On the one hand...

by Andrew Bryant
Director of Self Leadership International
Have you ever been in the position where you have said, "on the one hand I want to do this but on the other hand I want to do that"?

This is commonly called being in two minds. You might be in two minds about your career, your work/home balance, a business decision or a romantic commitment. Being in two minds is certainly not a productive or even comfortable state to be in.

We do not in fact have two minds, but one mind that has two functions; conscious attention and unconscious processing. When we are torn between two choices, it means that we cannot consciously process a conflict that exists in the unconscious functions of our mind.

Modern living/working overloads our conscious attention and so we are mostly unconscious of our values, beliefs, identity, paradigms and intentions. It is the nature of these 'frames of mind' to operate automatically and so out of conscious awareness. This does not mean that they are inaccessible; on the contrary, self-leadership is about gaining awareness of our frames of mind and choosing frames that empower us.