How you deal with confusion will affect your ability to achieve what you want to achieve. Feeling overwhelmed does too.
When we feel confused we become frozen. Action is halted. Our cognition is sending us the message: “Alert Alert – incoming data not recognizable” or “Alert Alert – incorrect use of processing. Processing failure inevitable.” Or, “I feel angry, frightened, sick in the stomach…about what I have just encountered/heard/witnessed.” Our cognition at this point is on the brink of dismissing or reacting to stimuli it doesn’t recognize a ‘fit’ for within our current worldview.
When we communicate with others, hopefully, confusion will take place several times. Otherwise, we are more likely only to mix with like minded people and learn little.
When we feel confused we need a plan so we can move through the confusion state. Here are some ways that absolutely do work!
You can use analogy. One way I use analogy is to image I have just arrived on Planet Earth. I am looking at it with open eyes, eager to see things as they are for the very first time. This is fun. Another analogy I use is to link into the feelings I have experienced before when I have visited a new place on my travels, a place that was nothing like where I lived. I give myself the task to look at things in different ways because I have no preconceptions in this new land.
I also program my cognition to expect confusion. Tony Robbins (NLP) told 2,000 of us in Birmingham in the 90′s that whenever we experience confusion we need to celebrate it – because it is the prelude to learning something. Embracing this cognitively changed my Life and it will change yours too. Yes it is that powerful! , and we all want to learn about what’s going on in our World.
BEING OVERWHELMED
Being Overwhelmed is a bit different to being confused. Instead of not knowing how to accept information, we usually have too much information all vying for our attention at the same time. Being overwhelmed requires some organisation of material – or data processing method that we currently do not employ. Most management courses will tell you that any serious Project worth doing must pass through the stage of OVERWHELM. This is helpful to know. This knowledge helps us understand that what we are experiencing is EXPECTED whenever we are approaching some big task. This is step 1 – validate the situation that you are overwhelmed – so you can move on.
Next, what usually happens is that it all seems too much to deal with and we may just want to forget the project, the life ambition, whatever it is that is overwhelming us, completely and go have a rest. Hmm the only time a rest is a good idea is when you have been studying all day and your head is swimming in ideas that need to be incubated and processed while sleeping. In this case, or similar, by all means take a rest. New information needs time to ferment. The key thing to ask before your rest is: Have I set out my new ideas in such a manner that I can pick them up when I awake? That is, are my study methods supporting my process methods? Have I written notes clearly? Have I mapped connections? When I revisit my project is it in a condensed format? It is no good reading lots of books without highlighting or taking notes. If you put them down before they have had a chance to move into longer term memory then they will quickly be forgotten and your time wasted. Many people don’t like writing on books but it works. Yellow highlights. Alternatively, write your notes. If all your texts are on the computer use the highlight pen tool, or copy and paste your notes onto another document. If you have another idea then use it. The objective is to start condensing out the key points that, when read, will regurgitate the meanings in more detail for you. And the idea is that you do this immediately, so that time spent does not have to be respent over and over again. This is a basic study note planning tool used by students all over the world. And you can use it in any area of your life.
When we are confused or overwhelmed we have a choice to learn how to manage a situation we have not yet learned to manage and learn from. In this situation we need to tell ourselves cognitively that whlat we are currently doing is ‘learning’. ‘learning’ means evaluating something to progress our knowledge. This is important because our cognition is telling us that it is not able to process this amount of information right now. It may be that there are too many conflicting belief systems for us to deal with such a large amount of information! Or maybe we have a belief system that tells us we are simple and we do not have the intellectual capacity to deal with the overload. Your cognition is just protecting your body. That is a good thing. You have a choice though. Do you want to learn all this stuff? How would you feel if you could find a way to overview the information and chunk it down so that it became just a few points that signified a wealth of new knowledge for you? Once you make the decision to keep moving ahead and learn you just have to find the right question. What is your question right now? Ask it of yourself. Incubate your new knowledge and wake up refreshed and inspired! It can really be that easy!
