A day of DEEP THINKING

Towards the end of 2019 I was itching to release myself from the pain that the routine of school lunches, washing, cleaning and time obligations brings to my soul, but on their first day back to school this week I couldn’t launch myself out of bed fast enough to get their bags packed, their lunches ready and on the road to get the beloved routine back in motion.

Amazed that words like “beloved routine” would ever come out of my mouth the day ahead was set to one full of exploration, learning, and evolution not just for the kids getting back to school but most importantly for me. You see, last week in the depths of school holidays I had made the decision to take Monday off of all of my working parent duties for a day by the pool of deep thinking.  

Now although the words deep thinking might be quite self explanatory, I thought I would share more about the how to, and encourage you to give it a go. The one commitment you do need to make, is do it without an inkling of guilt.

It started with gathering all the things that I would need for the day and some of my great loves - my Bookbinder journal, my new favourite pen, litres of water, sunscreen and a big brimmed hat to plant myself by the pool on an amazing sun shining Marlburnian day.

I had just sat down in the office to print out something to read, when I heard a knock at the door. My first response was “far out… this is my day, I really don’t want to have to see or talk to anyone.” Now living in a rural community I am coming to accept that this is just a normal thing, however these two faces I had never met before. As I opened the door and they introduced themselves I realised that they were two lovely women from Jehovah’s Witness’ from in town. On a normal day I would have quickly found an excuse to exit the conversation, but I decided I would try something different. I allowed them to speak, to share, to read me a scripture and although we quickly realised we had different views of God it was nice to be able to take the time, without judgment of their intention and to share those moments together.

With the seed of deep thinking planted a few months ago when a fellow explorer of the mind and I - Lillian Grace and I had a wonderful conversation when we connected about having her involved in Entrepreneurial Women with Purpose. I reached back out last week to get some tips to her deep thinking process to solve some questions, challenges, dig for greater meaning, enable clarity and truth, and answer some questions that had been niggling my thoughts.

Here are the tips she shared

1. Find your best thinking space - for me it was by the pool, barefoot in my togs (a word, as an Aussie I am still challenged by)
2. Think about the ways you best express your raw thoughts - for me this is with my Bookbinder journal and favourite writing pen
3. Start by writing down words that are important to you - mine began with freedom, ability, love, kindness, humility, vulnerability, commitment, ponder, meaning, creativity and flow. This helps to bring your thinking into focus on the essence of who you are and what I wanted to achieve
4. Spend time articulating the core purpose of what you are trying to think about - for me I was trying to get back to the root of Entrepreneurial Women with Purpose that I wanted to redefine and connect again to its purpose.
5. It’s important to remove any assumptions without just building from old ideas, and going back to the purpose and exploring different ways to achieve it.
6. If at any point in the process your words or your mind are not in a state of flow - temporarily remove yourself and come back a little later - this happened for me and I decided to go and pick fruit from the garden, clean out the water trays in the garden for the bee’s, give our chooks some gratitude for their daily delights and nurture the peach tree with some glistening water drops.

Although some of the layers I have brought to the surface and worked through have deeper layers of complexity I was excited at the end of this process to realise that the project that I wanted clarity on was truly aligned to my purpose and what I had originally set out for it to be.

The deep thinking process is a commitment that I will continue to make time for once a month - a day just for me, to give myself the time and space that I am forever preaching about.