Accelerate Your Evolution

Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

There’s one skill to master if your overarching goal in life is to become a better version of yourself.

It’s not a sophisticated communication technique or an in-depth journaling practice.

This is something that transcends any specific habit you can develop.

It’s metacognition.

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It’s the awareness of and control over cognitive processes, and an understanding of the patterns behind them. It is the highest form of intelligence and the key skill you need in order to improve yourself from the very foundation. Without the ability to think about your thinking, you’re just spinning your wheels.

Those who develop metacognition find their personal growth supercharged. It’s observing your mind in real time, noticing your thoughts, questioning your reactions, and interrupting emotional reflexes. Instead of running your pre-programmed mental software, metacognition is like a computer that can rewrite its programming while running. Mastering this ability allows you to update your beliefs instead of blindly defending them. Every time you notice your thoughts instead of obeying them, your brain upgrades itself. Self-aware people evolve faster than almost anyone.

Like anything else in life, the more awareness we can bring to an issue, the more likely we are to effect change. Metacognition affects every other aspect of life. If we get a handle on our ability to observe our own thinking, it will influence everything we take on, whether it’s improving our fitness, marriage, financial picture, career prospects, or parenting.

All of us land in adulthood with a set of scripts running in our brains. We received messaging from our family, school, sports teams, and all authority figures we came in contact with. Whether the messages were direct, inferred, or a result of experience, their cumulative programming became the tools with which we were expected to build a successful life as an adult.

Often, our programming was less than ideal. We may have developed anger issues which result in an inability to hold a job. Or we may have alienated our kids because our parenting skills look just like our parents’ parents’ parents’ “skills”. There’s no shame in admitting that we’ve been reenacting intergenerational stories. For some of us, those stories include trauma. Acting out of a trauma response won’t move us toward evolving into who we want to become.

If we cringe when we notice words coming out of our mouth that sound exactly like our father’s, the good news is that we noticed it. Many of us go through life mirroring behaviour that hurt us in our formative years, without ever realizing.

We all operate on auto-pilot sometimes, particularly when we are tired or stressed. Aim to start questioning the automatic responses, noticing knee-jerk reactions, and getting curious about what’s behind it.

So…how do we gain the ability to notice our thinking process?

An effective way to clear mental space is through practicing mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness is exactly what it sounds like - going through our day being aware of what we’re doing and saying, noticing sensory information we’re receiving and how we’re reacting to it. With time, we start to develop the ability to be aware of our thoughts, specifically how thoughts precede actions. It is the practice of being present.

A meditation practice allows us to widen the space between thought and action, and enables us to observe our thoughts and let them go. We start to understand that we are not our thoughts, and we don’t have to act on them, let alone believe them. As we sit for longer periods, not grasping on to our thoughts, we start to assign them their proper place - merely a function of our brain. We don’t have to take their commands.

Something else starts to happen as we deepen our meditation practice. Our understanding of consciousness starts to shift, and we realize that we’re not the thinker at all. We are simply the Watcher. Dis-identifying with our thoughts is integral to the process of letting go, just being. This is what meditation teaches - that we’re here to simply be. Let that be enough.

With time, these practices allow us to see our thoughts more clearly, and take the time to choose what to do with them. Our so-called triggers become less triggering. Now we can choose to not be offended in response to a perceived insult. We can choose to control what’s within our control and let go of the rest.

Once the programming has been updated, the mind runs on a whole new system.

If you have long-standing patterns you want to reset, don’t get lost in the weeds trying to change habits on a granular level. Look at the bigger picture and start thinking about your thinking. Metacognition may be the key skill to level up in order to level up.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?