Making Your Dreams Come True - Einstein’s Little Secret

By: Norman Tonelli, L.M.H.C.

January 9, 2004

 

Recently, I was reading one of my favorite books entitled, The Power of Focus, by Jack Canfield, and I stumbled upon a simple, yet incredible idea. It seems that Albert Einstein regularly practiced the habit of taking one day off per week just to think. He had a special thinking chair and one day per week he would just sit in that chair… and think. At first this may sound overly simplistic and unproductive”. We are a people who need to be moving and physically active to feel like we’re not wasting time. But take notice…He’s Albert Einstein for God’s sake!

 

I gave this idea a little thought and it occurred to me that many of the ideas that have inspired my most important life changing decisions and successes came while I was just laying around, or sitting around doing nothing but thinking. So I gave it a try. I started to devote as much of my free time to posing questions to myself, regarding challenges or problems that I was wrestling with. While sitting or jogging or driving or lying around I’d ponder a situation and just let my mind comfortably attempt to come up with as many possible solutions or explanations it could come up with. It became a hobby. A fun thing to do. A way to just regularly use this natural computer that we all have to ponder, dream, resolve, experiment or fantasize.

 

 We all need time to both plan and execute our lives, but we habitually spend and excessive amount of time in the execution phase doing what author Stephen Covey explains as “climbing up the ladder of success without first making sure that it’s leaning against the right wall. Effective living takes as much focus on the planning phase as it does on the action phase. It costs nothing to think. It’s something you can do while doing many “no-brainer” activities.

 

The trick is posing questions to your brain actually and allowing it to answer those questions. Your brain will automatically answer any question you ask it. It is sort of like the Magic 8 ball but a lot more accurate. Incidentally, the difference between an optimistic state of mind and a negative one lies in the type of questions that one is asking oneself. If you start with the premise that the mind will answer any question that you ask it, then it follows that if you ask positive questions or choose to focus on positive things, then the mind will try to focus on positive answers or solutions.

 

Try this. The next time you are faced with any problem big or small, immediately ask yourself a solution oriented question such as how can I solve this or what’s good about this, or how could I make this better. Your brain will start churning out all kinds of ideas, some great, some not so great. If you asked yourself a negative oriented question such as why does this always happen to me, or why does my life stink, your brain would seek to answer that question with a negative evaluation. Just sit back and enjoy the process of letting your mind wander through possible scenarios. It’s sort of like daydreaming. Then start putting aside special times to do this or it will just be one of those neat things that you learn, but never do anything about.

 

Expect to feel like you should be doing something more “productive”. Once again, we live in a society that links stillness with time wasting. This is not so at all. Action without adequate planning presents the illusion of progress, but you in fact may be getting closer and closer to the wrong destination! Believe me this works. Since practicing this “time to think” technique, I have created major changes in my personal and professional life that would have never happened otherwise. You can do this!

 

 

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