Engage your Beginners Mind!

Now more than ever its time to engage your “Beginner’s Mind”. Imagine opening your mind to a place of 100% curiosity and being free of all your thinking and preconceived expectations. Being 100% present and feeling a high level of bliss. It is in this place, where we are curious, open, and prepared for any eventuality, no matter what happens. The beginner’s mind is where the self-aware part of us can freely step out of the limited viewpoint of what is comfortable, be flexible and soar to new heights of curiosity and creativity. More importantly to the unfolding of the unknown.

It is time we listened to our hearts beat, our intuition guides us, and inner wisdom trigger levels of inspiration and creativity like never felt before.

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, wrote about the advantages of the Beginner's Mind. He said, "In the Beginner's Mind, there are many possibilities . . . in the expert's mind, there are few."

Steven Jobs of Apple fame studied Buddhism; he had read the Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind written by Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi. Throughout Jobs lifelong spiritual quest, he traveled the world seeking a guru, which he finally found in his hometown of Los Altos, California (Shunryu Suzuki). Over time he learned to trust his intuition and curiosity over analysis and preconceptions. It is important to note that based on the developmental concepts from Steven Job's for the iPhone and iPad, Apple several years ago became the first trillion-dollar company in the world.

Think about the mind of a child: overall, they are happy and free of mental models (assumptions of life) 99.9% of the time. Another reason for their happiness and freedom is they do not get stuck in the past. Things, for the most part, roll off them. They also do not think about what could happen in the future, i.e., worry about things.

There have been many theories on how to harness the optimal emotions that fuel extraordinary performance and high-level creative thinking. There is one consensus opinion: experts (or those who think they are) are the last people to include in creative brainstorming sessions, as they have often lost their ability to think up or consider wildly creative solutions that lead to breakthroughs. To reach a high level of possibility thinking, it takes stepping out of one’s comfort zone/safe place and its limited thinking. "Experts" tend to find their safe place in the familiar and what they know and in their limited thinking. Over time, they become uncomfortable with an open mind.

When an individual is uncomfortable with themselves or life in general, they are not present nor are they open to explore. In our world today it is so important to find a sense of ourselves, what makes us tick, what we may need in the moment as we navigate through all of information before us. The beginners mind grants us permission to be comfortable with the silence, be present in inner peace while we sift through our emotions, feelings and imagine what it takes to be healthy, well and alive!

For me it the moments when I am in meditation listening to my breath where I feel myself connecting with the energy that reminds me of swimming with my dolphin friends… this is the moment where my curiosity becomes alive, and I discover great insight…

Find your method whatever works for you to become comfortable with the silence and engage your Beginners Mind…. You will be grateful you did!!

My books offer several tools for how to engage your beginners mind. They are available on Amazon in paperback, Audible and Kindle formats. "It was ME all Along, the Path to FREEDOM" and "The Dolphin Lady, the Story of a Unique Relationship” -