Simple or Profound? Change Your Mindset!

I've been thinking a lot about the simplicity of some sayings and some things I've read and how they seem so simple. Keep calm. Don't take yourself so seriously. Laugh more. Pause. Breathe. Change your mindset.

Ironically, I applied the simple mantra of my trainer to think about it: Change your mindset.

It's all about mindset. Is it simple so it's cliche and irrelevant? Or is it simple so that it's profound and highly relevant? That's up to you. I've read reviews of books that say things like...good book, but nothing new here just the same stuff. I understand that, but sometimes the same stuff is what we need.

The same stuff at a different time in our lives so it sinks in differently because we can receive it differently. The same stuff as a reminder. The same stuff that we can interpret with new eyes. The same stuff that we can peel off another layer of what we never realized had layers in the first place.

Something as simple as Khris's change your mindset has taken on so many layers over time. I just realized this morning as I was thinking about things that back when I was teaching, I used change your mindset without naming it that every summer when I examined all of my teaching strategies and attitudes to try to improve things.

Something as simple as if I was going to give students pens or pencils if they forgot them was a matter of mindset. I thought about all of those things beforehand. Some teachers were of the mindset that they needed to teach students responsibility and never gave students pens or pencils. They even went so far as to have certain punishments attached to forgetting them.

I decided that my mindset about that particular issue was that I loved my students and that everyone forgets things. I remember how I felt as a student when I would be in class and I had no pencil. I would feel panic. I didn't want my students to feel that. I didn't want to add to that feeling by punishing them. So I always had pencils in my drawer for them. I went so far as to give them a pencil with a smile and sharpen it for them if they asked for one.

I didn't leave a cup of pencils out on the shelf. I tried that one year and they just disappeared and I was constantly replenishing them. But when I kept them in my drawer and they had to ask me for one and I said, sure and handed them one with a smile, I felt a connection to the kid. I made them feel like they could be safe at school even if they made a mistake. And I didn't care if they forgot to give it back. Usually I told them to keep it for their other classes.

That mindset made things so much nicer for me and for my students.

Things we learn in meditation and yoga and in lots of the books related to those types of things seem simple. But are they just simple or are they profound as well? When I have read the same quotes or books at different times in my life, I have understood them in different ways.

I may have been in a different emotional state or I may have revealed or uncovered an additional meaning to it.

Recently in a yoga class, the teacher was talking about the mantras and about breathing and she gave us the mantra of inhale let, exhale go. She kept talking about the mind wandering and all the stuff that yoga teachers always talk about with meditation and at some point she said something like the idea is to bring yourself back to the breath or whatever keeps you grounded in reality.

Grounded in reality. That hit me like a yoga brick! Nobody every said it like that. Or I never heard it like that before. It's not about clearing your mind and letting go so much that everything is gone. You're clearing your mind and letting go so that you're HERE!!! You only focus on the breath and the mantra to be here NOW! IN YOUR BODY!

When Khris talks about emotion and logic, I think we can have both if we are in our body. If we stay calm and feel. When I let my emotion take me out of my body and do and say things that I don't have control over is when I get in trouble. I'm not grounded.

When I recently read to pause and feel what your body is telling you, that is a way to ground yourself. You are in your body. Listening to your body. You being here now. Experiencing the emotion or feeling and letting your body tell you things.

But you are also letting your mind (logic) work. You are bringing yourself back to reality. Calming yourself. Not letting those crazy wandering thoughts (emotions) take over.

Logic and emotion are living together. One is not taking over so the other doesn't exist. They are existing together so that logic helps you understand what your emotion is telling you or how it is fooling you or protecting you, so that you can feel it and use it and respond to it or not respond to it yet.

It's a meditation of sorts. It's simple and profound. It's not just simply pause. There's work to do. Just like with my pencils. I had to decide to give pencils to my students with love. But that wasn't the end of it. I had to do that every time.

I couldn't get frustrated if 7 people asked for a pencil during one class. Or if the same kid asked for a pencil day after day.  I had to smile every time. I couldn't slip and give a mini-lecture and say, try to remember your pencil tomorrow. I had to smile and give it with love. EVERY TIME!

Simple isn't always easy. Profound is deep for a reason. Change your mindset!

Don't worry. The simple lessons will keep showing up and giving you more chances to dig deeper!

P.S. When you dig deep in the mud, you just dig farther. The mud is still mud. You just keep digging. So when people say something is deep, people expect the lesson to be different somehow the more you dig. But it's not, it's the same mud or dirt. You're just digging deeper. So don't always look for something new when you're looking for a deep concept. It's just mud. You just need to keep at it and dig more. It's more beautiful mud. Not necessarily different mud.