First thoughts

Wow, that’s come round quickly! Another Ultimate Blog Challenge (UBC) starting, and this one will be my fourth. The UBC challenges bloggers all around the globe to post every day for a month and provides an opportunity to connect with other bloggers, share your posts more widely and comment on a variety of blogs. It takes commitment and a bit of time, but like so many things, the more you put in the more you get out!

I have gained so much from the previous three challenges: found my authentic writing voice, worked out a lot of the things I want to say, made new friends and learned so much from the variety of blogs I have visited. I am so grateful to Michele and Michelle for running the challenge and making it possible for us to connect with each other, learn and grow.

This month, for the first time, I have a theme. I spent some time recently trying to work out what common ground there is in all the subjects I am interested in and write about. I found that always, almost without exception, I am concerned with how we think.

Where do our assumptions and beliefs come from, and how are we influenced? What causes our prejudices and the divisions in our societies and how can we shine a light on what might be going on? I’m drawn to the exploration of collective judgments and I want to ask questions about them. How we think, and how we encourage each other to think through various media, creates the world we live in.

How do we view ourselves, our lives and our experiences? Once we realise that we are not our minds and that we don’t actually have to be controlled by our thoughts, but we have the power to direct our own thinking, it becomes obvious that we can create our own experiences. It is both wondrous and incredibly painful to accept that my only experience of this world, being human and having conscious existence will be from within this body and in the company of this mind and personality. I can’t get out and I can never truly understand what it means to be anyone except me. And none of us, really, can grasp objective truth.

So I am stuck with being Harriet, until I am not Harriet any more. But I am not stuck with experiencing life the way I’ve always experienced it. I can change my perspective and see the same things a different way. And because life is merely, and wholly, my experience of it, changing the way I see things changes everything.

I can also learn to think much, much less, escape the tyranny of toxic thinking and worry, find myself in the now, and gain peace. I’ve been inspired by reading and listening to people who understand much better than I do how to achieve this. In particular, Eckhart Tolle, the inspirational speaker Richard Wilkins, and Sandy Newbigging, who has just won a Speaker of the Year award. During the coming month, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned from them in more detail.

Day by day, we’ll look at how we think about various subjects and I’ll be asking some questions to help us shine a big spotlight on our beliefs and assumptions. If they are healthy and helpful, then fine; if they keep us trapped or unhappy, let’s see if they are really necessary! Then, later in the month, we’ll explore how we can take control of our thinking rather than letting our thinking control us. And we’ll talk about thinking less and living more.

I’ll be asking for questions and comments, and I’ll invite you to join my growing community. As well as a lively Facebook page, I now have a newsletter which is launching this week. If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of my posts, get links to what has interested me recently and read some snippets of my life that don’t make it into my blog posts, please sign up below. Once a fortnight, right in your inbox, to read whenever suits you. I look forward to connecting with you!