The Insight State of Mind

Insights occur in a variety of circumstances - while running or walking, showering or meditating, playing with kids, conversing with friends, golfing, listening to music, sleeping, daydreaming, or in the midst of a friendly argument. The list is endless.

While circumstances and settings for insights vary greatly, they share a common denominator - the state of mind in which they arrive. In fact, so far, everyone we have worked with recognizes there is a state of mind in which their thinking is at its best. In the "Insight State of Mind," your mind is relaxed and not fixating or pressing in on a problem; you maintain a soft-focused attention. Of course, insights also occur when we are deep in logic and data analysis. Even then, they happen not when feeling pressured but from a state somewhat like reverie. Looking for an insight is rather like looking at a Magic Eye® image: the picture appears one way until you relax your focus and allow a different image to reveal itself - one that was there all along. As you notice this state and orient yourself toward occupying it, the likelihood of finding an insight increases. Insights, wisdom, and good judgment come from a clear-headed, calm, and focused state of mind. The simplest way to have more insights is to spend more time in that receptive state.

As you come to better recognize your Insight State of Mind, you will know where to look for it. You will find yourself in this state more frequently even when you don't need an insight. Use the various descriptions in our stories as triggers for your own insights. What in the story resonates with and strikes you as true? You probably won't relate to or agree with everything, but that will only help you sharpen your understanding. Read loosely and generously; a state of mind cannot be expressed fully with words. Language can only point you in the right direction.

You can think of thought as operating on a continuum. At one end, your thinking just happens. Thoughts occur, but you are a mostly passive observer - aware and watching for whatever shows up. Thoughts have their own trajectory and a life of their own, although, to varying degrees, you can guide them, such as when you daydream or when your mind wanders just before sleep. In these situations, you are present, but there is not a lot of 'you' there. One step further and you're lost in a dream, exhibiting no apparent control over thinking whatsoever. 'Presence' is a word sometimes used to describe this end of the continuum - a state where little active thinking happens. At the other end of the spectrum, your thinking is purposeful, personal, and, at times, effortful. You work hard to manage and push it in every direction. It seems as if there is no separation between you and your thoughts: you are your thoughts. You are 'in your head,' but not in a pejorative sense.

If you're like me, you're not truly aware, in real time, of where you stand along the insight/thinking continuum. When I address business issues, I find I use two rather distinct modes, which correspond roughly to the opposite ends of the continuum. In the first mode, I enumerate all relevant elements, mentally arrange the pieces, follow skeins of relationships to logical conclusions, keep track of which logical paths hold water and which don't. . . . Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Like a logical sieve, when it works, the best solution easily falls out. In the other mode, I drop all active thinking and metaphorically (or actually) gaze into the distance as I wait for whatever forms in my mind. I deliberately forestall any active connection-making and see what snaps into place on its own. Sometimes, as in a dream, the issue rotates of its own accord and offers a new perspective. Other times, I feel as if I'm groping in the unknown, a train of questions replacing a train of logic. This mode may feel familiar to you, as well.

You will not be surprised to learn that insights often occur when you are not actively thinking about the problem at hand. Instead, insight generally happens when you are involved in something else, particularly something enjoyable or mind-freeing, not when you drill into another problem. Like the name of an old friend you couldn't recall at lunch to save your life, the answer pops into your head only after you change the subject or shift your mental gears. Even so, these are not hard and fast rules.

Between the two poles of this continuum are many modes - with none inherently better than another. Think of putting on a pair of skates, so to speak, and sliding to the most appropriate mode in the moment, rather than getting stuck in one particular place. Sliding from mode to mode is what we do when we are at our best. We move into one self to prepare our tax forms and slide into a different self to love our families. We instinctively put our attention into our thoughts, memory, commentary, or imagination, depending on what is most required in the moment. We focus our intellect for a few minutes, back off and daydream, go into memory for a short time, and return to being present. We are most naturally effective, most comfortable, and most productive when we enjoy fluency in our state of mind.

Tempo and Pause
As a general rule, the Insight State of Mind feels slower than what you consider your normal pace of thinking. In our earliest understanding of the insight process, Robin and I continually advised clients to "slow their thinking down," but we found it was not a good recipe. We are all quite different. Some of us have insights as life zooms along, and slowing down could interfere with the process. Others of us need the mental space of a slower pace. Whether or not thought rips along at the speed of light, insights do not necessarily come during moments of pause.

We have since found the two sides of this coin: any device or 'recipe' that attempts to help you attain a particular state of mind doesn't work just as often as it does work. What appears to be critical for insight is thinking that is not rushed or pressured. Instead, you're looking to think at exactly the right tempo.

