Team meeting with yourself

The problem: Indecision, doubt, confusion, new challenges
Whenever we leave the comfort zone, think about new strategies, want to break old habits etc, it often happens that your thoughts go in circles for a long while. In the end you often end up confused and choose to procrastinate the topic.

The reason: Uncoordinated thinking
Even if you are not schizophrenic there are different voices inside of you that want to be heard and this is completely normal. They are caused by coincidence of priorities, principles, strategies, different needs and so on - multiplied by the different roles that you play (e.g. as an employee, father or mother, husband or wife, son or daughter or a role in your hobby club). It is not always easy to get everything done without conflicts caused by the different resulting interests.

The solution: Team meeting with yourself
Organize a team meeting with your inner voices. Depending on your preferences you can imagine different locations and styles. I prefer the following imagination: A court-like "arena" where in the front there is the judge which I prefer to call "the moderator". Now for every thought that comes up imagine, that a person in the arena or meeting room stands up and speaks. Always only one person should speak and the very important here is that you should put your thought in clear phrases and name the person that stands up by its role. Possible roles are for instance "the architect (of your life)", "the pessimist" (or I prefer to name this person "the critic"), "the controller", "the (master) builder", "the strategist", "the futurist" or whatever fits. Let the different voices tell their concerns and let the judge or moderator be the mediator of the discussion. You may find that some roles do speak more and other speak less and some roles do more often start the discussion which is already interesting to observe. It shows your dominating parts of your personality. You may also discover personal priorities you were not aware of before. But apart from that, the core purpose of the discussion is the communication between the different voices. You will wonder how often it is possible to find solutions that all or at least most of your voices can live with or how often consens can be found.

Related posts: Focus by decision, Information overflow, Razor sharp focus.

Primary motivator

When you see people's intellect fading away due to dementia, when brain is loosing control and cultivated manners do not cover primary impulses any more then you see that fear is a very primary motivating factor.

But fear is very present in our every-day decisions - not only when the brain is loosing control. If you look behind some of your core priorities and decisions, you may find that a lot of your actions are intended to increase an inner feeling of safety. Or, when you investigate some of your first reactions on other people's arguments in discussions, you may detect yourself feeling attacked. The common root is fear/anxiety. The two core options inherited from our very past when fear comes up is to attack or flee.

But:

• In modern times there are a lot of options between those two extreme reactions. (taking it with humor is a great one).
• You are not alone with your fear. Guess what: Person's attacking you (verbal, nonverbal or physically) may fear you more than you fear them! The best strategy might be, assuring the others that you are coming in peace.
   
• Fear and the instinctive reactions are good advisors in situations of imminent danger (for physical health - e.g. when face-to-face with a saber-toothed tiger), but not in most common daily situations (e.g. in meetings, negotiations, when having discussions with friends or family members etc).
   
• The power of others often is overestimated while the own power is underestimated. In many cases where you might experience fear, there is no reason for it.

A good strategy is to eliminate fear and the automatic reactions wherever there is no actual danger given and replace it with a moment of meditation before any overhasty reaction.

Related posts: Your situation does not suck, The fear, About habits, Plan to get fear done, Something more important, Spam critics, The present moment.