How stream of consciousness unlocks the human soul and your success.
A hundred years ago this year, Virginia Woolf became the first novelist to convey where most of us truly live our lives: not in the outside world but inside our messy human minds. Mrs. Dalloway lets us into her thoughts, following her inner monologue with all of its raw, unfiltered flow, flitting from conscious to unconscious, past to present to future in seconds. “Stream of consciousness” narrative was born and reshaped how stories, poetry & even film capture the non-linear nature of human psychology.
Today, we take it for granted that we may access these inner worlds in our scripted entertainment. There would be no Flight Club, Fleabag, or American Psycho without Woolf’s work, but how often do we see honest streams of consciousness in our real, unscripted lives? A century after Woolf’s original Mrs. Dalloway, we continue to find her (and him) everywhere, if only we take a moment to truly look.
In this video, we immerse ourselves in the inner monologue of a real human as she shops for groceries, her mind jumping from external stimuli, like the automatic lights in the freezer aisle, to inner thoughts, like what her husband said to her earlier that day. We see new thoughts enter her mind every few seconds as she jumps between past, present and future - often marking the jump with an “Oh!” Each skip of her mind reveals patterns & emotions she may not even be fully aware of, but they are laid bare for us. Authentic memories, worries, and random associations all spill out as she debates with herself, sometimes laughing at her own thoughts.
We asked a Jungian psychoanalyst, who said exposure to this kind of subconscious flow is rare, even in therapy. Yet here in this ordinary act of grocery shopping, and with a little patience, it truly comes alive.
This privileged glimpse into how the unguarded mind really moves is the purest kind of beauty. No novelists or script writers, just raw, messy humanity. We’re sharing it as a reminder that when we pause and look deeply, the smallest, most mundane moments can reveal the most expansive, joyful, even spiritual connections with humans as they make sense of the world. And when you have access to the inner world of your audience, you are perfectly placed to make decisions on the stories, products and brands that you build for them.