insight

How do we know when we’ve had an insight?

In our exploration of the three principles of innate health and well-being, we mention insight quite a bit. One of the questions I had when I first started learning about the principles was how do I know the difference between an insight and an idea that my brain offers?

Here then are a few things I’ve observed about that in the past year or so. These experiences apply whether I’m experiencing a deeper level of understanding about how my mind works and when I’m looking for information about what to do next.

Insight changes everything. When we’re searching for answers about the truth of ourselves or a situation, the oft-quoted explanation is that with insight, “Nothing has changed, but everything is different.” That has certainly been my experience.

With insight, we suddenly see a situation or pattern of behavior in an entirely new light. The feeling I get at those times is often one of, “Oh, now I get it.” My experience has been that this flavor of insight can be like a sudden mental jolt; sometimes my jaw drops open or I freeze in my tracks. Other times, it is more subtle and I simply notice a small shift within myself.

Insight feels soft. For me, ideas from my brain come with a different quality than insights. They are often just as valuable and beneficial – where would we be without ideas? But ideas are more obvious and don’t have that quality where things feel like they’ve shifted. The easiest way I have to explain it is that ideas feel like they come from my brain and insight feels like it comes from somewhere else in my body. A more central place. My solar plexus perhaps. But please don’t get caught up in that explanation. That’s just one way I have of describing the difference. For you, it might be very different.

Further to the idea that insight feels soft, it also feels peaceful to me. When I had my recent computer problems and needed to know what to do next, my brain was putting forth lots of ideas about what I could do. And one thing I noticed was that those ideas, while they felt logical, they didn’t feel peaceful.

So I waited. I waited until something landed with me that felt calm and peaceful. The insight to email the computer company was entirely absent of fear and any kind of panic. I felt utterly calm. To me, that pointed to insight.

Invisible insight. And then I’ve only recently started to realize that sometimes insight is invisible and undetectable. This happens when, with hindsight, I can see that something in me has shifted and I feel different about a situation, but without any conscious awareness of having had insights about that situation. An example from my life of invisible insight is when, without warning, I stopped feeling the desire to drink soda pop at lunch.

A caveat. I hesitated to write this post because I don’t want to imply that insight has to feel a certain way, or that you need to feel certain things in order to label something as insight. Because that’s not the case at all. And I’m also not trying to demonize ideas.

Syd Banks talked all the time about ‘following the good feeling’ and I think insight is a perfect example of that. Our problem-solving brains are often throwing ideas at us, especially when we’re worried or fearful about something, but those ideas don’t always come with a good feeling.

What I have found is that the more I learn to look for a good feeling in an idea or insight, the more peaceful and calm my life is.

Whether information you receive is from your brain or insight doesn’t really matter. What matters, it seems, is how it’s making you feel. When we are in touch with our wholeness and our innate well-being we feel good. And insights that feel good can remind us of our default setting of peace, calm and wellness.

Perhaps insight can be thought of as arrows, pointing us back to our innate health.

I’d love to know your expeirence with noticing the difference (if any) between ideas and insight. Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Light bulbs image courtesy Tomas Robertson and Unsplash. Boots and water image courtesy Sylwia Bartyzel and Unsplash. Beach footprints photo courtesy Zack Minor and Unsplash.]

One of the things I hear so often from those coaches and authors I interview on the Stop Suffering About podcast is how hard they worked to create change in their lives before they came across the 3 Principles. I experienced the same thing. So why do the Principles offer anything different than all those other strategies and techniques we tried?

It’s because the way we learn in this new paradigm is completely different than any other way we’ve learned before.

When I first came to learn about the principles, I had a hard time putting down my note-pad and pen. I was so keen to learn and so eager for change so I turned to the tools I’d always used to learn: hard work, memorization, practice.

But right away, I heard teachers like Michael Neill and Barbara Patterson saying that it wasn’t necessary to take notes when listening to them and that I didn’t have to memorize anything. “Listen like a rock with ears”, I heard Michael say more than once.

WTF does that mean?

