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  "description": "Let's call mind out on one of its most nonsensical arguments, shall we? 🤨",
  "path": "/but-if-i-ignore-my-thinking/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-24T06:00:12.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gilespcroft.com",
  "tags": [
    "in charge",
    "Great Filter",
    "we can't experience anything else",
    "driving the bus",
    "“But my mind has been quite helpful recently!”The thing is, it *would* say that, wouldn’t it? 🤔The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft",
    "Can’t make up your mindMaking decisions: when to use ‘Free-flow mode’ 🌊The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft"
  ],
  "textContent": "__“All of your emails hit the mark. Some hit THE spot!__\n__This is a good one Giles, very good indeed 👌”__\n~ Cam (Subscriber)\n\nGet YOUR Daily Reminders\n\nOh minds, how I do love them.\n\nSo keen are they to fight their corner (because they're in charge, yeah?) that they'll do _anything_ to justify their input and their worth.\n\nIt doesn't bear thinking about – the number of conversations I have had with clients (or more often not-clients, because this one's the mental equivalent of the Great Filter – it brings the shutters right down on exploration) that included a variation of a statement that began:\n\n> _“But if I ignore my thinking…”_\n\n[insert Bad Thing Happening™ here]\n\n🙄\n\nFirst on its list of arguments is _“…I won't get anything done!”_ which is just _ridiculous_.\n\nThe mind says:\n\n> 📦🗣️: _I keep you motivated. I come up with the good ideas. I do all the hard work. I get you to take action._\n\nThe corollary of which is:\n\n> 📦🗣️: _If you stop paying attention to me and doing what I say, then you will be unmotivated, out of ideas, lazy and apathetic._\n\nBut it takes the very lightest of observation to discover that it's actually the _opposite!_\n\nJust think back to, or better still, notice, the next time you have a good idea. It will come to you via the _medium_ of thought (because we can't experience anything else) but it will have a certain characteristic to it: it'll be new.\n\nYou've been batting away at some problem or other—mulling it over, trying to figure it out, brainstorming solutions, trying to find a way forward—and getting nowhere.\n\nAnd then… inspiration strikes!\n\n😯\n\nIt doesn't have to be like a flash of lightning or Moses delivering tablets of stone to you or anything, it's just a fresh take on things. A perspective you'd not seen before.\n\nNow, here's the question that I want you to slow down and answer, honestly:\n\n🤔\n\nDid ‘you’ do that – did ‘you’ come up with it?\n\nReally??\n\nI say ‘honestly’ because it takes a little humility (something the mind is not good at) to relax into the inconvenient truth that no, ‘you’ did _not_ come up with that new idea.\n\nOne minute it wasn't there, and the next minute it was.\n\nOh, for sure, you did _loads_ of analysis and pondering _before_ it happened (and if your mind is anything like mine, you'll have had a fair bit of self-satisfied thinking _after_ it happened too), but are you open to the idea that none of that analysis actually _caused_ the fresh new idea—something you could call an ‘insight’—to arrive?\n\n😐\n\nIn fact, I'm willing to bet that if you _did_ turn your attention to this matter and either examine past experiences or be a bit more aware of ongoing situations, you'd notice that ‘good ideas’ tend to happen under a number of commonly-reported situations:\n\n  * In the shower\n  * Waking up/falling asleep\n  * Driving\n  * Out in nature\n  * Engrossed in conversation\n  * Focused on something creative\n\n\n\n…all of which have one thing in common: **you're _not_ busy analysing stuff.**\n\nYour mind's _not_ fixated on the problem. The mind's not even there! (Certainly not the bit that makes out like it's driving the bus.)\n\nSo when it comes to the _“…I won't get anything done!”_ argument, we can see it's actually more like:\n\n> 💖: _Life keeps you motivated. Presence comes up with the good ideas. Wisdom does all the hard work. Taking action is your essential nature._\n\nAnd:\n\n> 📦: _If you carry on paying attention to the mind and doing what it says, then you will constantly get in the way of that natural process, immediately stifle good ideas, feel lazy, and remain stuck._\n\nWhich is why it's perfectly ok to ignore your thinking.\n\nAnd you'll only see this for yourself, when you give it a go.\n\n💟\n\nGiles\n\nSIGN UP FOR THE DAILY REMINDERS newsletter\n\nWant to start __every__ day with helpful, insightful content like this? The Daily Reminder is a quick, lighthearted email that arrives in your inbox every morning, to help keep you grounded in reality, so that you get to __‘Think less, and live more.’__\n\n __“They feel like a moment of stillness in a world of madness.” ~__ Neil, UK\n\n __“One of those small things with big impact. Honestly, just sign up!”__ ~ Paula, UK\n\nGET YOURS NOW\n\n### Related\n\n“But my mind has been quite helpful recently!”The thing is, it *would* say that, wouldn’t it? 🤔The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft\n\nMore mind-nonsense.\n\nCan’t make up your mindMaking decisions: when to use ‘Free-flow mode’ 🌊The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft\n\nThe two modes of thinking we have at our disposal.",
  "title": "“But if I ignore my thinking…”",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-25T07:57:57.762Z"
}