With changes afoot in my life I momentarily got caught up, believing the scary movie in the thought-reel of my mind. All perfectly designed to wake me up.
Things look uncertain.
I just had a meeting that’s confirmed a significant price of work with a client is coming to an end after Q1.
I left the meeting (later than planned) and got a flat tyre, currently waiting to be recovered.
Two kids are at home alone, first time on their own together (they’re known to argue!) for longer than intended.
Thoughts flying to the future & to judgement – Will the kids be ok? What a bad parent not keeping an eye on the time in the meeting. What a bad driver allowing that vehicle to make you drive too near to the edge. What about your business now, how will you replace that work? Maybe you’re not doing the right work. Maybe you’re no good at what you do.
They’re so compelling these thoughts. They come with yukky feelings built-in. That makes them seem even more important to listen to.
But what we’ve never been told about them is that the yukky feelings aren’t here to tell us to believe the thoughts more, to beat ourselves up more, to worry more about the clients, or to put more intellectual muscle behind solving the problems. They’re not telling us that we or the world is wrong.
What they’re telling us is that we’re off track, we’re out of the present moment, we’re caught in imagination that we’re taking as a truth. We’re believing fear-based, lack-based ideas as facts.
And that’s not where clarity is found.
These feelings are here to jolt us awake. To remind us that ok-ness isn’t to be found ‘out there’, and certainly not in imagined futures or imagined lack.
The feelings are here to remind us to come back to now, to centre, to be here, in this moment. That doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes all zen and happy, but it means getting real and honest with this moment – I feel scared, I feel upset, I feel frustrated.
Unlike what we’ve been told about the need to suppress or manually change yukky feelings, coming back to here and acknowledging them enables feelings to change naturally. The more we try and get rid of them – paradoxically – the more they remain in place and keep looking like a real problem.
So for me now, in the acknowledgement of my imaginary fears with no attempt to change them, I can get real about there being a phone to call for backup for the kids, there’s a pub to get a warm drink, there’s time to talk to a friend and share the story of what’s happened, there’s time to imagine a different future (knowing it’s more plays of imagination). Knowing that the ‘here’ in the next moment and the next will take care of themselves, as they always have done; and all the easier when we’re real and honest about them.
We aren’t designed to solve imagination. We are perfectly designed to solve reality.
With love, Helen
I work with people who want a quieter mind and a more fulfilling life. They’re smart, passionate people who are curious about there being a better way. They’ve worked hard to get to here and yet something’s still missing: ‘is this it?’. In our work we explore and reconnect you to innate brilliance so you rediscover the real happiness, real security and real balance that you are. Find out more here.