Thinking about my thinking

When I get stuck with something, I inspect my thinking first. What am I telling myself about this? How am I representing the situation? I often find that the way I am thinking is creating a large part of the problem I am experiencing.

I started Strategic Coach years ago. Dan Sullivan’s idea of thinking about your thinking is something I keep coming back to. Three tools from there have stayed with me: the Impact Filter, Strategy Circle and Experience Transformer.

The Impact Filter helps clarify the purpose of a project, why it matters and what a successful result would look like. The Strategy Circle starts with a desired result, identifies the obstacles and turns them into strategies and actions. The Experience Transformer looks back at an experience, what worked, what did not and what to change next time.

I use these tools constantly. They give me a way to put my thinking where I can look at it.

In NLP, we talk about our internal representation of the world. That phrase means something to me. My thinking is the way I am representing what is happening. I bring my own beliefs and interpretations to it, and then experience the situation through them.

I have been married for 19 years. I doubt I would have managed that without understanding this. My mind has tried to convince me that my life is shit many times. It still tries every day. Being able to inspect that thinking has helped me question the story I am being told.

This has saved me a lot of money too. Before I act on a problem, I want to understand how I have framed it. Sometimes a change in that framing changes what I decide to do.

I keep coming back to that question: how am I thinking about this?