What if we’ve got our understanding of ourselves all wrong? What if we’ve got our thinking about how we need to use thinking all wrong? What if the innate capacities that drove Neanderthal man forward in evolution (without a book or teacher) are just as present in modern day man? What if, just as those capacities enabled Neanderthal man to successfully navigate his context, they are just as available for successfully navigating our context, and the contexts of the future? What if the way we think we have to relentlessly think about everything in order to live well is actually getting in the way of the capacities inbuilt to human beings that are the real drivers of change, thriving and evolution?

Innocently, we may have taken a wrong turn and the pendulum has swung too far out. Like mushrooms spawning, books, information and websites on how to manage our emotions, psychological states, parenting, relationships, business, performance, etc. now envelope our lives, each of them telling us how to do this, how to do that. It is humanly impossible to do everything they say, and yet each proposes that its contents will make us more effective – the implication being we will fail if we don’t. No wonder anxiety is so prevalent. Is it really true that we innately lack the wherewithal to successfully navigate life without an ‘expert’ somewhere guiding us? Or have we innocently lost our way and lost sight of what makes us human – the capacity to successfully navigate all the complexities of life – if we slow down the busyness of our thinking.

What if we settled back into an assumption that we have got what it takes and let go of running to do lists, schedules, books to read, classes to attend …. being in control. What if we played with letting that internal state go and gave ourselves permission to experiment? What if we maintained a quiet inner state for a small part of each day, what would we discover about what Neanderthal man innately trusted because he had never been taught to doubt it?