback. If the target moves, the heat-seeking missile adjusts its course.
Step 4. Make Friends with “Mistakes”
Our mind functions like a heat-seeking missile. The mind is designed to manage the complexity and changing nature of our lives. It is designed to receive feedback, to compare our progress to what we are aiming for, to adjust, to change course regularly and to persist until the goal is reached.
Some people feel badly about mistakes. Some mistakes are regrettable, and we will consider later how to transform common feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment and blame that often accompany mistakes (see healthy emotions, chapters 16 and 17).
However, here is another possibility. Mistakes are feedback. Mistakes can be really useful feedback. It is reported that Thomas Edison made ten thousand experiments before discovering how to produce a lightbulb that worked. When asked what it felt like to make 9,999 mistakes, Edison replied that he had not made 9,999 mistakes. He had completed 9,999 attempts to achieve his goal and with each experiment he learned something. In the end, courtesy of all he learned from what appeared to be his “mistakes,” he revolutionized the world with his 10,000th attempt.
Be brave. Make a start. Stick to your goal. And be flexible with how you achieve that goal. Respond to feedback. Be prepared to hold to the big goal and be prepared to be flexible when it comes to how to get there.
Step 5. Rambo or the Martial Arts?
Pardon me again but we need to discuss the state of mind that goes with our positive thinking. While what we do is of great importance, the state of mind we do it in can be even more significant.
Most people are familiar with the Rambo image. Isolated, tough, uncompromising, resolute. Very driven, a fair bit on edge, high energy. Not