I recently returned to playing classical piano with a certain amount of discipline. To my surprise, I discovered - with some effort and a little practice - I could actually play more than one of the preludes and fugues in Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier. As most pianists can attest, Clavier is an amazing set of works, in part, because many of the pieces we normally play quite quickly also sound beautiful when played more slowly. (Listen to Glenn Gould's recording of Prelude Number 1 in C.) With practice, I found - if I slowed down enough - I could play some of these magnificent studies, even with my limited abilities. Of course, I get into trouble when I try to play too quickly; I make lots of mistakes. On the other hand, the pieces don't sound right when I play too slowly. My challenge is to hit upon the right tempo for the mood I'm in and the technical capacity I bring to the keyboard. When I find it, I make music. In the words of the timeless Goldilocks, "This one's too hot and this one's too cold, but this one is just right."

My friend and colleague Steve uses a sports analogy for finding the Goldilocks sweet spot: "It is the championship game. Your team has the basketball with 15 seconds left on the clock, and you are down by a point. What do you want: wound up and tight, or loose and confident?" Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson always want the ball in those situations; they are loose and confident. They are present in the situation and open to whatever happens, able to bring all their hours of practice into the immediate unfolding of the game. Other players are tight and trying too hard to find the 'right' action to take: their breathing is labored and neither their brains nor their muscles move with the fluidity needed to make the shot. They are so locked up, we use the term 'choke' to characterize their efforts.

"Every so often, a Celtics game would heat up so that it became more than a physical, or even a mental, game and would be magical. That feeling is very difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened, I could feel my play rise to a new level. It came rarely, and would last anywhere from five minutes to a whole quarter or more. Three or four plays were not enough to get it going. It would surround not only me and the other Celtics, but also the players on the other team, even the referees.

"At that special level, all sorts of odd things happened. The game would be in a white heat of competition, and yet somehow I wouldn't feel competitive-which is a miracle in itself. I'd be putting out the maximum effort, straining, coughing up parts of my lungs as we ran, and yet I never felt the pain. The game would move so quickly that every fake, cut, and pass would be surprising . . . and yet nothing could surprise me. It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion.

"During those spells, I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball into bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I'd want to shout to my teammates, 'It's coming there!'-except that I knew everything would change if I did.

"My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all of the Celtics by heart, but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me. There have been many times in my career when I felt moved or joyful, but these were the moments when I had chills pulsing up and down my spine.

"Sometimes the feeling would last all the way to the end of the game, and when that happened, I never cared who won. I can honestly say that those few times were the only ones when I did not care. I don't mean that I was a good sport about it-that I'd played my best and had nothing to be ashamed of. On the five or ten occasions when the game ended at that special level, I literally did not care who won. If we lost, I'd still be free and high as a sky hawk." *

*Second Wind: Confessions of an Opinionated Man by Bill Russell and Taylor Branch

Obviously, a quiet mind does not necessarily mean you are quiet. Instead, you might be very active physically, like Bill Russell, operating 'in the zone,' while mentally quiet. Or you may have your best insights when you're in the midst of a rapid discussion or friendly argument, although the 'argument' scenario may be most appropriate when parties can hold a good feeling as opposed to one rife with stress or ill will.

Thought is like a conveyor belt filled with cafeteria trays at the clean-up station. Each tray is a different thought, moving along at a comfortable pace. A thought comes in and goes out. Each flows easily into the next. No pressure, no rush, no urgency. A sense of space, a breath, or a pause lives between each thought, between each tray - a space of nothing, a special place. In this empty space, fresh thought and insights occur.

Trays run faster on some belts than on others, but there is still a well-paced flow.until the inevitable: some trays get stuck and back up on each other. With real cafeteria trays, you get a muddle of dishes and a sticky, gooey mess. With thought, you become bothered, anxious, and over-focused. Thoughts, like trays, are now a jumbled traffic jam, piling up on one another. Space between thoughts, the nothingness into which something fresh might pop, has been crowded out. Less space leaves less room for insight. If I'm feeling pressure, urgency, concern, or worry, I know an insight is probably not on the horizon.

Many of us, when we don't have 'the answer' we think we should, get uncomfortable or anxious with the arrival of these small, unfamiliar spaces between thoughts. To resolve our discomfort, we immediately, and often unconsciously, fill the gap with a thought from our memory bank, destroying the possibility of the relative mental silence that could bring us something fresh. As we learn to 'sit with' our discomfort for a bit - remain still or simply allow ourselves to dwell in the unknown - we might possibly uncover an insight.