We have been taught to learn one way: to stuff information down our throats like we’re trying to win a pie-eating contest. It can be hard to un-learn that habit when we encounter this insight-based understanding.

One of my favorite stories about this un-learning comes from when I was reading my first book about the Principles, Michael Neill’s The Inside Out Revolution. When I was about 2/3 of the way through, my friend who had introduced me to Michael’s work, asked me how I was enjoying the book.

“It’s good,” I said, with a slight note of puzzlement in my voice. “I’m enjoying it.” I paused while I sought out what I was really feeling and then landed on it. “My only concern is, he hasn’t told me what to DO yet.”

My friend chuckled. “He’s not going to,” she said.

Well then, how will I learn? I thought to myself.

Weightlifting and Insight

As a fiction author, one of my favorite podcasts is one about story structure called Story Grid. One of the hosts of the show, Tim Grahl, is also a competitive weight-lifter. On one episode he shared a story about learning from his weight-lifting coach.

Tim had noticed that the coach tended to explain things in a variety of ways, coming at a problem from several angles. Tim was curious about this and asked him about it. The coach said this by way of explanation. “I’ve figured out that I just need to talk a lot, because different things I say are going to strike people in different ways. The way that you’ll come to understand what I mean is different than the way my next student will. But I never know what that thing is going to be.”

What the coach was describing was insight-based learning.

He knew that each student was going to be struck by insight at a moment that the coach couldn’t predict. But if the students showed up and listened, both the coach and the student could rely 100% on insight showing up as well.

Cultivating Insight and Change

We all have access to wisdom and the intelligence behind life. What we don’t have is control over when wisdom and insight are going to strike us. But what we can do is simply expose ourselves to the conversations that are going on about this understanding, open ourselves up to that wisdom and intelligence, and wait for insight to arrive. Which it always, always does.

One way to get in the way of insight is to clench up about what we’re learning. To try to memorize and make lists of what we should remember. Relaxing into the conversation, listening like ‘a rock with ears’, can feel scary at first. Our need to control things can start screaming at us. “What if I forget? What if I can’t remember what you’ve said in a crucial moment?”

But paradoxically the more we relax and stop worrying about what we need to remember, the more we have access to the innate wisdom that is within each of us.

I like to think of the analogy of floating on my back in a body of water. When we’re first learning to do this, we tend to be anxious and tense (just me?) and not trust that the water will actually hold us up. But I remember that when I was 4 or 5 years old and learning this skill, as I practiced I noticed that the more I relaxed and softened my body, the easier floating on my back became. Eventually, it became automatic for me. If I wanted to float on my back, I was able to relax immediately, knowing the water would hold me up.

The same strategy applies when we’re learning about the 3 Principles. The more we relax, knowing that as spiritual beings having a human experience we are designed to receive insight and wisdom, the more that insight and wisdom is available to us.

Why This Matters

So, why does having insights matter? Why can’t we just memorize what we’re being told and leave it at that?

Memorized facts don’t have the same effect on us and are easily forgotten. What worked to solve a problem for someone else might have zero impact for you.

The power behind insight is that your insights are going to be tremendously meaningful to you. They will make sense to you and shift your world so that everything has changed for the better.

Also, insight lasts forever. Once we see something in a different way, we can unsee it.

Here’s what I’ve learned since coming across the principles: Deep, meaningful change comes via insight.

When we want our lives to change for the better – whether that’s dropping a habit or addiction, or getting along better with our spouse, or being less troubled by anxiety – applying other people’s strategies and techniques isn’t all that helpful. Think of the number of times you’ve done that. How has it worked out for you? For me, I think of the number of times I’ve applied someone else’s advice to my eating habits (eat clean, count your points, eat raw, etc.) and how often that has worked.

Answer: Exactly zero times.

But when we look in the direction that the principles are pointing, we experience insights that mean everything to us, specifically.

And that changes everything.

We’ve all had insights, small and large. What are some of your favorites? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Trees image courtesy Aaron Burden and Unsplash. Weights image courtesy Cyril Saulnier and Unsplash. Woman swimming image courtesy Drew Dau and Unsplash. ]

What’s the difference between an insight and an idea?