Thinking with the wisdom of the heart
by Françoise Gallet, coach & facilitator
March 2024
Thinking. It colours almost everything we do. If our thinking is good, it’s likely our decisions are good. If our decisions are good, it’s likely our outcomes are good. This stands to reason. But there’s much more to thinking well than you’d think!
For starters, there’s a lot to appreciate about our capacity to think: thinking can be a wondrous thing.
It lets us tell stories about ourselves and each other which feed our sense of purpose and meaning. We think about the future to plan, dream, envision and make progress. We think about the past to learn from our mistakes and heal from setbacks.
We think about each other in ways that support empathy, understanding and a sense of our shared humanity.
We think up new ideas to progress rich fields of knowledge that address challenges, reduce suffering, and birth brilliant discoveries.
We can do that all as independent thinkers, thinking for ourselves. And we can do it when we come together to think.
But our capacity to think also has the potential to generate tremendous suffering.
We can think up some pretty nasty stuff — stories that belittle ourselves and each other; ideas that spark and perpetuate suffering for ourselves, and others.
Our individual human suffering and global conflicts are both sobering and emblematic of how we can think in ways that perpetuate suffering and wreak tremendous harm.
We're greater than our thoughts...
It’s easy to conflate ‘bad’ thinking with ‘bad’ humans and ‘bad’ outcomes. But, I think, the fact that our thinking generates suffering doesn’t by default make us ‘bad’ humans.
It says more about the unhelpful ways in which we think for ourselves and the unhelpful relationships we have with our thoughts.
For starters, so much thinking happens in our own minds, without it ever benefitting from any kind of investigation or contemplation. This makes it easy to conflate thoughts, even irrational ones, with reality — without ever robustly questioning our assumptions, storylines, and beliefs.
...so why do we succumb
to our thinking?
Our thinking is also born out of the inescapable condition of being human. Every single one of us has a deep yearning or aspiration to avoid harm, to be free from suffering, and to flourish.
We’re also vulnerable and fallible beings, evolutionarily primed to try new things. Making mistakes is how we learn and adapt to our changing needs and changing environments.
Plus, each of us is exquisitely unique.
Of course, as unique beings, each one of us is driven to live out this aspiration the only way we know best.
So, with all eight billion of us fallible beings, sharing this fundamental aspiration, things are bound to get messy and incredibly complex.
We simply cannot escape that we all think differently, despite fundamentally sharing the same aspiration. It’s the paradox of being individuated humans conjoined within the greater body of our humanity.
We’re going to come at opportunities and challenges from contradictory and conflicting points of view. Even with the best intentions, we’re going to make mistakes and we’re going to misunderstand each other.
Given this radical complexity, how we think really matters. By this I mean the actual ‘mechanics’ of thinking.
Indeed, I think ‘how’ we think is as important, perhaps even more important, as ‘what’ we think — the actual content or ‘stuff’ we think about.
But, we habitually get overly invested in ‘what’ we think. So that, currently, when our viewpoints collide, it’s too easy to default to the self-interested position of defend and protect.
Consequently, despite each of us being much more than the sum of our respective thoughts, we succumb to this way of thinking.
We see this everywhere. Politics is a prime example. But it plays out in relationships of all kinds, in all cultures. It is, after all, an outcome of having a human mind.
I’ve become really curious about the frameworks we have for improving the quality of how we think for ourselves, and the quality of how we think when we come together.
And how to bring these frameworks together… Just how might we think well for ourselves, when we come together to think? Especially when we are thinking about stuff that we disagree about, but that matters to us all.
We need to untangle ourselves
from our thinking
Interestingly, there are many frameworks that work with cognition, or thinking. There are also many frameworks that offer ways to think together well, about complex stuff.
- Cognitive Behaviourial Therapy (CBT).
- Systems Thinking.
- Non-Violent Communication.
These are just three. Three, that have had a substantial impact on how I think and what I think. But, mindfulness meditation, and specifically meditations that examine the nature of thought and thinking, took these frameworks a step further.
At a time when my thinking was fueling quite a lot of personal suffering, these meditations profoundly shifted my relationship with my thoughts — and how I was feeling.
