|
|
More featured articles
Books by Brenda Anderson
Tuning In
excerpt from 'Playing the Quantum Field: How Changing Your Choices
Can Change Your Life' by Brenda Anderson, New World Library, March 2006
Nearly everyone has heard that we tap into only 10 percent of our brainpower.
Tuning in, however, enables you to override physical limitations and emotional
obstacles and tap into the other 90 percent. It also reduces stress. You access
new possibilities when you don't have any agenda other than being present to
what's happening in the moment. This enables you to connect with others on an
intangible but nevertheless very real level...
When you tune in, you optimize all your senses,
including your sixth sense. You miss these valuable insights when your mind is
in the past or future. When you tune in, you become more open - not guarded, not
protective, not on the attack, not trying to figure out what to do next. This
requires a great deal of concentration, particularly when you bounce from one
activity to the next. You start noticing how your boss interacts with others and
what works best. You get a sense of your child's state of mind before she even
says a word. You instinctively say the right thing to your friends. When you
tune in, you interact better with everyone in your life because you understand
what matters to them.
A colleague once told me about a Carnegie Mellon
study showing that spending two hours on the Internet per week can alter your
brain chemistry (including levels of endorphins and estrogen). You go on
autopilot and start operating like a machine because you're not interacting with
humans: What's the task? Get it done. Do it fast. What's next? We lose our
warmth, our personality, and our perspective, and we become predisposed, without
making a conscious shift, to being less than our best with other people. In
other words, we forget to notice.
Have you ever been working on your home
computer, and when your child or spouse walks in to talk to you, you look at
them as if to say, Go away! I'd prefer to look at my email? We have more
challenges tuning in than ever before. You can use cues like the ringing of your
phone to stop, get present, and get human before even saying
"Hello."
When another person makes the effort to tune in to me, I feel
energized, appreciated, and heard. Think about the doctors and dentists you've
particularly liked. It's probably because they looked you in the eye and saw you
as a person, not as a diagnosis. Do the same for the people you love
most.
Noticing shifts in the energy and makes room for a different
outcome. You don't always have to have the answer. When you've tuned in, you
feel present, calm, detached, and alert. When you tune out, you feel distracted,
spacey, and not particularly connected to others. You may have your own cues
about these two states. When I tune out, I feel disconnected and out of sorts,
and when I tune in, I immediately feel focused and curious.
*The above
article is an excerpt from Playing the Quantum Field: How Changing Your Choices
Can Change Your Life by Brenda Anderson, New World Library, March 2006. Printed
with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA.*
|
|
|
