You Have to Be Out of Your Mind to Follow Your Bliss

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The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking.  It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.― Albert Einstein

You have to be out of your mind to follow your bliss. Literally. One of humanity’s greatest thinkers unlocked the secret to a blissful life. He demonstrated that each of us participates in creating our world with our thoughts about it. Whether you experience your life as a wondrous adventure or a series of defeats is largely the result of your thinking process. How you think about life events determines how you will experience them. If you want to follow your bliss, Sensitive Soul, you have to get out of your ordinary mind and think like Einstein.

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. ― Albert Einstein

While disappointment, grief and anger are all part of the human experience, you have a choice in how to think about those experiences. If you allow your thoughts to loiter in “bad neighborhoods in your head,” replaying every negative thing that’s happened, you’ll multiply your problems and feel miserable most of the time. If you start the day with a groan, dreading the day before your feet even hit the floor, or you’re expecting the worst so you won’t be disappointed, you’re saying to an interactive universe, More problems, please! But if you’re willing to pivot and instead think like Einstein, you’ll activate your capacity for genius. You’ll start to feel capable most of the time, supported by a benevolent universe. 

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.― Albert Einstein

You can experience more good feelings more often and overcome obstacles with less drama when you entertain possibilities that may seem miraculous. Living as though everything is a miracle in a mixed-bag world surely sounds irrational, even reckless, but living as though nothing is a miracle blinds you to dynamic, intangible and mysterious forces like love, spirituality and beauty.

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.― Albert Einstein

Blending conceptual, abstract or intuitive knowledge with logical thinking helped Einstein illuminate the invisible world. His equations launched technological advances in medicine, nuclear power and the inner workings of the sun, yet he transparently admitted to the limits of his own linear thinking. His inventions were not only the product of his equations, he asserted, but also something that may be described as miraculous:

I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence and the truth comes to me. ― Albert Einstein

You can experience more miraculous moments where truth comes to you, by tapping into both your linear-thinking mind and your conceptual-thinking mind. Changing how you think will change what you experience. It will broaden your perspective and allow you to perceive an infinite number of potentials for any situation you face. 

Every day, you use both sides of your brain to think both linearly and conceptually:

Linear thinking is sequential. One thing leads to another in a series of steps. Problems are solved by applying information learned from one situation to another. Predictions are made based upon cause and effect. Rules, patterns and formulas provide consistency and clarity.

Conceptual thinking is abstract. Connections are perceived between seemingly unrelated things. Problems are solved by considering multiple factors at once and drawing conclusions from a variety of sources. Predictions are made based on input from the non-rational mind.

Shifting fluidly between linear and conceptual thinking helped Einstein convert his abstract thought experiments into practical inventions. You can think like Einstein by  using your conceptual mind to experiment with envisioning the best possible outcome while using your linear mind to make a plan. A common obstacle you may face inside yourself is the negative attitudes about abstract thinking you’ve inherited. You may automatically censor yourself, saying things like, that doesn’t make sense, it will never work, that’s just wishful thinking. Your intuitive gifts have been denied, dismissed or diminished in importance in a society which rewards the efforts of linear-thinking lawyers more than it does conceptual-thinking artists.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.― Albert Einstein

You can reclaim your intuitive hunches and optimize linear thinking with practice by validating your non-rational thoughts. Give a little room for your imagination to wander before judging events good or bad. Notice connections among seemingly unrelated events. Learn to tolerate ambiguity so that you can collect and evaluate data from both rational and non-rational sources before forming an opinion. When you start to switch between logic and intuition more naturally, you’ll generate novel, elegant solutions that work on multiple levels. 

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.― Albert Einstein

Your curiosity awakens the open-minded experimenter in you who asks “what if?” and “why not?” instead of “who’s at fault?” Solution-oriented thinking generates feelings of self-confidence rather than feelings of blame, judgment or doubt. Tapping into curiosity inspires you to try something new, formulate a hypothesis and evaluate the effect. Remember that it is your willingness to face, understand and overcome problems that makes you happy, Sensitive Soul, not the absence of problems.

Reality is merely an illusion albeit a persistent one. ― Albert Einstein

Developing your capacity for higher level thinking helps you gain a greater depth of understanding so that you can navigate reality and illusion more skillfully. It lets you zoom in and zoom out on situations, toggling seamlessly between intuition, practical details and big picture ideas. You unleash the power of both your capacity for creativity and your databank of accumulated knowledge when you learn to think with your whole mind.

To solve problems like a genius, get curious about creating the best possible outcome for a complex situation you face:

• Reframe problems as challenges you’re confident you’ll overcome. 

• View setbacks as feedback, rather than failure. 

• Wonder about novel solutions that will benefit all concerned.

Adopting an experimental model of life lets you drop any unproductive drama, worry or judgment more easily. It lets you redirect the energy usually spent rehearsing what went wrong and apply it to brainstorming practical solutions. It puts the brakes on emotional reactions long enough to give you the perspective you need to form an intelligent response. 

You can suspend ordinary linear thinking without abandoning logic. 

You can think conceptually while staying firmly grounded in practical reality. 

You can think like Einstein, but you have to break old habits of thinking first.

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.― Albert Einstein

To think like a genius, you have to quit complaining, criticizing and comparing. You have to stop keeping score, controlling or playing the victim. You have to be willing to not be right. You have to believe yourself to be an intrinsic, miraculous part of a benevolent universe, both capable and worthy of bliss. Suspend what you already know long enough to wonder what else in the universe could be possible for you. Get out of your mind and follow your bliss, Sensitive Soul.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. ― Albert Einstein

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