Gold Quote of the Week
What’s Important? “I have to follow my thoughts and mine for the gold. I have to dig it out.” Bill Cosby What have you been “thinking” about lately? In the last hour? The last five minutes? Do you even “know??” Just consider. Bill Cosby’s quote is so great because in such a few words he so evocatively describes the nature of our usual thought process. “I have to follow my thoughts and mine for the gold.” How often in the first place do we follow our thoughts? How often do we take notice of what is going through our minds? I’m trying to write this but …The dog’s on the couch. There’s noise out in the street. The tv is on and I can’t really hear it…. And what do these random thoughts have to do with writing about Bill Cosby’s quote anyway? Actually, quite a lot because they offer an example of how easy it is for our minds to wander far from the task at hand. focusing on our thoughts, one thought at a time, can prove pretty challenging. We get so busy that we don’t slow down to sort out what we’re thinking from what we’re doing, and in any case, most of us simply aren’t used to such monitoring of an internal process. Additionally, , the image of “mining for the gold” is so apt because once we do focus on our thoughts, there can be so much chatter we get lost and don’t even begin to consider what’s most important. It really is like slogging through all the dust and debris and having to digand slow down to find the real nuggets. Finally, the analogy to digging for gold invokes the same kind of spirit of adventure we highlight when we think about people who actively set out to foreign territory seeking buried treasure. Why not use that same spirit to get as excited about the internal process of figuring out what’s most important to us Though he’s known for his humor, this time Bill Cosby’s couple of sentences really, to mix the metaphors, hit the nail on the head. What a gentle way to help us think about thinking, and what a smart metaphor linking the act of thinking to mining for gold. Let’s go for it, and let’s enjoy the adventure. How might Bill Cosby’s ideas be useful to you, and in what one or two ways this week might you better mine your thoughts?
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