The Random Mind


“They say you never step into the same river twice”

Imagine how life would be if every morning you woke with a completely different mindset. What if each morning you had a completely random set of thoughts? Or, how would life be, if there were nothing concrete about your beliefs about the world whatsoever? There’s no doubt, if your beliefs about everything were fluid and ever changing, you’d live in a complete and utter state of confusion.

Let’s just say for a moment that your beliefs about your job changed every day. One day you wake feeling in love with your work and the next you don’t. Let’s say that one day you woke believing you loved your wife or husband and the next you didn’t. How would the people around you deal with this?

There stands a very good chance they wouldn’t. Living with such a fickle individual would be intolerable; totally insufferable. So it stands to reason, the vast majority of us, don’t change our beliefs on a daily basis. The human mind does need the kind of stability required to make life predictable and manageable. Too much randomness would make things far too unsettling. We require a certain degree of stability. Those whose minds are broken, without any solidity or stability, struggle to live meaningful lives.

“This brings me to the other side of this equation”

Too much stability and predictability can be just as damaging as too little. We must acknowledge the importance of applying some randomness and change into our lives. Without it, we become bored, and stagnant. When a river stops flowing the water stagnates.

So what methods can we employ to inject the necessary amount of randomness into our lives? Well, we could play ‘The Game of Dice’ as suggested in our workbook. A very simple game.

Make a numbered list of six activities and then throw a die. Whatever number the die falls on, is the activity you must do. We’re leaving things to chance, mixing in a little randomness, with this kind of game.  A good example of the kind of lateral thinking that keeps our lives and minds flowing freely.

The Random Mond

“Now let’s come back to beliefs for a moment”

One of the reasons the game of dice is so effective is its simplicity. Another reason for its power, is the application of chance, allowing it to make decisions for us. Here’s the thing about beliefs: they don’t leave things to chance. If you don’t believe something, the chances of experiencing it, are very slim. In this respect, the list you initially draw up to play our game, will be influenced by your beliefs. As such, will it be truly random? It’s doubtful isn’t it? So we think the best way to play the game, is for someone else, to write the list for you. Consider this list:

1, Go Kayaking 

2, Go Paragliding 

3, Ask a random stranger out for dinner 

4, Quit your job

5, Learn to cook

6, Smash the TV

How would it be if you set yourself the proviso, before playing the game of dice, that you MUST do the very thing the die decides? Would life get interesting? How interesting would it get if someone else made a list for you?

“It works a little like this with beliefs”

When we consider that the beliefs we currently believe – that dictate our waking thoughts – were actually decided by somebody else, we get a feeling for the real lack of control, we actually have over our lives. These are the kind of beliefs made for us during childhood:

1, Work five days a week

2, Chain yourself to routine

3, Stay with the same partner all your life

4, Worry about a pension

5, Chain yourself to debt

6, Money equals happiness

On our workshops you’ll get the chance to choose what you’d rather believe. What would you like to believe about your future? Can you see the advantage to living a more random life? Believe you can. It starts here.

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