Our Thinking Mind through Change and Uncertainty.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Change is the only constant in life.”?This quote has never been more relevant than it is in our current times. We are all experiencing or witnessing various degrees of disruption which unfortunately is causing many of us to live on a survival mode. The Financial Times has recently reported a deepening mental health recession where many countries are struggling with a rise in the numbers of people with problems related to anxiety and depression. With so much change and instability worldwide it's no surprise that our mental heath can be severely affected. Our brain can't cope with such a deep level of uncertainty, creating defense mechanisms that often aren't helpful. It can be even more challenging for our brain to cope with all of this if we are also personally going through change and uncertainty in our own careers. Careers happen in the context of our life. We can't approach them as a single entity disconnected from everything else. We can - and must - set healthy boundaries so that we can take care of our overall well-being but our work is influenced by where we are in our life. This is why - as I have said before - career change can be a disruptive process; the degree of disruption varies depending on the personal - and collective circumstances. We are all part of a collective system - whether we like it or not. Our thoughts, our feelings and our actions are influenced by the system or - allow me to tune into spirituality - what is defined as collective consciousness. For those of you who don't know me personally, I have been on a spiritual journey for a few years - it started with Kabbalah and currently I'm exploring different forms of spiritual teachings - some of them stemming from Buddhism. One of common denominators that I have found is that we need to let go of our ego or the thinking mind if we want to be truly present and connect with our true Self.

Our mind plays an important role and can hugely influence the way we navigate a career change. Our mental models can profoundly affect our way to cope with change and uncertainty. Mental models are assumptions, habits of thinking and our stories about the world based on our experience - and sometimes - based on what other people have told us without us having any direct experience. This may work fine or may not. In the extreme we might have what Robert Dilts - NLP trainer - calls The Thought Virus - an idea that we have that is limiting us but we've never had any personal experience.

There are neutral mental models that allow us to navigate the world without falling over (think about the force of gravity). There are limiting mental models. There are empowering mental models. We all have ideas we act on for us that are true for ourselves and about the world. These ideas are mental models that we construct for our experience. They are our best guess at how the world works. They are very often learned from our experience and become habits of thinking through neuroplasticity. They also create expectations (if I do this then this is going to happen). They have no guarantee of truth. They are the best we have learned so far. Very often mental models become a statement about the world because there's no "I" involved. We think as if they are something out there and not a part of our personal experience. Everything gets generalised so we have certain experiences that get generalised and "true" in the present and in the future. This generalisation can have a negative approach if our experience in the past has been limiting and not representative when we try it in the present. The risk is that we end up running our life or dealing with change based on that experience, making things more difficult. The process of change can be even more challenging when that experience is linked to an emotional event. The amygdala - the primitive part of our brain - has a memory of its own and is highly biased to search for things that are very threatening and fear provoking. This is often why adopting a more holistic approach can help us if we want to work on mental models based on emotional events.

We can clearly understand that our mental models are based on partial information. We see with our brain. We depend a lot on our visual senses. "What we see is all there is". That's what we pay attention to. Mental models create confirmation bias. We generalise, we apply to the future, we ignore the context. Ask yourself the following questions to observe your limit mental model.

• What is happening?
• What has been happening over time/What patterns do you see?
• What's influencing the repeating behaviour?
• What beliefs/mental models/assumptions/values stimulate the behaviour?

The iceberg model of thinking can help you move away from a reactive state of mind and explore what's going on beneath what’s visible and understand what is causing the problem to exist in the first place.

Once you're aware of your "invisible world beneath your visible world" you can start working on your limiting mental model by asking the following questions:

• What would have to be true for this to be so difficult?
• What source of information are you holding on to?
• What feedback do you get?
• What new habits can you create to support the change you're experiencing?
• Which environment could be more helpful for you?
• What mental model would you prefer?
• What small action can you do that is safe and tests it, so you can get better feedback on the idea?

Your mental models are not you. Thinking happen to you. You are not your thoughts. Keep testing what you think so you have the best mental models at any time.

#change #uncertainty #mindset #mentalmodels #thinking #careerchange