Is your life running on autopilot? You deserve recognition for being able to maintain your life, family, or work at the level you have. Kudos! Now, what do you believe could be possible if you got in the driver’s seat?

Sometimes thinking is the last thing in the world you want to do. In the past, my life had largely been a reactionary one and my thinking and decisions were simply done out of necessity in order to manage events and keep my life humming in maintenance mode, following my thoughts, following other’s thoughts and ideas, following the way life happened to turn out.

Here’s the thing, we are all leaders in some capacity whether we lead people at work, parent children, or are influential in our social groups.

Often we shirk that responsibility, and default to allowing other people to run our thinking and decisions. Even when we believe we’ve managed it ourselves, it often turns out to have been our paradigm and previous programming or mental conditioning playing out.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

You can change that and be more effective as a leader, even if only of your own life, by simply taking some time alone with yourself, in creative thinking. Just thinking. Consider some of the benefits of taking time for what Dr. David Schwartz called managed solitude. (Read The Magic of Thinking Big)

  1. Being alone with yourself, thinking, connects you to the inner you. This strengthens and develops our confidence and stability.
  2. Stopping the mental chatter of your active mind takes you past all the mental conditioning keeping you in your current “comfort zone”.
  3. Two types of thinking are very effective in these times alone:
    • Directed thinking. Think about an issue or a problem you need to work through, objectively, and discover clarity and focus that you hadn’t previously experienced.
    • Undirected thinking. Allow your subconscious mind to access your memory banks and channel the contents to your conscious mind. This can be incredibly powerful in self-evaluation or discovering how you can do better at something.

Try it and take 30 minutes every day, at a time when you are fresh and alert, to be alone thinking.
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When I first tried this, I was surprised to feel the tension in my head and body float away. On several occasions I experienced new insights and solutions regarding things I had not previously been clear about. I’ve since become addicted.

The floor is open. What would you add to this article?

[reminder]How much time do you take to be alone with your thoughts? What tools do you use to direct your life and move yourself to the next level?[/reminder]