On a recent trip to West Virginia (not for leisure but for club soccer), I was in a car with another parent.  He was more tech-savvy than me (actually hooking his phone up to the rental car) and expanding Google Maps with the precision of a surgeon changing our direction with any given obstacle.  He evaded accidents, traffic, and speed traps without hesitation, taking his big city skills to this small state.  When another parent commented on his Google Map mastery, he replied, “You know, there is more than one way to get somewhere.  Google just sends everyone the same way.”  That little quip about Google making decisions for us prompted me to think about how this is true about way more than Maps. It is easy to just do things the same way, the one way we rely on.

I recently started listening and meditating to Waking Up, an app by Sam Harris.  I’m not going to lie, it is deep, consciousness stuff, non-duality stuff, observing subject-object-subject stuff of which clearly I don’t have a deep grasp on since I’m calling it all “stuff." But what I can tell you is it has given me pause to reflect on how I have gotten here. How we have gotten here together. Each one of us has made choices that have landed us right where we are, our jobs, our families, our living situations, our friends, EVERYTHING.  These decisions many times are made without much thought or just with one direction thinking. We do things a certain way without questioning it - like all of us following the same route on Google Maps.  So what might happen if we started making some different choices, we expanded our minds, we started thinking differently?  What would that look like? What if we actually give thought to our thoughts?

Truth be told, I can’t actually tell you exactly how to change your thoughts since my nightstand book pile is heavy on curiosity, creative thinking, asking questions, etc.  What I can tell you is changes in our thoughts, and therefore our lives, start with awareness.    In the guided meditations in Waking Up, Sam teaches us about this kind of broad awareness, to not always just focus on your breath but to be deeply present taking everything in with all of our senses.  When we do this outside of meditation (which is actually the purpose of meditation), we became very aware.  Aware of feelings, thoughts, actions, and reactions.  And then we can become more aware of what we typically do daily thoughtlessly. Being present (aware) with ourselves gives us the space to start making changes and to start changing our habitual thoughts.

If we want something different in our lives, we have to expand our minds and discover a different way of thinking.  We have to wake up.  Then, and only then, we can start leading our lives instead of one-directional-Google-Map-thoughts, leading us.  

PS If you want a free 30 day trial to this wonderful app, email me and I would be happy to send you the link.