Happy Friday — I hope it’s a joyful one!
Status Quo Buster Trivia: On Sunday, over 53,000 runners completed the London Marathon. Among them, an impressive 19-year-old runner etched their name in the history books.
Read on to discover who it is and what they achieved.
For now, I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter, which shines a light on why forgetting can be helpful.
Curious
A reflection on why forgetting bright ideas is helpful:
Bright ideas fill you with enthusiasm, but sometimes they come with pain.
I can’t be the only one who has experienced the rise of a great idea only to be disrupted by a call for your attention elsewhere. Maybe it’s a phone notification, or someone needs your help.
You tend to your business. Upon completion, you return to a pondering state to continue your expansion of the bright idea but…something happened.
It's gone. The bright idea that filled you with clarity and energy has evaporated. But how? How could something so clear disappear into thin air?
This repeated occurrence baffled me for a long time until I gained a new perspective.
While elusive bright ideas can be frustrating, they are a reminder about the nature of thoughts.
If bright ideas come and go, so do negative thoughts and emotions. They rise and fall. Appear and disappear.
Not only that but if an idea can spark one moment and completely disappear a few moments later, what does that mean?
It means you are not your thoughts. You are the space in which thoughts temporarily reside.
If the price you pay to create space between you and your thoughts is forgetting bright ideas, I will gladly pay the tax.
Conscious
Writer, Mark Williams on the relationship between you and your thoughts:
“You come to realize that thoughts come and go of their own accord, that you are not your thoughts.” - Mark Williams
Source: Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World
Change
An exercise to forget what society told you about who you should be:
“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” — Charles Bukowski
Source: Poetic Outlaws
Living free is about stripping back the layers of conditioning you accumulated while growing up until you reconnect with who you are at your core. Living free is living to your own beat.
Exercise: Reflect on the question posed by Charles. Below are some questions to help guide your reflection.
What filled you with enthusiasm and joy as a child?
What activities and interests were you drawn towards?
What were your instincts about how you wanted to live before altering your ways to fit in?
How did you express yourself creatively before worrying about judgement?
What dreams and aspirations did you have before opinions influenced your thoughts?
What values and beliefs felt most true to you before being shaped by external influences?
When did you feel most free?
I hope this exercise helps you connect with what matters most to you. If you’re feeling stuck and ready to make sustainable change or have clarity on what matters but need accountability to achieve the results you’d like, consider my coaching program.
Live Free,
Niall
P.S. To ensure you always receive my emails, please mark this address as ‘not spam’ or add it to your address book.
p.p.s. An important letter will be published this coming Monday. It’s an exploration of one of the most worrying trends in modern-day society. I’ve spent a lot of time on this one. To give it space, I will postpone next week’s Curious.Conscious.Change letter. Normal business will resume the week following.
Status Quo Buster Trivia Answer
19-year-old Lloyd Martin became the youngest known person with Down syndrome to complete the London Marathon.
“Don’t take your dreams out of you. Put the dreams in you and think about what you can do because anything is possible.” - Lloyd Martin
Source: bbc.com
Showing what is possible when you follow your own path.
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About to restack a quote and carry on reading, I am filled with more thought-provoking ideas and reflection. I love this so much! This piece speaks to my current efforts in reconnecting with my old self before life happened, just like everything you powerfully articulated.
I enjoyed this reframing of thoughts. The great headline drew me in - The Power of Forgetting, such a great contradiction (at first glance). Thanks for writing I just subscribed.