From Surviving to Thriving: A No Tools, No Techniques Shift from Stress and Overwhelm to Fulfilment

We all have preference. That is pretty human. But have you noticed how some circumstances don't seem to be preferences. But there are some things in life which don't seem to be preferences. They seem to be necessary in order for us to feel okay. Past examples of this for me were other people's behaviour, my career status, my success on Tinder and how much stuff I owned. When I thought my experience was created outside-in, I spent a lot of time trying to fix my feelings by controlling the outside world. Exhausting behaviour which led to burnout.

You see, our experience is not created outside-in. It is created inside-out.  It is our perspective and thought in the moment which creates our feelings not our circumstances or other people. There is a very different feeling which comes with a preference as apposed to 'must be in order for me to be okay.' It is a lighter feeling with less pressure and a quieter mind. My circumstances have to be a certain way for me to be okay changes to I would prefer them to be a certain way. From this place we are calmer, have more clarity and can take the next step to our preference.

Noticing is one of the most powerful ways we can change but it is a particular kind of noticing. It comes from a place of understanding how the system works. Knowing the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It comes from knowing a fact that when we feel an emotion in the body, that is an update telling us about our state of mind. 

From that place, noticing is powerful. It brings up questions like what am I believing that isn't true, what story have I created here and what behaviour would be helpful? But here's what is not helpful when we are noticing; judgement, wrongification, outside in thinking and poking around in the past. Noticing when those start to happen is helpful too. As your awareness rises, it is amazing what starts to fall away.

I spent a long time being right and goodness did I get riled up about it. It was my way or the highway! I would get angry and upset when someone didn't behave as I thought they should. I still sometimes do it now to be honest but a whole lot less than I used to. 

You see I have had some realisations about the idea that I am right. Firstly knowing that the things I believe are just the things I learnt from other people as I was growing up. I used to see them as my opinions but now I see them as the opinions of my ancestors. Of course they often look real because they were learnt unconsciously but they really are not. Secondly I now see that the awful feeling I get when I rant about someone else's behaviour is coming from my thinking about that behaviour not from the behaviour itself. Thirdly I know that I am fundamentally connected to everyone in the world. They have their thinking and I have mine but in reality we are all connected. When I come from the idea of that connection, it seems easier to ignore different opinions and see what is similar about us rather than what is different. The final thing is that I know I work better psychologically when I am in a nicer feeling and understanding all the above has me there more of the time. So it just makes sense.

Here are some things you might think are real which really are not! What you think someone else is thinking, thoughts about the future, the limiting beliefs you have about yourself, the things you think you are right about and your memories of the bad things which happened in the past to name but a few.

You might be wondering why I am telling you this. Why I am telling you that a big chunk of what passes through your head is a pack of lies. Just read the list again and think about how those types of thinking make you feel. Uncomfortable, angry, anxious, stressed and powerless. That's your amazing system working perfectly, telling you about your state of mind. Using our feelings as a guide to tell us about our state of mind is the route to freedom from suffering. A simple raising of awareness which is more effective that anything you have ever tried to make yourself feel better.

Work-life balance seems to be something we should pursue. The lack of it is blamed for all sorts of ills such as burnout, stress related illness and heart-attacks. But what does it actually mean to have work-life balance? But work-life balance is unique for each and every one of us; a concept created in thought. In other words having balance will look different depending on how you think about it. 

For example, I often work very early in the morning because I happen to be up then but don't try to get me to do much after about 7pm because that's when I am ready to chill out and watch something mindless on the box in the corner of the room. We are all different and we all have a different idea about what balance looks like to us. The trouble actually occurs when we try to shoe-horn ourselves in to someone else's idea of balance. That can lead to overthinking and actually increase our stress levels. What is most important is awareness. Things like noticing the voice saying keep going when you are tired out and the voice saying you are not good enough if you don't. Balance is something we can create easily with a rise in awareness. 

