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“No amount of thinking can stop thinking.”

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Mark Nepo

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I am fairly sure that everyone wishes, at least sometimes, that you had a power off button for your brain (& thoughts). Your head is working so hard and it just keeps running and all you want is to be able to take a breath, or get some sleep or just slow down some of the things roaming around your head.

Now. I don’t know about everyone else, but the time I really, and I mean REALLY, want a power off button is when I am not worried, when I am not stressed, when I am not overwrought, when I am not, well, anything.  Yet, in those moments I still find there are a shitload of thoughts crammed into my head and I want to not actually stop my thoughts from going crowding my mind and swirling round and round but rather slow them down so I can pluck out the meaningful ones.

Millions of things always try and crowd into our brains.

It can be exhausting. And it can actually be frustrating because you do not really accomplish anything.

Ok. I will share two thoughts. First is how to power off and the second is my theory on why our brains ‘power up’ so often.

– Powering off

Here is the oddest thing about a power off switch. It sounds counterintuitive, but, you actually want to think to shut it down.

Yup. Silence actually encourages more ‘mind power’ or space to fill by ‘powering up’ your mind, i.e., more over thinking. Go figure.

This means that the way to actually power off is to … well … think. Ah. But a certain type of thinking — think: repetition thinking.

<note: that’s why counting sheep is actually effective>.

You want to think about something mindless so your mind mostly shuts down (really it just slows down) by focusing on one inane thing. Eventually it even gets bored and … yup … powers off.

Frankly, it’s a fallacy to think you want to shut your brain off. And, frankly, it is impossible. So the trick is to fill up the space with non thinking thinking. Its kind of like slowing things down by speeding up thinking about one thing. Non thinking thinking works because the more you try not to think about all of the things on your mind the more you actually think about it. Reading that last sentence it sounds to obtuse to make sense <but I assume you get my point> … so I am gonna shut down my brain on that thought and move on.

– Bruce’s theory on why our brains ‘power up/on’ so often.

To me, the root of our desire for having a power off switch revolves around Life unevenness – more specifically, how we grow unevenly <something I wrote about back in 2014 … growing up unevenly.>

Suffice it to say as we expand ourselves and our minds and get better as people <intellectually and experience-wise> it all makes us grow unevenly.

Why does this matter? Well. The well rounded circle or the classical myth of a ‘well rounded person’ is … well … simply a myth yet it is something that has been pounded into our heads. It creates a false narrative with regard to our expectations about Life in our heads.

terror let go meaningful df wallaceAs you learn and think and experience you do not expand smoothly but raggedly. Day after day, despite the fact you may feel like your Life is a grind or you are in some rut, you are constantly running toward some thought and experience … or … leaping from danger or something you dislike and … well … suffice it to say it is anything but balanced. And it is certainly not creating any smooth well rounded growth.

My main point? There is no such thing as a well-rounded person <that alone makes us uncomfortable and makes us think far far too much of rounding out the unevenness>. You may aspire to be well rounded but even at your best you are some shape other than a circle type person. And this means our minds excitedly explore the edged forays into interesting things and in parallel get snagged on the ragged edges of unexplored thoughts or even second guesses with regard to the lack of smoothness in our lives, thoughts and growth.

Yeah. This can make us feel uncomfortable and our mind wrestles with this discomfort as well as dealing with the ragged edges constantly poking at us.

Here is the truth.

Ignorance is boundless.

Knowledge is limited <only in terms of time>.

And learning is never symmetrical.

Therefore, our minds are always grappling with the uneven edges of our lives. And, therefore, the fact our minds are ‘powered up’ is simply a reflection of our personal growth. Oh, as we all know, not all growth is painless so we take all the good & the bad and … well … think. That is Bruce’s theory on why our brains power up so often.

Anyway.cSometimes I do wish I had a power off switch for my thoughts and my mind. But, I will admit, not often. I like thinking. No. I love thinking. And once I had developed the “Bruce theory Uneven wordsfor why our minds work so hard especially after it has been working hard all day long” I realized that a mind that is powered up isn’t really worried or getting tangled up in regrets <although that does happen> it is just growing.

It is growing raggedly and unevenly.

I would like to say it gives us an edge and some edge. And I like that thought. So maybe we should worry less about ‘powering off’ our brains and just enjoy the brain power while its on.

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Written by Bruce