Get Out Of My Head
If I were to step out of my mind and look back, it would resemble the 42nd Street subway station at 5:30 on a Thursday; absolute insanity and no rhyme or reason to the flurry of different ideas or thoughts speeding past each other with the grace of a bull in a China shop. I know this about myself and it is why this is my 13th year blogging here and my 18th year keeping a daily journal.
“True confession: I don’t know what I am thinking until I externalize my thoughts. ”
This is a scary thing that I have realized about myself, but, in the mayhem of my mind, nothing slows down long enough to see it as a complete thought before it speeds off to wherever it was going or it is run over by the next thought rushing past. This is a scary thing because there is a completely real chance that if I open my mouth to respond to a thought that I haven't vetted through externalization via writing or private conversation before, I will have no idea where I am going with the next words that are coming out of my mouth until they are on my tongue. There are times that I say something that it is the first time that I have ever heard or thought those words.
That is a scary thing, but since I know that about myself, I write a lot. I go through a couple of moleskins each year and have thousands of emails that I've sent to myself in an effort to get something down and processed before having to respond or answer a question publicly. This blog post that I am typing right now is not for anyone besides me if the truth be told.
But these scary facts of the verbal high wire I sometimes dance on have also sharpened my senses and built my confidence in navigating new thoughts, from others or myself, on the fly and coming out the other side. In sales and business development, that is a good thing.
In Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, knowing one's self, or self-actualization, is at the top. And while I fully expect to be getting to know the ever evolving Andy Ellwood for the rest of my life, knowing how important writing and speaking is for that process, I am looking forward to doing a lot more of it in the month's to come.