Life Design Action: Order New Lego

Requires: Personal responsibility. Intelligence. Creativity.

Does not require: the same Lego bricks you’ve been using until now.

If you give a kid a some Lego and say, “build me a house”, the child will (probably) build you a house. If you took the same child and the same Lego and said, “build me a different house”, the child would probably manage that too. If you then repeated this again and again, eventually the child would run out of variations of what they could build. They will literally become limited by their Lego.

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Lego Thoughts

If you live in the UK you may well have noticed that the air has turned into an interesting blend of Eastern Spiced Butternut soup with the thickness of blended Lentil.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it were Gaspacho.

But it isn’t.

It’s just bloody, bloody hot.

Hot like we’re all in a broth pot, on an Aga, in a sauna, in Tunisia, with the Sun God breathing on us with hot, feverish garlic breath, saying “blahhhhhhhh”.

My method for soup-survival involves two things;

1. Going in the Sea

2. Remaining Still.

     Very still.

Preferably on a beach.

And whilst practising Method 2, I have had an opportunity to watch my mind. This has been quite enlightening. You see, whilst the Body is flaked out like an overworked commuter, collapsed and rapidly burning on a beach towel in a Spanish Resort, the Mind leaps and demands like a small child who wants to play. Right now.

And on realising that the Body isn’t going to do more than grunt, the Mind then begins to scurry around Mind Stuff, turning it over and trying to dig holes under it. When I say Stuff, I mean all those little thoughts, ideas, challenges, projects, issues, stories that somehow need action/movement or resolution.

Surprisingly, little progress is made with the Stuff.

But still, the delinquent Mind, who believes it is all-knowing and adventurous, hurries off on quests, following currents,  looking for solutions to issues, but all it is doing is tossing the same Stuff over in the same way that a wave tosses seaweed on the shoreline.

Moving, moving, rolling, rolling, replaying, replaying, never really getting anywhere fast.

This normally results in me falling asleep in the sun, then waking up very hot, red, sweaty and irritable with bits of hair stuck on my cheek. I then get up, stump inside, get a drink and sit grouchily in the shade, muttering to myself about not getting anywhere with my Stuff due to heat/time/grumpiness etc.

Then yesterday, whilst lying beneath the birdcage in the long daisies in the garden, a few old thoughts that I hadn’t seen for a while rolled in:

Thought One) The average deep thinking human has 70,000 thoughts a day which means that if the mind was a Lego box, it’d contain a LOT of Lego.

Thought Two) 80% of our thoughts are the same thoughts each day, hence why people get to a certain age and then their lives, attitudes and actions become fixed.

Thought Three) If our thoughts are the blueprints for our actions and we are turning over 80% the same thoughts each day, how can we continue to evolve, grow, move, create, change and transform through new inspired action? (We are like a child with thirteen Lego bricks trying to recreate San Francisco and then wondering why we keep building the same house).

Thought Four) Is it possible to get more Lego?

Hmm …

Here are a few ways I have invented to get some new Lego for your Lego house … (feel free to shout out your own. The quirkier the better).

Take a different route (road to work or route of thinking)

Change the radio station (in your car or in what you are saying)

See the smallness in the BIG people you aspire to be like (and know that you are BIG).

See the GIANTS in the people you see as below yourself (and know you are EQUAL TO ALL)

Write a list of all the people who you feel have judged you. Decide what you could do to prove yourself to them. Laugh at how massive those fantasy attempts can be.

Pull over your car, slip through the barbed wire fence and lie down in a field.

Stand on your bed. Bounce

Know that your failures were just the result of variations in your Lego building attempts.

Realise that your life is the result of the Lego you’ve collected so far.

Release the idea that you are never too old to play with new Lego.