“Where is my mind?” asked The Pixies in the glorious, hazy, sweaty, smoke-filled clubs of the late 80s and early 90s.
…and maybe it remains a useful question.
What mind am I thinking with?
What intelligence am I connecting to?
Am I connecting with my head and thinking with my creative, problem-solving best self?
Am I tuning into with my heart and creating connections and developing empathy and trust?
Am I leading with the passion, vision, and energy of my raw gut instinct?
Am I in flow with these resources and connecting to all of them?
Or am I feeling small and leaning into their shadow sides, leaning into judgement of myself or others?
Maybe I’m connecting to the intelligence of my social group, maybe my team, or a previous company, possibly my family. Could I be tuning into the unspoken rules and desires of those around me or the ghosts of those who went before?
Is this is where my mind is today?
Maybe I’m tuning into a slower more selfless type of intelligence, possibly the intelligence of nature, the intelligence that causes forests to emerge, or the bees to swarm, or the fish to school. How might I be in tune and in flow with nature and the world around me and how do I resist it?
The truth is that we do and have all existed and belonged in a wide variety of relationship systems or groups of people and we all carry some of the judgements, beliefs and stories of those systems with us.
Sometimes they resource us, sometimes unconsciously they keep us stuck or locked in unhelpful conflict.
In organisations too, we often follow the unwritten rules of who is ok or not ok, who has a seat at the table, who comes first.
In your organisations are you lead by head office, are you connecting to the heart of the matter, and are you connected to and guided by an inner purpose?
What might you past organisational self or your future organisational self say to your present organisation if it had a voice?
Who is too big? Who is too small?
What might you make more space for?
Where is your mind?