1 hour a week will change life

You will get rid of obsessive thoughts and your consciousness will become clear.

George Shultz, US Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989, retired every week for an hour in his office and pondered. He took only paper and a pen with him. The purpose of such an exercise is to distract from everyday affairs and just think. To do this, let go of your mind, do not try to control it.

In this case, the network of passive brain operation is activated. It is responsible for processing and understanding of the events that occurred, identifying links.

Give consciousness to escape from specific tasks. This is more useful than driving it into a rigid concentration framework.

The essence of the exercise is to move away from the two main stressors that deprive us of productivity:

• constant flow of external stimuli (calls, messages, urgent tasks);

• forced concentration (when we force ourselves to focus and do business).

How to organize an hour of reflection

1. Write thoughts on paper

All the week we put some thoughts back on the table to focus on work and other matters. On their own they will not disappear. They appeared for some reason. If this cause is not understood, thoughts will come back again and again. This will distract and expend our psychic energy.

In psychology, this phenomenon is called non-constructive repetitive thoughts.

The first stage of the exercise is to draw out of the mind as many repetitive thoughts as possible and transfer them to paper.

Just sit down and try not to think about anything, as during meditation. You will inevitably have thoughts and feelings. Write them down, but do not get hung up on one thing. Continue for 5-10 minutes or until thoughts cease to occur. Most likely, for the first time there will be a lot of them. Do not be intimidated by this.

2. Think about your relationship

At the heart of every relationship are desires, expectations and obligations. We want something from ourselves and from others, and they are from us. We are waiting for something from ourselves and others, they are from us. We promise something to ourselves and others and believe that others need something to us.

Analyze your records made earlier, in terms of relationships.

• To which of the people in your life do these thoughts belong?
• What do they express: desire, expectation or commitment?
• Evaluate your feelings in the same way. Be honest with yourself.
• All that is not related to these three categories, for the time being put off.

Think whether desires, expectations and commitments are correlated on both sides in every respect. When there are discrepancies, relations become strained.

3. Build a hypothesis and test it in action

For example, you found a misunderstanding in dealing with someone, differences in desires and obligations. Think about how you can change the situation. Include fantasy, imagine several options for the development of events. Formulate an action plan for the next week.

Your plans are hypotheses that need to be checked in action.

If the plan did not work, then you misjudged the situation. Next week, think about what you missed. Construct a new hypothesis. Repeat this process again and again.

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Do you think 1 hour of thinking a week can make life better?