One of our client teams hammered away without success on a problem - a product launch stymied by a delay in regulatory approval. How could they shrink what was a law-mandated, 18-month testing period? Their 'mental cafeteria trays' were pretty well piled up. We suggested they begin looking for gaps - deliberately trying to pause their thinking and practice not thinking about the problem, or about anything, for that matter. Within minutes, one team member voiced a fresh thought. It instantly crystallized into an understanding of how to launch the product immediately, using an existing approved component, followed by a re-launch as a 'new and improved version' once the regulatory work was complete. 'Minding the gaps' allowed this client team to create space in their thinking and see the problem differently.

Notice your own state of mind right now. Is your mind quiet and settled? Is there space between your thoughts or are they crowding each other? Are you rushing through your reading trying to get to the end as quickly as possible? Just noticing the character of your thinking from moment to moment allows you to recover an easy-going mental state, the natural equanimity you return to - as soon as you stop thinking your way out of it.

The Feeling of the Insight State of Mind
The most reliable way to recognize the Insight State of Mind is by the presence of its characteristically good feeling: a sense of calm, ease, and peace; a spaciousness of thought; a sentiment that 'all is right with the world.' While akin to the flow state of sports and performing arts, the Insight State of Mind does not necessarily involve the 'peak experience' often associated with being 'in the zone' during a performance. This state of mind feels more like a gentle walk home along a familiar route: easy, peaceful, unlabored. You're very likely to notice the arrival of an insight in the feeling of energy and elation that arises when a problem you have been stewing on becomes obvious and clear. When an insight arrives you have a feeling of immediate happiness because whenever an event in your experience matches a cognitive structure in your mind, the apparently wired-in physiological response is a spontaneous smile.

Orienting yourself to look for this good feeling is the most important finding Robin and I discovered in our explorations of insight. The more familiar you become with this feeling, the more you attune yourself to finding it, the more present this feeling becomes in your life, and the more time you will spend in the Insight State of Mind. Like a barometer, this feeling gives you a moment-by-moment weather report on the condition of your spirits. The presence of your inner good feeling signals your good state of mind: you are connected to your inner wisdom, and you have best positioned yourself to have an insight. When the feeling is absent - when you feel cloudy, confused, pressured, or angry - insight is less likely. Cultivating the feeling takes you simultaneously to the feeling and to the Insight State of Mind. It's that simple. While you may not find it easy at first - and the challenge may require some mindfulness - it becomes more so over time.

We may be familiar with this feeling, but unless we develop an appreciation for it, most of us miss it. You want the sensor (the feeling) hooked up to the meter (your awareness) and the operator (that's you) paying attention to the meter reading. Many of us, particularly men, may not spend much time in a mode where we notice feelings. Instead, we retreat into our thoughts and find ourselves pretty much oriented toward figuring things out. For many topics, that's the most useful mode and we're fine. But when an insight state of mind is needed, we end up navigating without all our instruments and without a compass, in particular. The good news is the compass still exists. Finding it is easy, like sending an invitation to your friends - "Come on over for dinner Tuesday evening" - instead of going out to round them up and bring them to your home. You simply put out the invitation and maintain a quiet expectancy or faith. Since you know your friends will arrive, you don't expend any further mental energy on the situation. You do, however, stay alert for their arrival. You don't want to miss the doorbell when it rings.

A beautiful day, sailing on a broad reach, the perfect ski run, the moment you wake up in the morning, the recovery after your morning jog, the peace after meditation or prayer. Life abounds with examples where we experience the state of relative mental peace. We use many words to try to describe this condition. While none quite capture the essence, they can, nevertheless, point toward it. For any deep feeling, descriptions formed in words are only pieces of the truth - they can never be the whole truth - but you can still connect with an experience that is familiar even if not oft present.

Losing and Recovering the Insight State of Mind
Sad to say, but probably no surprise, most of us don't spend much time in the insight state of mind during a normal workday. Many circumstances - multitasking, meeting deadlines, and worrying, along with low quality thoughts (insecurity, frustration, disappointment, anger) - conspire against its appearance and degrade our thinking. Although such disturbances form, ultimately, from thought, and all of us can change our minds, we often feel as if we're stuck. We feel hijacked by distorted thoughts, the cafeteria trays pile up, our thinking becomes dense, and some sort of bad feeling sweeps through us, to boot.

