Common Sense

What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?

It’s the simple things that people often simply don’t believe in that cause so many problems in life. We are taught to think that life is difficult, complex, challenging, and a battle from the cradle to the grave.

That simply isn’t true. What needs teaching in schools is clarity and the blindingly obvious. What confuses us is our mind.

Someone very dear to me that I respect enormously has no confidence. They don’t want to get a day job because they’re fed up with being hurt and abused at work. They recently worked for a very bad company who refused to implement safety guidelines and my friend had a very nasty fall.

The lack of confidence, leading to a challenging mindset to live with, stops them from making the most blindingly obvious decisions they need to make. But then no one teaches you the power of simplicity.

Suggestions and why

Simplicity has to start with the right mindset. Strip out the anxious voice, the don’t deserve voice, the voice that believes that you’re so inept you can’t make anything work, and ask yourself what you need to do to solve your challenges. Focus only on that.

I’m not saying it’s easy, I know it isn’t, and I wish so much that I’d known this years ago, at least I can share it though. But two things that need teaching in schools are mind control and simplification.

The more you complicate the harder the solutions are to find. The more you allow your mind to worry rather than focus, the harder decisions and actions are.

I’m now going to be blindingly simple, in a way that will probably sound ridiculous. So please understand that I speak as a person who was crippled by anxiety, worthlessness, and feelings of being too stupid to make anything work for over 40 years!!!!

Two degrees and I landed up back in the same career. Think about that if you want feelings of failure.

You must find a way to move past your mind to logic and facts, by creating inner peace, and you must simply ignore that inner chatterbox.

If you had a friend who’d been moaning to you for years, as I moaned and mithered (hesitated) for years, you get to the point that you just want to tell them to shut up! Don’t you? People became frustrated with me, so I have no laurels to rest on here,

Plus I had a laurel hedge at one house that was the bane of my life, 15 feet tall and nearly took out the telephone cables before my ex deigned to ‘trim’ it. So I don’t even like laurels. Hope that gave you a smile amongst all this simplicity 🤣.

So, one very simple answer is to just say to your anxious, worrying, stressed, mind “shut up and let me think!”

I spent so much time with a tape loop of ‘shut up shut up shut up’ going through my mind it wasn’t true. To avoid that you meditate.

For beginners just put on music that you love, preferably with headphones, close your eyes and let your mind and body sink into the music. Preferably orchestral, no words, you don’t want to be focusing on them. You want to be focusing on allowing the tension to drift quietly from mind and body.

You see, you wouldn’t exercise on a broken leg would you? Whip off the plaster and go for a 5 mile run? But you will allow your mind to keep going, going, going. Dealing with a life you hate, a job you can’t stand, plus all of life’s challenges, and never give it a rest.

If the mind is tense the body is tense

Meditation is probably the best path to clarity. A tense body pulls muscles, a tense mind can’t think straight.

Then toss in some good old common sense: I have a problem what is the solution? What do I need to do? Beyond planning that answer to those questions is not think and worry. Nor is it focus on the past as your why you can’t solve those problems. Put it down and be in the now. Because you are.

The generous present moment

In any moment is the opportunity to do the right thing for you.

Schools should teach life skills beyond the practical. The mind creates our life, we need to know how to manage it, make the best of it, and turn it into our super power.

There is so much I wish I’d known at 16, I was even going to write book on that subject, that would have made my life a thousand times better. School is an excellent place to introduce this thinking, create discussion, and brainstorm ways to manage life using your infinitely powerful mind.

As you can see though, simplicity is more than simple common sense. It’s softness, flowing with not challenging life, and looking at what needs to be done rather than allowing your mind to derail you.

Own your mind.

Best love as always

Amorah – Deb