I’m used to hearing people say: ‘the common denominator is me’. It’s often a relief to hear someone accept that they may be the source of a problem, that they realise they may be doing something a lot of the time which makes life hard for them — and for other people. But we don’t only exist like that. (more…)
Imagine all the worries you can think of as like wild horses running off into the future. Get on the back of one of those and you’ll be in trouble. These wild horses are a big reason that people get stuck in life. They can’t decide what to do, or they become so scared of the future with all of its impending trouble that they miss life’s true opportunities. (more…)
Does your mind turn angrily to things you wish you could forget? It’s as if someone’s turned the heat up too high; a kind of friction with the past. These things seem to hang around waiting for an opportunity to get noticed. Maybe a small thing occurs and suddenly you’re back with them, all over again. (more…)
I’ve written about being at the centre of your own solar system somewhere else, but a talk I listened to at the weekend made me think about it again. Think about the relationships in your life and how intensely you’d cling on to whatever they contain. That clinging involves the stuff of Panksepp’s emotional instincts. Life, it seems, depends on how we respond affectively, our emotions guiding our thoughts towards ‘what supports out survival and detracts from our survival’. (more…)
Insight and information can help you avoid repeating past ways of feeling, thinking and acting. You need to protect your capacity to think with that information, rather than to remember it. Your capacity to think freely is what will keep you safe and doing life the way you want.
Here are three things that you can do three times each day which will help prevent your body from becoming overloaded by negative intensity… worries, resentments and so on … the kinds of thing that will leave you stuck. causes a loss, sometimes a radical loss, of momentum. These three things promote positive intensity: the joy of being able to feel relaxed and thoughtful, the pleasure of being in harmony with your life, and the ability to start and stop things when you need to.
Experiment with different amounts of time for the in-breath, pause and out-breath to see what suits you most for a situation. Box breathing is something you can always turn to discreetly
Stop being taken for a ride. Go and see films specifically to explore whether staying watching them or leaving is the best option. After you leave you need to be able to tell someone why you left. How long can you stay before you’re confident the film is not going to deliver what you need? You can experiment like this with any kind of experience, really. Always hold a place for your right to leave, work out how to do this in ways that feel right for you and others (ie storming out might not be the best option – quietly departing might be instead. Do you really want to make a point? What will the effect of that be on?
Buy a tuning fork or two and sound these close to your ear for an instant experience of being present in the world, connected to something outside of you that leaves you feel grounded in yourself.