The number of ways to enter these underproductive states - overuse of the analytical mind, lack of sleep, facing a poor report, dealing with a lost sale, encountering an angry colleague, changes in diet and hormones, or physical ailments - surpasses the population of the world. Each of us has our own multiple routes to disaster. What may trigger one of us has no effect whatsoever on another. Even when not triggered, our latent thinking habits kick in; we tend to worry, 'awfulize,' or be overly critical, which draw us away from good spirits and good feelings. What's worse, we are generally unaware such 'thought storms' are happening. Having arrived in a poor state of mind, we press on. More often than not, the more we press, the more our state of mind deteriorates. Our thinking and our mood wildcat on their own. We end up less creative, more inclined to make mistakes, and less conscious of our mental state.

A good first step is to become much better at recognizing when you are not in a good state of mind. When you've lost the good feeling, you probably will not know the best thing to do in the moment. With just a fraction of a pause, however, you can remember that, at the very least, you shouldn't make any decisions. Instead, wait until your mood recovers. Sometimes, your waiting period is short; sometimes, you need a good night's sleep.

Noticing the absence of a good feeling and stopping whatever you were doing only changes your experience if it precipitates a change in thinking. Understanding the relationship between thought and experience generally makes weathering thought-storms easier. Let's say you've lost your bearings. If, like the weather, you know this is natural and temporary, you simply won't get as bothered as you otherwise might. You'll be inclined to relax a bit and wait for the weather to change. Consciously looking for nicer feelings can often interrupt the grip of a low mood and allow your mind to return to a calmer, quieter state - but not always.

Robin realizes that anything he attempts in these moments, including trying to recover his mood, is likely to be flawed. Who among us hasn't decided to stay at work an extra 30 minutes to clear our e-mail inbox, hating our decision while making it, only to find the next day that most of the messages were of questionable quality? Often, our actions generated even more e-mail of even more questionable quality to appear. What's going on here? The extra 30 minutes doesn't cause the poor quality. Resentment degrades our judgment, a resentment that carries a very bad feeling, if we care to admit it. Now, when he recognizes he's not in a good state of mind, Robin has become better and better at stopping everything the moment he discovers he's lost. Instead, he simply waits until his mind settles. With a little practice and patience, it only takes him a couple minutes to recover enough common sense to know what to do next.

When we try to escape a bad mood, our strategies for doing so are the products of low quality thinking and, thus, are rarely successful. Many clever methods - such as replacing negative thoughts with positive ones or initiating distractions - have been devised to change thinking. Unfortunately, trying to use the mind to outfox the mind is never-ending work. The good news is that all this effort is unnecessary. We come equipped at birth with a simple barometer for high-quality thought: the presence or absence of the good feeling.

As easy as it is to fall out of this natural state, the marvel is that, in principle, it's just as easy to fall back in. Imagine a basketball in a swimming pool: its essential characteristic is buoyancy, which creates a relentless tendency to float to the surface. Holding the ball under the water takes effort, as does pressured thinking. If you stop holding a basketball down, it floats to the surface; likewise, if you stop whatever habit currently occupies your thinking, you will return to a state of equanimity. Recovery of good spirits isn't really about doing something to get back; it's about stopping whatever was taking you away in the first place. Obviously, that's different from other areas of life, where creating change requires us to do more, not less. To gain the feeling of the Insight State of Mind, you need only let your inherent righting mechanism do its natural work. Your mood, like an unhanded basketball, will float to the surface with no further help from you. Relax and let the quiet mind return. Look for the good feeling. Everything else will take care of itself.

Robin describes his indicators as similar to the 'idiot lights' on the dashboard of his car. Loss of good feeling? Red light on! As with dashboard lights, this mechanism is not foolproof - you still must remember to look at them, as anyone who's inadvertently run out of gas can attest. But, over time, he has identified enough indicators to acquire a level of redundancy. If he misses one, he has a high likelihood of noticing another.

We all let go of the basketball differently. Young children are really good at it, I think, because they simply haven't formed the habit of holding onto thoughts. Let's say you're a kid and your world is melting down because someone took your toy. Then, you notice fishsticks for dinner. Your mental world becomes fishsticks, and the upsetting thoughts are gone. As adults, we're disadvantaged from spending most of our lives in systems that train us to hang onto the basketball - a capacity so essential for sound analytic thinking - but which, like using thoughts from our memory bank, create problems when used to excess.

Automaticity: No Technique, No Method
We do all sorts of things to get into an insight state of mind: go for a walk or a run, take a vacation, garden, pray. Some of us relax in long baths or wail out on the saxophone. When we find ourselves stuck in a bad state of mind at the office, simply standing and stretching, or going to a window and watching the clouds, can do the trick. One of our executive clients gets her best insights after going to the movies. By her own admission, she has a very busy mind. When she goes to the movies, she gets caught up in the visual experience; distracted from her habitual thinking, her basketball floats to the surface. Another executive stands up and walks around when his thinking is blocked and he feels stuck, while a third sits quietly by himself and write notes.

