The path to your life is right beneath your feet. Right now.
We are such fragile little creatures. So sensitive. So emotional.
One minute we are riding the crest of a wave of good feeling, and the very next we are slumped over with defeat and despair. And this can happen within a moment, let alone a day.
The thing that scares us the most is that we are just one thought away from either option. Our beloved gives us the cold shoulder and we spiral into a frenzy of anxiety and insecurity. Then the next moment they are fine, and it turns out that they were just distracted on a work call, and they apologise. You are jubilant again.
Is it any wonder we burn out, exhausted, stressed and depressed when we are continuously at the mercy of our thoughts like this?
And who are we in the middle of all this chaos? Are we the negative or the positive aspects of the mind?
We would like to believe that we are just the positive thoughts and that the negative mind is something that invades and attacks us, but that would be to deny something that, regardless of how it feels, is still essentially a part of our human experience.
When we experience a barrage of our own negative thoughts it can feel overwhelming and often we don't know how to make them go away or get rid of them.
This in itself is often the biggest problem of them all - the desires to get rid of negative thoughts or bad feelings.
The harder we try to rid ourselves of bad thoughts and feelings, the more energy we feed them with, and so the cycle continues.
The fastest way I have learnt to greater peace of mind is to stop forward-thinking. Stop imagining and wishing for a future moment where you will feel better or your mind will be clearer.
This is the moment, right now. Painful and uncomfortable as it feels.
Allow those thoughts to just be exactly what they are, and feel exactly how they feel right now. There is nowhere else to go. This is you right now. This moment, these feelings, these thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with them. Thoughts are just thoughts. Feelings are just feelings. It is only when we judge them and begin to resist them that they become problematic.
If you are anxious and have butterflies in your stomach, your heart is pounding and your hands are shaking. Just feel it all. Don't think that you shouldn't feel that way, or that other people are stronger than you. Just feel what your body and mind are doing, right this moment. No judgements. No desire for it to be anything other than it is right now. Just acceptance. Kindness.
When we do this we realise that we haven't strayed off the path like we thought we had. If anything, the path has just become a whole lot clearer. It's right beneath our feet, every moment and we just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and allow it to unfold before us.
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