BUILT-IN LIFERAFT: THE A.N.S.

April 17th, 2018

ANS stands for Autonomic Nervous System

It’s an ancient system embedded deep in all our brains.  Before our species had personalities, we had Autonomic Nervous Systems.  Personalities, curiosity, ingenuity… all that stuff came later.  The ANS controls all the things that keep us alive that we don’t have to think about: heartbeat, respiratory rate, pupillary response, and that massive winding digestion system.

It keeps you alive while you do other things.

It keeps you alive while shit happens.

No matter the difficulties of life – as long as they are not fatal to the body – The ANS keeps you going, even when you don’t feel like it.  Even when you feel down, blue, in the dumps, and even when you feel like dying. 

The ANS was rigged up to ignore you and your sometimes counter-productive thoughts.  It’s a system with a built-in faith for who you’ll be tomorrow.  Faith in what you might do when the storms of emotion pass, when the torrents of feeling are tamed, when calm and clear thinking begins to trickle back into our consciousness. 

Through everything, the ANS is there for you.  Making sure that the machine keeps working.  Even when you don’t feed that body properly, or exercise it, the ANS does the absolute best it can with what it’s got

While old ways of thinking and being slowly fade, as we slowly build a new perspective, the ANS sustains us.  So many religious traditions have settled on this idea of the spirit – an eternal essence of a person that transcends the flesh.  If anything, it’s the other way around.  As we become better, older, wiser versions of our self, the body sustains us through that – often painful – transition. 

Life support, until that part of our brain where our personality rises from is ready again for that first breath of fresh air. That glimpse of a better life.

INTRODUCTION

April 16th, 2018

Welcome to Tinkered Thinking. 

The focus of these episodes and posts is encapsulated in the title.  It’s all about how to tinker with your own thinking.  It’s the hypothesis of this platform, that progress is best achieved with a constant, consistent effort, influence and pressure.  Think about the effect water has on stone.  A consistent drip will eventually drill a hole through that stone if given enough time, whereas a real drill risks cracking the stone in an effort to try and achieve the same. 

Regardless of the competing and conflicting studies regarding neuroplasticity, it is clear that people can change.  And while there may be outliers who can change overnight, the large majority of us seem better served by a slower, gentler process.  A process that can often feel frustratingly slow for those yearning for change. 

Tinkered Thinking seeks to serve anyone who has this undertaking.  Indeed, it’s the continued hypothesis of this platform that some kind of development continually occurs in all of us regardless of whether it is thoughtfully directed or not.  All of us can recognize in others the results of such developmental trends: whether it be an unfortunately bitter person, or someone who has acquired amazing skill from long practice, or even the lines in someone’s face that shows just how much laughter has filled their days, all of us can recognize the results of trends in other people’s thought.

Tinkered Thinking will draw analogies from everywhere in life to try and elicit helpful perspectives and questions to loosen up mindsets and potentially create some wiggle room in order to point in new and better directions.

Everyday, starting today, for a minimum of one year, a podcast will be released with an adjoining post.  Both will be nearly identical and the reasoning behind this is simple:  Some people like to read, and others like to listen.

Most of these episodes will be quite short, and the philosophy behind this is for everyone listening to have something to turn to, some new thought available every day…. without sacrificing hours of time. 

It’s worth remembering that stones become smooth not by floods but by the slow, constant movement of rivers.  For at least the year, Tinkered Thinking will seek to be that slow, constant influence for anyone looking for it.

Over two hundred episodes are already written, and ready to go..

So stay tuned if you’re ready to tinker with the way you think.

Remember to visit TinkeredThinking.com and if down the line you find this material valuable, you can always visit our support page and make a one time contribution or signup for a small monthly contribution.  Any support is always deeply appreciated, and of course that extends to sharing this content.  If you hear or read something on this platform that you think would benefit others or someone in particular, it’s an fantastic show of support just to share it.

Until tomorrow, this is Tinkered Thinking.