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Dear Heaven Maker:
Generally, I’m a pretty ‘up’ kind of guy. Sometimes, however, my mind gets the better of me.
Several times in the last couple of weeks my mind has done just that. What with Covid (we’re in a lockdown here), the Ukraine-Russia issue, severe winter weather here, the economy, and on and on, my mind took over. I didn’t exercise, I watched too much TV, and I ate too much.
I didn’t like what was happening. I couldn’t pull myself out of it and I didn’t know what to do.
As one of my 2022 goals, I wrote: “Divine Soul wins over ego/mind.” I had no idea how that was going to happen.
Then a couple of days ago, I read about a safety system, invented by a Japanese railway company one hundred years ago, which cuts errors by a whopping 85%. This wouldn’t appear to be a process that would help my Divine Soul win over my ego/mind, but I tried it and it’s working.
The system is called Shisa Kanko, ‘Pointing & Calling,’ and it combines:
Looking, Pointing, Speaking, & Listening.
‘Looking, Pointing, Speaking, & Listening’ engages multiple senses, allowing railway employees to have a more focused awareness of what they’re doing. Because they’re required to point at the object and verbalize the action, they can’t gloss over the safety check. For example, when an engineer changes the speed of his locomotive, he doesn’t just glance at the speedometer, he points at it and says the new speed, “80 miles per hour.” Here’s another example. A platform attendant doesn’t just look down the platform to confirm that there are no passengers in the restricted area as the train approaches, but instead, points his/her arm and says, “There are no passengers in the restricted area.”
I find using this same process REALLY WORKS to get me out of my ego/mind. I use it to do things I don’t want to do but have to do: writing, exercising, doing the dishes. I get up from the dinner table, I point at the dirty dishes, and I say out loud, “Doing the dishes.”
I’m currently writing a new book called Paradise Found. For writing, I extend my arm fully, point at my computer screen, and say out loud, “Writing.” Saying it out loud forces me to hear what I’m saying. This simple act of Looking, Pointing, Speaking, & Listening engages my body and focusses my ego/mind.
And, it works!
It’s simple and powerfully effective.
Use it for anything your ego/mind doesn’t want to do. If you’re feeling down, pick any activity and use ’Shisa Kanko – Point and Call’ to complete it. Then pick another activity and use it on that too. Pretty soon you’ll notice that your mind is focussed, not on negativity, but on fully supporting you to take actions
Arigato gozaimasu (ありがとうございます), thank you, Japanese railways for supporting me on one of my 2022 goals.
If you have other effective ways of handling your ego/mind, let me know.
Martin
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Robin Trimingham of ‘The Ozone’ group recently interviewed me about Heaven on Earth, here.
This is Part Two of an interview she did with me. Part one is here and there’s a third one now being edited.
Martin Rutte
