The Looped Mind

Waking up at 2.30 A.M. is a habit of mine at least once a fortnight—woken by the God of creativity; the wheels of the mind spark into motion, alive and a-churning.

To get up or not to get up? That is the question. To get up and take down the stream of thoughts that come to mind, so as to develop them come morning is beneficial—they’re not forgotten and the opportunities lost aren’t rued all the next day. But then, getting up runs the risk of staying up... “BLING,” awake and tired no more (until 6 A.M. rolls around!).

The Power of Looping Thought

The looped mind is both a blessing and a curse. The same creative thought, a good thing most would agree, where not acted upon, can shoot around and around the mind for hours, keeping us awake or worse. Negative and positive thoughts—both—are indiscriminate here.

If I managed to take the ideas down and then be sufficiently tired to go back to bed so as to wake bright and chirpy at my usual 5 A.M. wake-up time, the mind loops through satisfaction all the next day for having gotten its almost uninterrupted sleep; this is a vast sense of sweeping wellbeing.

But, the looped mind also dogs us when we’ve made a bad decision and we’re now ‘wearing’ the consequences.

Investing in Our Immediate ‘Thought-World’ Futures

Using the looped mind to good effect is seeing, now, the potential for regret and remorse in the immediate future and modifying our action, now, so as to create beneficial loops of wellbeing producing thought, then—i.e. in our immediate futures.

It’s recognising the value of investment in our future-mind’s chatter; it’s the mind influencing the mind—propelling for itself; it is thereby also confidence-driving, the thought-world’s boon and success for the proverbial day to come.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.