The Flight of Thought

I would like for you to truly ponder this next statement: Your feelings, at all times & no matter the circumstances, are being brought to life from your thoughts - not the world around you. You are feeling your thinking. Period. (What?! YES TRULY!) I had a couple of moments on a flight not too long ago that will help to explain.

The first was while I was waiting for the restroom in the galley-way in the back of the plane. I put my face right up to the tiny window that's in the door of the plane, just because I was curious and loving the view. Then a quick flash of panic went through my entire body from the thoughts of being thousands of feet up in the air with no ground beneath my feet. Woo! Because we feel our thinking, I absolutely could have allowed my fearful thoughts to turn into a thought storm, resulting in an anxiety attack. But instead, I got in the drivers seat of my thinking and moved those thoughts right through by not taking them seriously. I literally said to myself "NOPE!" - turned around, and started thinking of other things, keeping myself in a more peaceful & relaxed state.

You see where I'm going with this?

The second experience I'm sure you can relate to. As we started to descend, the plane was beginning to do those huge drops out of nowhere from turbulence - the kind where your stomach goes right into your throat. A baby starting crying, the gal next to me was white knuckling the arm rests, people were hollering every time we dropped. My hands started to get clammy, I was jumpy and totally on edge, then I realized I was creating stressful thinking around what was happening: "Are we going to crash? OH god, even the stewardesses look stressed, that must mean this is REALLY bad." But remember, we feel our thinking, not the world around us. So what did I do? You got it - I got in the drivers seat and started to say over and over in my head "We are safe and will be landing safely." I immediately felt peace wash over me and I honestly became less aware of the turbulence I'm sure we were still experiencing. Of course we landed safely, and instead of being all wound up and tense in my body, which I surely would have had to recover from had I not gotten in the drivers seat of my thoughts, I was in a peaceful state of mind.

Out of curiosity, did you notice any tension in your body while reading about my flight? If so, isn't it incredible to recognize how you didn't even have to be there, but just by making the pictures in your head you created a similar reaction in your body? That's my point! Life is never happening TO you - you are creating life through the lens of your thinking, inside-out, always.

Listen, you're human and it is definitely easier said then done to catch your thoughts in the middle of an experience, I totally understand. But imagine what life would look and feel like, imagine how much less stress your body would go through, if you made the effort to CHOOSE to stay in the moment and not allow your thoughts to take over.  Especially when we feel out of control of a situation, the thoughts we create lead to such dis-ease (which is often, if we're not trusting our wisdom... that's a whole other conversation!) We have the option to choose one thought over another, it's the free will you're empowered with as the thinker of your thoughts!

YES! Dance break!

Lauren Hurt Photography

For the rest of the week ahead, challenge yourself to check in with your thinking when you notice different feelings or emotions in your body. Whether you feel sadness, worry, anxiety, stress or tension; Or any physical side effects of tightness in the chest or breath, clammy hands, headache, or body aches & pains. I guarantee you that you'll notice you're swirling in your thinking about things that are outside of the present moment you're in. Then get in the drivers seat and say to yourself out loud "I'm not there yet" (if you're concerned about the future), "I don't want to watch that movie again" (if you're playing a scenario or experience from the past over and over), "There's nothing to be done with that right now" or my favorite, "PAUSE." Take a deep breath, take a look at your surroundings, and come back to the present moment. The nature and energy of Thought wants to move through your head, so doing these things will naturally begin to auto-correct your state of mind to it's neutral state, which is relaxed and peaceful (mind-blowing, right?!). The short of the long of it, as Sydney Banks says...

"The life of a thought is only as long as you think it."

Want to hear something pretty spectacular? After having read this article and scratching the surface of understanding the nature of Thought and where your experience of life is coming from, you'll find yourself more peaceful right away. What's even more wonderful? You'll begin to have more compassion for others, as well as yourself,  because you know they're dealing with their own reality of life through their thinking, just like you are.

Pretty amazing stuff, see you again next week.