This is a small peak into how:
The results of a Harvard study show that we spend almost half of our waking hours thinking in a particular way called mind wandering. This is the thinking we do ‘on autopilot’. This isn’t the thinking we do in the presence of others. Or our focused, task-directed thinking.
As we mind wander, we typically do what is called self-referential processing — thinking about ‘me, myself and I’ by contemplating the events that happened in the past, what might happen in the future, or stuff that may never happen at all.
While some of that has wondrous, glorious potential. The less wondrous thinking can leave us feeling sad, or bad.
The results of the Harvard study found that mind wandering can come at an emotional cost. That’s partly because the wandering mind can play a bit like a radio station that’s on in the background. It’s easy to switch off a background music stream when it’s messing with the vibe. But it’s impossible to switch off thinking. Our brains secrete thoughts, whether we want them to or not, whether we like them or not, whether they are helpful or harmful.
Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Zegal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, write poignantly about the implications of this in the book, ‘The Mindful Way Through Depression’:
“…most of what drives our emotions and behaviour is not deeply unconscious, but just below the surface of our awareness. Not only that, but this rich interior world, with its motivations, expectations, interpretations, and storylines, is accessible to all of us if we dare to look.
We can all become more aware of the ‘stream of consciousness’ going on in our minds, moment by moment. It often takes the form of a running commentary.
If it is potentially damaging to us, it is not because it is buried deep in the psyche but because it is virtually unattended. We have gotten so used to its whisperings that we don’t even notice it is here. And so, it shapes our lives.”
At the time that I was learning mindfulness meditation, I was thinking a lot about physical pain — chronic pain that I couldn’t seem to escape or relieve. It was thinking that left me feeling even more miserable about myself, my body, and my options.
Learning to notice the rumination that had me in the grip of misery, is what psychology calls the observer effect.
Typically, the observer effect, describes how individuals modify their behaviour when they know they are being observed by others.
But, as a result of my mindfulness practice, I was the one doing the observing — of myself. Or more precisely, I was observing my own thinking. And, I was also noticing it with an attitude of curiosity; instead of defaulting to judging my thinking, or trying to shut it down, or stoking it with more thinking along similar lines.
As soon as I untangled myself from my thoughts, I was no longer being held ransom to my thinking — for better or worse. And that profoundly changed my options, my relationship with my body, and even my relationship with fear and pain.
In order to think well for ourselves, we need to shift our relationship with thinking, beginning with the realisation that we are not our thoughts.
The practice of mindfulness helps us untangle ourselves from the ‘stream of consciousness’. It imbues self-awareness with a spaciousness that offers greater cognitive flexibility.
This sets the stage for robust and liberating thinking — for thinking for ourselves, in ways, that are more helpful than harmful.
Listening well,
helps thinking well
In addition to practising mindfulness, I also think it is helpful if we make time to think in the presence of a listener.
When this happens, we get the opportunity to hear ourselves think, to link ideas together as insights, and to interrogate our inner worlds, identifying contradictions and removing limiting assumptions that don’t serve us (or others, or the greater good).
This is the kind of thinking that has even more potential to liberate than limit.
And, it isn’t something to be taken for granted.
Because often it’s difficult to know what you think — and feel about something — until you’ve noticed what’s happening in your “rich interior” and then heard yourself think it. Out loud. To another.
If you’re lucky, it’s a listener who’s interested in who you are, what you have to say, and where you’re going with your thinking so that you might get to the very cutting edge of your thinking.
If you’re less lucky, it’s a listener who interrupts you, finishes your sentences, or cuts in with sage advice, all with the best of intentions.
Or, if you’re really unlucky, it’s someone who shuts you down, or shoots down your thinking even before you’ve had a chance to examine it and interrogate it for yourself, or unearth your freshest thinking.
A lot of thinking we do for ourselves is met with these less fortunate circumstances.
This is why we need a framework or mechanics that disrupt those habitual ways of treating each other’s thinking.
As luck would have it, we have a particularly accessible and useful one: Nancy Kline’s work on creating Thinking Environments.
To think well
you need to be treated well
So, what is a Thinking Environment?
A Thinking Environment is a framework for quality independent thinking. Supported by Ten Components, it creates the conditions that support thinking that liberates, rather than thinking that limits.
