Can we do the equivalent of a ctrl/alt/del refresh on ourselves?

And should we?

Most of us end up managing our day to day lives with a lot of tabs open. Each one representing another thing to do or remember. I don’t know about you, but this is both literal and metaphorical for me.

Every now and then I go through my phone or computer and close all the files, browser tabs, programmes and apps that are running. I do this partly to give myself some space and perspective; a lot that is open has already become defunct and is just obscuring the important stuff. But also because things work better when I do, freeing up memory and capacity to function quicker and more effectively. If I do nothing, my device overheats eventually, and I’m forced to restart everything, normally at a very inconvenient moment.

We rarely think to refresh metaphorically – even though it looks like the same benefits are on offer. And the reason, quite simply, seems to be that we haven’t realised that we can hit refresh on our minds.

We don’t see that underneath all of our busy thinking, remembering and habitual behaviours is a box-fresh performance system ready to help us do whatever we need to. The living intelligence inside all of us is designed to learn, recall, respond and connect.

Whilst we can’t see it, we feel the capacity of the system when we allow our minds to relax. In the work that we do we regularly direct people to recall a time or place that they felt at peace – it’s a shortcut to remind them that they can experience that feeling anywhere and in any situation, if they know where to look. As one of our ‘Pause’ participants recently put it, “it changes a full stop, to a comma.”. That ‘comma’ means we can bring fresh eyes to a situation and see beyond our habitual thinking to get a new perspective.

Take this image for example

Take a moment to observe what you are telling yourself about it. This is probably indicative of your habitual thinking.

Now, pause and let your mind relax, and then hit refresh on the picture. Deliberately come to it with a new perspective and ask yourself; what is happening in the picture now, what has just happened and what is going to happen.

Notice how easy or hard it was to let go of your habitual thinking and see the picture anew. What happened when you came to it fresh?

Our thinking, even the well-worn paths of it, is more flexible that we realise, and by relaxing our minds we naturally get access to more than our habitual thought patterns.  We find the potential to get a new perspective, clarity and responsiveness on anything. We just have to know that, in every moment, underneath the noise is an intelligent supply of fresh thought.