Switching mental gears

In our well-being or stress management trainings and workshops we focus on finding a healthy balance between the doing mode and the being mode of mind.

Our lives can easily get out of balance, for example due to unexpected life events. For our mind, sometimes single, disturbing thoughts are enough to lose balance. Losing and seeking balance is a normal process that often leads to a new and perhaps more sustainable balance.

However, there is also a critical, persistent and difficult-to-reduce imbalance caused by excessive thought activity, by a driven doing of thinking that gets out of control at a certain point. If this driven doing of the mind is not balanced by sufficient being - that is, in an acceptance and simultaneous letting go of what is - then our mind can very easily get into excessive stress or into obsessive thoughts.

Excessive thinkers and busy doers often find it difficult to do nothing at all, even for periods of time. We use this mental impulse to always have to do something and divert it from a to-do list to creating a to-be list.

The To-Be elements are not more things that need to be done, but reminders of how we want to be every day. Once these are internalized and integrated into everyday life, there is no need for a To-Be list.