They’re important because even if you don’t particularly like, or feel affinity for, the person who you are thinking with, or agree with their thinking, using the Ten Components nonetheless supports quality thinking and quality outcomes.
The Ten Components are:
- Attention
- Equality
- Ease
- Encouragement
- Feelings
- Appreciation
- Difference
- Information
- Incisive questions
- Place
To generate this field, we’re invited to make subtle, but profound changes, in the way we treat each other while we are thinking, using the Ten Components.
We listen, without interrupting each other. We offer each other attention that is richly generative in its nature. We offer the Ten Components to each other.
As we do this, something shifts.
Firstly, we disrupt all the unhelpful habitual ways in which thinking happens when we come together — interruption; thinking for each other, not with each other; ghosting people’s thinking, and various other power plays.
In the absence of these dynamics, something catalytic happens to our individual thinking: the quality of our thinking improves.
Further, when we apply the Thinking Environment to structures of work, to the thinking we do together in groups or pairs, the quality of everyone’s thinking and the outcome of every interaction improves.
And let’s face it. Collectively, at this point in time, we’re in deep need of much more of this type of thinking.
However, to do this well — to offer each other the Ten Components — we also need to offer them to ourselves. That is, after all, part of how we give expression to the Component of Equality.
To think well
you need to treat yourself well
So, a robust Thinking Environment hinges not only on how we treat each other as we think, but also on how we treat ourselves, including how we are in relationship with our thinking. And more, especially, our feelings, or emotions.
This is why, I think, the work of the Thinking Environment stands to be beautifully complimented by a framework for freeing the human heart.
As luck would have it, we have one. For the sake of simplicity, I’m labelling it: mindfulness-based self-compassion.
But behind this label lies centauries-old, rich and deep monastic traditions and the newly emerging field of contemplative science — the unpacking of which is beyond the scope of this blog.
At thrivelife, we call the synthesis of these two frameworks: ‘Thinking with the Heart in Mind’. It’s work we have been pioneering with Thinking Environment Faculty Member, Trisha Lord.
We explore its potential by helping you hone the skill of creating Thinking Environments. Plus, cultivating three innate human capacities.
The capacities of:
- Self-regulation — the ability to navigate our inner worlds of emotion, sensation, and thought with dexterity and in service of being in a helpful relationship with yourself.
- Self-awareness — recognising what is moving through our inner worlds, without reducing ourselves to this stream of consciousness, and sensing into our deeper, greater, potential.
- Self-compassion — recognising and accepting our inherent vulnerability and fallibility, with warmth and friendliness; nurturing the courage to harness compassion in the service of ourselves and others.
If we make time to cultivate these new ways of being and thinking, we think the implications will be powerful.
We’ll be cultivating the skills we need to step outside our echo-chamber silos of algorithmically reinforced thinking into brilliantly diverse fields of thinking.
We’ll be cultivating the courage to bring our whole selves to the act of thinking.
We’ll be doing our best independent thinking, together, and more readily keeping our hearts open, instead of habitually shutting down to each other (and ourselves).
We’ll be coming together to think in ways that are robust and compassionate.
And from here, we might just live into a future, where, when we think about our differences, with all their inherent and sometimes deeply painful contradictions, we’ll be alive to the wisdom of the heart — its call to our compassionate nature, the fulfillment of our humanity and our shared flourishing.
The Ten Components
The work of the Thinking Environment, suggests that the ten behaviours that produce the finest thinking are born out of the embodiment of Ten Components.
Each of the ten components are powerful individually. But when working together to create a field, or matrix, they have a transformative impact.
The Ten Components are:
Attention – listening without interruption and with interest in where the person will go next with their thinking.
Equality – regarding each other as thinking peers, giving equal time to think.
Ease – discarding internal urgency.
Appreciation – noticing what is good and saying it.
Encouragement – giving courage to go to the unexplored edge of thinking by ceasing competition as thinkers.
Feelings – welcoming the release of emotion.
Information – absorbing all the relevant facts.
Difference – committing to freedom from untrue limiting assumptions driving prejudice.
Incisive Questions – freeing the human mind of untrue assumptions lived as true.
Place – producing a physical environment – the room, the listener, your body – that says, ‘You matter’.
