🧠Weekly Mind Sweep #107 | Manage Your Mind | Reality
January 2024
Week 104: Curator’s Perspective
Week 105: Curated Conversation; Reality
Week 106: Mind Your Business; Reality
*Week 107: Manage Your Mind; Reality
Week 108: What’s On My Mind; Reality
New to the Weekly MindSweep? Past issues live here.
Let’s sweep the brain…
Rather watch or listen instead of read? Now you can!
We live on a big moving rock, and nothing matters.
OK, well, coffee does, but work with me here.
In 2020, I had an epiphany: All the stuff we thought was crucial turned out to be our brains making up stories and giving meaning to the world around us. Reflecting on this statement feels a bit dramatic. Still, living in a global pandemic, this felt like a new reality.
As Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett describes reality in a Big Think video [1], our brains live in our skulls and rely on our senses to provide information.
Our experience of reality is a complex combination of sensory information and expectations.
With an outside-in approach, our brain must decipher what is going on.
It takes information from our eyes, ears, touch, and smell and categorizes the data against our past experiences. Then, we perceive what's happening out there. AKA predictive perception.
She continues to explain that when we hear a loud noise outside, our brains don't know the cause or the effect. So, it has to guess from your past experiences.
Our expectations influence how we perceive and experience our world based on our past experiences. There are different predictions based on different lifetime experiences.
Our brains shape and predict reality.
Wait.
So my reality isn't your reality?
With over 8.1 billion people worldwide, there are over 8.1 million realities out there?
Our brains categorize experiences, and society agrees to give certain things meaning—a way to predict, expect, and understand the world around us.
Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett gives a few examples of the meaning our society creates:
Money: pieces of printed paper equal monetary value.
Voting Ballot: the marks on printed paper are counted, and a winner is selected.
Lines in the sand: creating borders.
We impose meaning.
Take a moment to consider perception, self, and the very nature of reality.
Embracing the brain's role as a predictive machine allows us to move beyond the limitations of a passive observer and embrace our active role in constructing our own experiences. This new perspective opens doors to deeper self-awareness, a deeper understanding of our minds, and, ultimately, a more meaningful engagement with the world.
With this new perspective, what aspects of your experiences and perceptions could you reconsider or find new meaning?
[1] The Well video with Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett - approximately 7 minute watch time
The answers you need for your business are already within you.
If you’d like support in pulling them out to build a business you are proud of, I’m here to help.
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What I’m reading
Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
“This manual is a must for any business mind.
You might believe you’re thinking clearly in the moments that matter most. But in all likelihood, when the pressure is on, you won’t be thinking at all. And your subsequent actions will inevitably move you further from the results you ultimately seek—love, belonging, success, wealth, victory. According to Farnam Street founder Shane Parrish, we must get better at recognizing these opportunities for what they are, and deploying our cognitive ability in order to achieve the life we want.
Clear Thinking gives you the tools to recognize the moments that have the potential to transform your trajectory, and reshape how you navigate the critical space between stimulus and response. As Parrish shows, we may imagine we are the protagonists in the story of our lives. But the sad truth is, most of us run on autopilot. Our behavioral defaults, groomed by biology, evolution, and culture, are primed to run the show for us if we don’t intervene. At our worst, we react to events without reasoning, not even realizing that we’ve missed an opportunity to think at all. At our best, we recognize these moments for what they are, and apply the full capacity of our reasoning and rationality to them.
Through stories, mental models, and more, Parrish offers the missing link between behavioral science and real-life outcomes. The result is a must-have manual for optimizing decision-making, gaining competitive advantage, and living a more intentional life.”
What I’m listening to:
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
“Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction.
We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and yet the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks, the average length of a human life.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management.
Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we can do things differently.”
Collaborations!
MetroWest Chamber
Limited to 12 Spots
Friday, February 2, 2024
9am-11am
For 2024, we'd like to make a focused effort to support you and your business. In February, we'll discuss:
Networking, Thought Leadership & Speaking
Join Shannon Dalton Giordano of Serendipity Social Media and me of Chickbook Creative for this two-hour interactive business community experience.
We’ll discuss ways to cultivate business through Sales, Marketing, and Communication methods that support relationship building, showing up authentically, and connecting deeper with colleagues and the people you serve.
9-10 am - Gain a new perspective or tool to support you and your business
10-10:45 am - Open discussion, community support, brainstorming ideas
10:45 -11 am - Clear and actionable takeaways to start your month in forward momentum
Join us to meet business owners in our community. Leave with new tools in your toolbox to help you make connections and build your business!
Free to Attend; Registration is Required
Mindful Connections
Connecting like-hearted entrepreneurs to build relationships, offering support, understanding their passions, and sharing their names in rooms of opportunity.
Every Thursday, 12-1 pm
12:00 - Take 5—a guided meditation with Terri Hamilton of Apparent Connection to ground your week with peace and focus.
12:05-1 pm Round-table Share
Who you are
The gifts you bring to the world
Who you serve
The answer to a Curated question to spark conversation.
If you found this on the web, sign up to join us!
IN-PERSON: Mindful Connections!
Please join us for an IN-PERSON Mindful Connections!
Pressed Cafe
330 Billerica Road,
Chelmsford, MA 01824
02/09/2024
11 am - 1 pm
Co-hosted by Terri Hamilton of Apparent Connections & Jamie Chapman of Chickbook Creative. This unique networking experience allows the space for like-hearted entrepreneurs to learn more about each other, share their gifts with the world, and learn more about each other to share names in rooms of opportunity.
Do you know someone who would like to join us? Forward the email or share the link!
Join us!
Free to Attend; Registration is Required - https://bit.ly/MindfulInPerson02092024
Sacred Action Workshop
You likely have goals for 2024.
How are they going so far? It's easy to be motivated and go full steam ahead for a few weeks before things slow down a bit. Obstacles present themselves. You might suddenly need to clean your house top to bottom. (!)
Join Jamie and Christina of Innate Marketing Genius to move forward on your 2024 goals in an embodied, aligned way. This 90-minute workshop will include:
The role of self-compassion
Stories of our own struggles and discoveries
Time to re-calibrate and re-align with what you truly want for this year
Make a plan for what's next
There will be no high-intensity motivational advice. This is about you finding your own way to do things.
You will walk away ready to move forward on what matters to you in your own authentic way.
In other news…
Feeling #FOMO about Curated Conversations? Join us!