XO,

Jessie

Staying in the Swill

Have you ever experienced staying in the swill? By staying in the swill I'm referring to that heavy feeling that you put on like a cloak day-in and day-out because you're trapped in your thoughts of worry, fear, or doubt. You try really hard to focus on things you're grateful for, or opportunities that lie ahead, but you generally end up back at square one, feeling like crap. You maybe even have moments that give you hope for a better feeling because you laugh at something, or a wonderful idea or memory passes through your mind; But the moment those positive thoughts cross through and they bring you peaceful feelings, the swill thoughts (or what I like to call, thought turds) pop into your head like the school marm who catches you laughing during a test...

"Don't you dare begin to feel at peace and relaxed, you have to focus on all the things you're worried about!"

Well let me tell you, I have absolutely been experiencing this state of mind for the last week, and am feeling like I've finally emerged through the other side of the fire - a little scathed, and A LOT relieved...

Lauren Hurt Photography

So what in the world happened? Well, I had an experience over the holiday break that was pretty traumatic and put me in an immediate low mood. Like, permanent nausea, rash on my face (literally) type of low mood (my skin likes to make sure I know where I'm at in my state of mind, isn't that nice?!) And as I remind clients and students in my What Moves You community, when you're in a low mood, it can be difficult to see life clearly, to hear the positive intention behind what others are saying, or to even register the positive experiences in life that are happening all around you.

Why is that? It's quite simple actually. We are experiencing life through the lens of our thinking, every moment of every day. Even though it is quite seductive to think that life is happening TO us, or our feelings are coming from what's going on around us, we are in actuality ALWAYS having an inside-out experience; Looking at life THROUGH the lens of the thoughts swirling around in our heads, each and every moment. Being that I had had a traumatic experience, there were multiple things going on inside me:

• For days following I was trying to make sense of what happened. Why did it happen? How could things have gone differently? And so on...
• I was constantly trying to make sense of an upsetting situation that was over and I obviously couldn't time travel to change it, so I was in a perpetual funk. A low mood. A sadness.
• Due to the funky low mood, even if I wasn't thinking about the specific experience, I was seeing life through those lenses - like a pair of glasses full of fingerprints and smudges. I couldn't see clearly; My state of mind was shot. So every little aspect of my life that I had a stressful thought about was amplified ten-fold.

How was I able to overcome the thoughts and therefore the funk? Number one, I had to remind myself that I'm human and it is OK to get swooped up into the negative thought storms once in a while; Surrendering to that understanding in itself began to auto-correct my state of mind. I began to appreciate and love myself for having had the experience, and that it was truly over and in the past. Every time I thought about it, I was making the choice to hit replay on that movie, so I finally made the choice to stop hitting replay.

You see, our feelings come from our thinking, not from the world around us. So every time I was hitting replay on that movie, even if just for a moment, stress and anxiety riddled my body. From there, if I thought about normal life stressors about my life or work while in that feeling, those stressors felt so incredibly real and huge and heavy, they seemed out of my control and I would freeze. I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide away from the world. Mind you, if I were in a positive state of mind, those life stressors would of course still cross my mind, but I would easily be able to let them pass or they would motivate me into action, therefore moving them through my mind without even trying.

Bottom line is, we are the thinkers. No one is climbing inside of our heads crafting our thoughts for us. We have a huge bandwidth for a massive variety of thoughts that we think all day, every day: the construct of who we are (I'm introverted, I'm funny, I'm sarcastic), judgements of ourselves or others, memories & experiences; To what we plan to eat later in the day or what pen we choose to pick up to write with, and EVERYTHING in between. We have so many thoughts crossing our minds at the speed of light, that we often can't keep up. But the more we have an understanding that we are the generators of all those thoughts, and we have the free will to pick and choose what to pay attention to OR we can just observe them flowing through our mind like a ticker tape at the bottom of our television screens, the more at peace we are. As Elsie Spittle so wisely said in her book, Nuggets of Wisdom...

Remember that the nature of Thought is pure energy, so it flows. Use thought wisely - let negative thoughts flow through your mind. Then your natural well-being will rise to the surface.

So dear reader, I hope this shines a little light on where your life experience is coming from, as well as some peace of mind that thought storms and low moods happen to each and every one of us. Having the understanding of where my feelings and funk were coming from, sure helped me to trust that I didn't have to be afraid of what was happening to me, and I knew it would all inevitably pass. But darn it, life can be hard, it will throw you punches, and it's OK to have to work it through sometimes.

See you again next week, XO ~   

Jessie