Any and all of these actions may work, but none work for everyone all the time. If such a panacea existed, it most certainly would have been discovered by now. Of course, this is not unusual; many activities do not function well as defined or structured processes. Consider listening to music, looking at a picture, going for a walk, or romancing a partner. Returning to an Insight State of Mind is similar. Certain methods may be useful from time to time, but they will be specific to you. You will use them when it feels right or makes sense rather than routinely, by prescription. Moreover, you don't want to get attached to a particular method. For half the techniques you discover or rules you form, you'll find the opposite may well be true, too. Those of us who are particularly fluent with concreteness - favoring recipes and other 'practical' things to do - must be careful, or our preferences can interfere with returning to an insight state of mind.

Reliable access to insight is gained more through understanding of and sensitivity to a set of principles than adherence to set of techniques. From these principles, the appropriate method to access an Insight State of Mind comes naturally and extemporaneously, as often happens in sports or the arts. Great basketball players have an intrinsic understanding of the principles, rules, strategies, and mechanics of their game, but their play is dictated by what is required in the moment - often without much conscious thought on the part of the player. Insight Thinking is similar. From principles comes behavior, already learned or newly invented, appropriate to the moment, and much more potent than any recipe.

More good news: you don't have to manage this process at all. Very little needs to be done to get into a good state of mind. If you step back and look for the good feeling, good thinking follows. The change may not be instantaneous, but it will be reliable. Like the basketball floating up from under water, our natural mental state is to be buoyant, feeling good, and open to insights.

Look at athletes in the heat of a game: at their best, they're not 'thinking' very much. They don't pause, pull a laminated card from their pocket, and decide what move to make. The right move just happens. Our job is much easier than an athlete's. They must work constantly and repeatedly to build the muscles and muscle memory required to physically - instinctively - execute the shot, without thinking. Our equipment for insight is built in and fully developed; we simply must get more accustomed to using it.

The whole process resembles the correction you make when you drift out of your lane on the highway. Just noticing the loss of the good feeling will set you back on the path to a clear mind. Noticing and shifting back is painless and simple. With a bit of experience, it becomes second nature. The innate intelligence of mind operates fully. Your mind settles down and seeks a quiet state without your conscious attention to the task. Once the principles of insight thinking are understood, we seem instinctively programmed to know how best to access and occupy our insight state of mind with increasing frequency. Moment by moment, we are more aware of the good feeling associated with high-quality thought. We quickly note its absence and spontaneously correct ourselves.

For some of us, this shift of habit occurs quickly; for others, it takes some time. Our colleague, Malcolm, describes his process of becoming more conscious of his state of mind as occurring over a number of years. During that time, he adopted a certain faith in what he calls an 'inner wisdom.' As his faith developed, he became more trusting that he would pick up on what was important - confident his inner wisdom would bring it to his attention when required. Others of us find the shift requires attention, patience, and practice. Thankfully, the practice is not onerous. It feels good physically and psychologically and is accompanied by creative ideas, fewer mistakes, and natural good judgment. Simply live your life and do your best to find your way to the good feeling.

Having insights is the most natural thing in the world. Every day, when we discover things we don't know, we are having minor insights and realizations. Generating more insights doesn't require great effort; in fact, effort is counterproductive. We only need recognize the state of mind in which insights are most likely to occur, and, as we more regularly find our way there, we will get more insights. The Insight State of Mind doesn't run a lot of internal monologues; it is lucid, fertile, fresh, a pleasant state, different from the feeling of the moment an insight first hits. Each of us recognizes this state in our own way: a characteristically good feeling of ease, soft energy, and other positive sensations. While hard to describe, upon reflection, the feelings are personal and well known to each of us. The presence or absence of such feeling is the most reliable barometer for the quality of thought at any instant. The Insight State of Mind is not a state where you stop thinking; you're just not working hard on your thinking.

When your mind is over-busy, shouldn't it take a lot of work to get to a state of equanimity? Naturally, we think or hope specific techniques will take us there. If we just employ the right steps, won't the problem solve itself? Contrary to our popular beliefs, techniques aren't necessary to reach the Insight State of Mind. You only need to pay attention to the presence or absence of the feeling you associate with your best state of mind. The moment you reflect on your current state, you allow the natural restorative mechanism to kick in, the basketball floats back to the surface, and you to take a small - or sometimes large - step back to inner peace.

Part of you already knows all of this. Although your aptitude may have fallen into disuse, you are not learning anything new. You're reacquainting yourself with, and extending, a natural capacity that has been with you since the day you were born.

Charles Kiefer
©2008