At this time of year with everything seeming to get a little busy, do you find yourself wishing you could just take a moment to step off the conveyor belt? You probably need a moment to let your brain catch up. But we live in a world where there is so much ‘stuff’ assaulting our attention it’s difficult to switch off. Television and social media companies need our unadulterated attention. Worse they need our chimp brains engaged so that they can sell us stuff through adverts. They don’t want us thinking about it too much.

But that’s where we become whole: when we allow our whole brain to process information. The brain is like a shoe shop. It’s quite happy trading with customers all day long but at the end of the day all the shoes need to be put back in the right boxes on the right shelves and the day’s takings need to be added up so the shop knows what works and what doesn’t.

I was once told that every day we should take 10 mins to sit and let our mind wander and try and make sense of the world. Don’t take a cup of coffee because that becomes a coffee break. Don’t take a book because you’ll read it and your doing brain will start again. When I was working with the American Army in Turkey I used to do this every so often. I was enlightening returning to the fray and watching how narrow the thinking was.

The more your ‘doing’ brain takes charge the shorter range your thinking. You lose sight of the goal or where you’re headed and start thinking about the process, the method. I was coaching a flying student today and he told me how his instructor berated him for flying his approach to a landing with a slight curve. The instructor was expecting the student to start with the landing point straight ahead at a set speed and height. The student hit the right speed and height but elected to start approach slightly early because it was more efficient. If the instructor had taken a few seconds to think about what they were trying to achieve he would have appreciated the student’s thought processes. Instead, he was fixated on the ‘method’ rather than the result.

This need to stop and reflect has been recognized in so many cultures. All religions emphasize the need for ceremony and prayer. The ceremony is a way of allowing people to stop ‘thinking’ and the prayer is a time for people to recondition their deep thinking. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis often refers to an analogy of the brain as the elephant and rider. Mostly the elephant lumbers along but it is the rider, the mahout, who will direct the long term plan. He has to persuade rather than force the elephant to take a certain path, so he needs to think well ahead and train the elephant accordingly. It’s only when you stop ‘doing’ and spend time letting your internal shoe shop reorganize that the mahout gets to formulate the long term plan.

Otherwise you’re at the mercy of the elephant and if that elephant wants to spend money it hasn’t got on trinkets, or waste time slumped in front of the telly then the coming Christmas season will seem really busy, expensive and unfulfilling.