THE SECRET OF THE STEERING WHEEL EFFECT

One More Way to Never Run Out of Ideas and Write Happily Ever After

Open the inspiration portal to write with passion and find joy in the writing process

When I’ve started writing on Medium, a big part of my reading here was dedicated to “How to” articles. Some about the writing process, but many about shortcuts. How to make money fast (in my defense, the pandemic left me without a job so I truly need to find a sustaining way to earn the money for a decent living), how to optimize my content in order to rank higher on search engines, how to repurpose my articles, and so on.

But, and this is a big BUT, focusing on how needy I am made me feel insecure about writing. I forgot that writing is a process and I wasted a big amount of energy worrying about how I am not growing fast enough, what to do in order to write articles that are going viral, and so on.

As anybody knows, worrying does not solve anything. Worse is diminishing our focus, blocking our creativity. I found myself not knowing what to write about.

This for me is highly improbable. At any blessed moment, day or night, if you ask me “tell me something you are passionate about” the danger is I will not stop talking.

This, of course, when I am not worried. Then all I can think about is all the ways the future can go wrong. I can write some very dystopian articles about that and I might gain even some followers but I spent already too much time in those dark places, I don’t want to go back there.

So, as I am doing all the time when I catch myself in the worry-zone, I did the wiser thing I could do: I surrendered.

Surrender is easy. I am doing it one thousand times per day… but now I had the opportunity to do it methodically.

So I sat down and wrote some guidelines:

• I will not write what I believe that people want to read. I will focus instead on what I can do to add value to my readers’ journey.
• I will focus on upgrading my writing skills.
• I will focus on content.
• I will see my writing here as an internship.
• I will not let myself be discouraged when my articles are not receiving the reads I dream about.
• And last, but not least, I will use my writing as an active meditation, to open the inspiration, ignite my creative power and find joy in the writing process itself.

A few years ago, I asked some children, “What is the purpose of eating breakfast?” One boy replied, “To get energy for the day.” Another said, “The purpose of eating breakfast is to eat breakfast.” I think the second child is more correct. The purpose of eating is to eat. Eating a meal in mindfulness is an important practice. (Thich Nhat Hanh — Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life Peace)

Eating in mindfulness will bring us energy for the day anyway. And the best part, it will give us better and more sustainable energy.

As with eating, writing with mindfulness would bring us the same effect. We will write better, faster, with more clarity and focus. And while we might not instantly have thousands of readers for an article we enjoyed writing, chances are that the process itself would bring us to the point when our articles will pay for the effort and time we put in writing them.

Here you have a beautifully written article about how the “overnight success stories” are not what they seem. (Author: Shreya Badonia)

Now about The Steering Wheel Effect

The Steering Wheel is a wonderful metaphor for the best tool we can imagine to move our minds (and lives) in the right direction:

Compared with the entire machine we want to steer (no matter if it is a car, a ship, or something else), the steering wheel is a small dispositive. Yet, by almost effortlessly moving it in one direction or other, we are able to move a car, a tractor, a heavy truck, even a plane. Yup, the large commercial aircraft have their own version of the steering wheel, called till.

The point is that there is a dispositive that allows humans to use the smallest effort needed to graciously direct things so big that would be impossible for us to move even a few millimeters without them.

The same with our minds:

We, humans, are working with two different sources of motivation. The Conscious and the Unconscious. Most of the time we use a combination of the two to achieve our goals. The problems appear when those two minds are not aiming in the same direction.

Here is the dwelling place of procrastination. And procrastination, as this thoughtfully written article explains to us, is self-defeating behavior. (Author Ifhaam Hassan)

I will not claim that I’ve managed to permanently defeat this monster. What I did, I found a way to put my unconscious mind to work to my advantage.

It is quite simple, actually. It is rooted in our biology. And, as the steering wheel, it requires just a tiny amount of energy compared with how much we need to work when we rely solely on willpower:

We need to learn to ask better questions.

Yes, is that simple.

Questions are the steering wheel of the mind. (Peter Sage)

Why do I say that this is rooted in our biology?

Because of one small part of our brain with a large impact, called Reticular Activating System (RAS).

Remember the emphasis I put on the disproportion between the size of the steering wheel and the machine is steering? This is the same about RAS: it is a relatively small part of our brain, but its role is HUGE.

RAS is the gatekeeper of information that enters our conscious mind. In other words, this little fella stays between our conscious and unconscious minds and decides what we focus our conscious attention on.

This dedicated guardian deserves an article just for itself, so I will write more about it in the future.

Now, for the purpose of illustrating its effect, try this exercise:

Ask yourself “what can go wrong if my writing is bad?” Or: “why I do not like my current situation?”

I bet you can easily come up with some answers. Notice how you feel when you ask yourself those questions… Notice how your answers amplify those feelings…

Don’t stay too much there, it is not worth it.

Now, the pleasant part:

Ask yourself:

“How I will feel when my articles will reach 1000 views each?” “Or how I will feel when my friends will send me messages about how much they enjoyed the last story I wrote?

“What do I like about my current situation/my writing?”

“What can I do to improve it?”

Notice how you feel when you ask those questions. Take your time to answer and notice the difference between those answers and the one before…

If you are rolling your eyes and muttering words about “that positive thinking stuff”… no, this is not about positive thinking. Or not about forced positive thinking.

It is biology. Biology and programing.

We have a biological device that works like a computational machine. There has to be a relationship between the data we feed it and the results we obtain, isn’t it?

Garbage in, Garbage Out.

It is true for computers, I venture to say it is true for humans too.

So let’s wrap it:

• We have an unconscious mind that influences all our conscious decisions.
• Whenever our two minds are in unison we experience what some people call “the flow state”. We work better, effortlessly, and we achieve incredible results.
• Whenever our two minds are in conflict we find ourselves in a procrastination mode. We tend to sabotage our goals. We are using self-defeating strategies.
• Our procrastination is a sign we resist something.
• Our subconscious mind is bigger and more powerful than our willpower and it is hidden from our conscious access.
• The one who decides what we can access from our subconscious is our Reticular Activating System.
• We cannot access the whole unconscious, but we can consciously access our Reticular Activating System.
• Think about it as if it is an intermediary. We can go and ask him what we need. In return, it will go and make the required adjustment to focus us on the path we want, to gather the insight we need, and to direct our subconscious into the task of dreaming a bigger picture.
• We do this by asking better questions.
• SAR is the unseen mechanism of our Steering Wheel.
• We can use QUESTIONS to claim the “captain of my ship” role.

I call this The Steering Wheel Effect

I believe many of us can recall at least one moment when we have changed something impossibly hard by doubting our beliefs, asking better questions, and having incredible insights.

What do I mean by better questions?

This also deserves another article (looks like I am in the flow now) but the fastest way to recognize them is that they lead you to answers that make you feel inspired, energized, and optimistic.

Thank you again for reading. 🙂

Please note that all the book links in my articles are referral links.

Welcome to the best online community you can find. A place to learn, write and grow. 🙂

Best way to start? Use somebody’s referral link. Start a virtuous circle. A fellow writer will receive a part of your subscription.

If you like what I am writing, please consider mine. Thank you!