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Go Nonverbal
We’re taught from infancy that words have power and that thinking things through is the path to success.
While this may be partially true, it’s not the whole story by any means. In fact, by itself it’s a highly distorted view of the whole. And it leads people to believe that the mind is in control and that its endless thinking and processing is necessary for success.
The mind is an amazingly talented storyteller. It creates stories to explain every circumstance and situation — and in almost every case, those stories are completely unreal and untruthful fiction.
So I encourage my clients to just get out of their minds. (Some of them would say I do a bit more than just “encourage” them!)
Feel what your body is telling you, what your instinct and intuition are telling you. When you listen to your body, instinct, and intuition, you’ll see that their messages are consistent with each other — they are, as it were, singing in harmony. But the mind’s messages, the stories, thoughts, and emotions it produces, are often out of tune, dissonant and painful.
However, you can’t control your thoughts, and minds are made to think. So how do you keep from getting pulled in by your mind’s stories, sucked into the pain, fear, and insecurity that those stories typically create?
There are several options for climbing out of the verbal loops that the mind loves to create and process. Here are a few for you to try.
Feel
Along with learning to live in your mind comes the lesson to stay out of your body and your emotions. Stoicism, whether about physical or emotional pain, is considered a virtue in today’s society.
While I’m not suggesting that you wear your emotions on your sleeve, discovering and acknowledging your feelings is a giant step in getting out of your mind and experiencing the power of going nonverbal.
Take a moment right now — and again and again whenever you feel overwhelmed and crowded by your thoughts — to check in with your emotions and scan your body. How does it — how do you — feel? Where — emotionally and physically — are you tense, and where are you relaxed? What hurts, and what tickles?
Feel without stories and without labels. These are unprocessed, natural feelings; there’s no need to adulterate them with thoughts.
Let images speak
Images are a powerful and eye-opening way of learning more about yourself.
Pick up a magazine and page through it quickly, without getting trapped by the words. Without thinking, without analyzing why you’re drawn to an image, tear out the pages of images that attract your attention. (Magazines covering travel, nature, or other lifestyle topics will be more fruitful hunting grounds for this exercise than business- or news-related publications.)
Lay the images you’ve pulled on a table and just feel your way into them. Experience the mystery, the exuberance, the whimsy, and yes, the pain, frustration, or anger — whatever it is that comes up within you.
You may find yourself rearranging them into a layout that speaks more clearly to you. You might find yourself reaching for scissors to cut out what’s meaningful. And you may want to glue them down to a piece of cardstock or poster-board so you can retain the layout and revisit the images over and over again.
When my wife Ellen was finding her way from a job that no longer held her interest to a new and amazing job that she loves, she worked extensively with images. Allowing them to help her define what she wanted, to understand what would give her joy and satisfaction, was a deeply transformational journey for her.
Nonverbal words
Some of my clients turn to poetry as a way of escaping their endless loops of thought while still being able to express their experience and emotions.
Poetry connects you with emotion and images in a non-linear, non-logical way that, even though it is using words, still allows you to step outside of your habitual ways of thinking.
Next time you’re feeling especially trapped in your mind, sit down with your computer or with paper and pen and try poetry as a doorway out.
Observe without judgment
The mind loves to produce judgments — which, after all, are just more stories. So you may find yourself thinking that this feeling or that experience is “better” than another feeling or experience, or that you “shouldn’t” feel this way, but instead “should” feel that way.
As you observe your feelings, as you look at the images that draw your attention, as you create the poetry that speaks from your experience, also observe your mind forming judgments about those feelings, images, and poems. And choose not to believe them. They’re just more words, after all.
The mind is an amazing tool, but it makes a very bad conductor of your life. Thoughts are addictive, and just as any addiction causes damage, so too can your thoughts.
The more consistently you use these approaches — and any other nonverbal way of being that calls to you (such as taking a walk on a beautiful day) — the more you’ll experience the non-thinking realms of being, and the thinking that emerges from that different place.
“As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.” Sir Henry Rider Haggard, British author, 1856-1925, from King Solomon’s Mines
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare, British playwright, 1564-1616, from Hamlet
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