We all have problems to solve and it seems there are lots of possible ways to do this but there are problems with these strategies. They are using our old, conditioned thinking to find a solution to a problem which has been created by the same old, conditioned thinking. Perhaps you have noticed that feeling when you are going round and round in circles and the same things keep coming up again and again. It's like you are shaking your mind but the same things keep falling out.

I suspect you have also noticed when the best solutions appear. All of a sudden and out of the blue. When you are thinking about something else or in a more relaxed state of mind. They appear like magic and you say, 'Why didn't I think of that before?' It's because, when we are not thinking about something with our conditioned mind, we connect to something deeper; wisdom and the intelligence of creation. It is in that quiet that new thought emerges and thus we can experience clarity and see the solution.  We are told to make our minds busier to be more effective but we have been sold a lie.

It took me a long time to see how my experience of my physical body was being created. I have had a few physical things over the last few years including adrenal fatigue, under active thyroid, the menopause and everything that brings, a frozen shoulder lasting a year (so far) and headaches caused by histamine intolerance. At first I couldn't accept that I wasn't experiencing my physical body just as it was but now I see this very differently. Even our physical body has to be experienced through the power of thought and awareness in the moment. It cannot be experienced any other way and when we see this, a whole world of opportunities for healing unfolds.

I used to meditate every single day. In fact, I didn't miss a day for about 4 years. I did it when I was on holiday, when I was busy and even when I wasn't feeling very well. You see, I was on a mission to make myself feel a certain way. I wanted to feel calmer, more motivated and better about myself. But it became an addiction because I reached the point where I didn't think I could be okay if I didn't meditate. 

Over the last couple of years, I have considered what meditation actually is especially after I attended a lovely event run by Michael Neill and Dicken Bettinger called 'Living in a State of Meditation.' You see, I now see meditation as a state of mind which available to all of us when we are not so caught up in our personal thinking. I love that Jeff Foster says about it, "What is meditation? Pure fascination with this moment, exactly as it is." As I have explored the truth about how human experience is created deeper and deeper, I find myself naturally spending more time in the present moment.  So instead of meditating every day, I now live in a state of meditation much more of the time.

What I would love you to see is that you are not broken, you don't need fixing and that everything you are looking for through tools and techniques like mediation is available to you always; it's what you are made of. Imagine not just getting through each day but getting into it like you would a mediation; noticing every moment in all it's glory. You don't have to be a guru to experience this.

Thought control has had great PR over that last few years. I did a quick search for 'How to control your thinking', on Google and got 9,840,000,000 results! Ridiculous but I have probably tried a fair few of them because I tried for ages to control my thinking. I tried and tried but the negative thoughts still kept on turning up. It was exhausting and I felt like a failure. Why did other people seem to be able to control their thinking and I couldn't? It was because I was being sold a lie and here's why.

You categorically cannot control what appears in your head. Once you have noticed a thought, it is already there and if you want to change it, you have to pull it back into your awareness. A thought has no meaning until you give it one. In others words having a negative thought does not define you as a negative person. It's like watching clouds of various shapes going across the sky. When you realise the nature of thought, you reach the point of no longer needing to change them. Things can turn up in your head and you don't have to take them all seriously. Freedom lies there.

How many people do you need to change? Your parents, partner, children, friends. Who else is on the list? When we live in the outside in paradigm, it can look like there are some people who have to be different for us to be happy. But have you noticed the amount of work that involves and how overwhelming it can become? I didn't until it was too late and I burnt out. It can be helpful to see the layers to this desire to change people. 

Firstly the idea that other people can make us feel anything is fundamentally flawed because we don't all feel the same way about certain people. Secondly, how you perceive someone is being created through your beliefs and perception of the world. Thirdly, other people find it hard enough to change themselves so what makes you think you can do it. As you start to see these truths about how life works, it makes less and less sense to try to change other people and more sense to bring some awareness to what you are believing which isn't true. 

If you would like to have more ease in your relationships and feel less like your sanity depends on them, then please get in touch.