Discover the truth behind where your anxious feelings are coming from…
“I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.” – Eckhart Tolle
My wish to help people re-discover their authentic selves is at the heart of my coaching practice. While also helping them understand the role thought plays in driving their behaviours and how they experience life.
It was this knowledge that led to the biggest change in my life. Leading me from a life coloured by adversity, insecurity, and hyper-vigilance. To one of ease, peace, compassion, and a greater trust in my innate resilience.
We feel 100% of our thoughts, how many of them are you suffering from unnecessarily?
Thoughts are transient energy—they come and go—but they come pre-packaged with an emotion. We have thousands of thoughts flowing through our minds every day. However, it is only when we focus on one that we feel it.
Many times we over-analyse our thoughts, believing them to be a problem we need to solve. The attention we give to them creates momentum and more thoughts are generated.
This can keep us stuck in low-energy emotions. When we feel stuck, our ability to find new ways of dealing with challenges is limited. If we have a goal we wish to achieve but “think” is impossible, we might inadvertently self-sabotage by creating imagined obstacles!
When you realise you don’t have to believe every thought you have, it helps you to move out of your way as you uncover innovative and creative ways to achieve the success you are seeking.
Why do we all have different fears?
We often find it hard to understand why others don’t perceive or feel the same fears we do.
For example, there are many people too terrified to fly, they can only see the possibility of a disaster in their minds and experience sensations of anxiety and panic at the very thought of flying.
Whereas others perceive flying as just another form of transport. They have a place to go and simply view flying as the fastest way to get them there. Others enjoy flying and experience great excitement.
So what is the difference between them?
It is simply how we “think” about flying, and the feelings that come with that thinking. If the thinking is fearful, our brain triggers the stress response.
The stress response, or the fight/flight/freeze response, is our body’s emergency reaction system. It includes physical and mental responses to our perception of various situations.
When the stress response is triggered, our bodies release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which give us extra strength and energy to respond and survive whatever threat we are facing.
The intelligence within us.
Our organs are subconsciously programmed to respond in certain ways to situations that are deemed threatening or challenging. The amazing thing about this is, that it all happens automatically regardless of whether it is a real or imagined threat.
When we play out our thoughts in our minds and get caught up on the troubling ones, we experience the emotional sensations they evoke in our bodies getting a rush of stress hormones we don’t need.
Being aware that our thoughts are formless energy shaped to look and feel real by our imagination, means we don’t need to take them so seriously.
What is our subconscious mind?
Research has shown we spend 95% of our time in our subconscious mind, which psychology describes as the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness.
Our subconscious mind has what is called a homeostatic impulse, meaning it keeps your body temperature at 37 degrees Celsius, keeps you breathing regularly, and keeps your heart beating at a certain rate.
All of this is amazing, however, it also keeps you thinking and acting in a manner consistent with your conditioning.
Conditioning.
Our conditioning is what we have been taught, our cultural and societal beliefs, and any traumatic events we may have experienced in the past, all of which shape our perspective of life.
Habits of thinking and behaving are stored in our subconscious minds, which memorise our comfort zones and functions to keep us there, which is not conducive to growth and change.
Coming to understand that thoughts and long-held beliefs can dissolve instantly means you don’t have to suffer them or let them sabotage your hopes and dreams.
How often does your overthinking get triggered by people or situations?
Our minds are very good at visualising worst-case scenarios when trying to figure out how an interaction with someone might go, or when we imagine the outcome of a situation that is troubling us might be.
We all have stories we tell ourselves when dealing with someone we perceive as “difficult”. Or something we perceive as a “problem” or an “obstacle” in our lives.
Often we try to figure out how to deal with a person or fix a situation, only to get caught up in a storm of thoughts and worries in our minds.
When we become certain of how a particular outcome might go we can get trapped in a cycle of feelings—anxiety, despair, guilt, shame, fear, or anger, only for the situation to turn out completely different from how we thought!
How often have you tried to predict the future?
I had experienced this many times until I finally saw my predictions of the future rarely turned out as I imagined, and since we can’t actually predict the future, why suffer in trying to do so?
Now as I catch myself doing this, I simply let my focus on my thinking soften, and as my mind begins to settle, I often have a clarifying insight that leads to whatever step I need to take to help the situation.
Or to the realisation that it was only my thinking causing me to believe there was a problem in the first place.
Are you hypnotised by your thinking?
Have you ever caught yourself in a thought storm, feeling like you’ve been suddenly woken from a hypnotic state? This has happened to me many times, especially while driving. I often find myself nearing my destination with no recollection of the journey there.
In the past, I would have berated myself especially if I had gotten lost in negative thinking. I would be annoyed at myself for not being able to control my thoughts.
Understanding now that I don’t have a choice of which thoughts pop into my consciousness, only the ones I give my full attention to has brought me a sense of freedom and great relief.
These days I’m much more aware and compassionate with my self-talk. I no longer try to control or monitor my thoughts or change the negative thoughts to positive ones as quickly as possible, as suggested in many self-help books I’ve read.
My attempts to do this in the past were draining on my energy.
Now when this happens I allow myself the mental space to fall back into awareness. As I untangle my mind from worrisome thoughts, new thought begins to flow.
All of which brings me back to well-being and more peaceful sensations.
How many hours a day are you in quiet peace?
Know that our default state of mind is one of peace, with loving, light-hearted feelings. This state is the one before our intellect, before our experiences in life, before our learning and belief systems, and we have the capacity to return to it at any moment.
Our mind often becomes overactive with thinking that makes us “feel” fearful and insecure. Our capacity to imagine the worst possible outcome of any situation causes us to have a lot of unnecessary worries.
Worrying doesn’t make us any safer, instead, it keeps us locked in feelings of anxiety and robs us of our peace of mind.
Let your thoughts flow.
When we let our thoughts flow, just like clouds in the sky. It brings us back into our natural state of peace and ease.
Within this space, we have access to our innate wisdom. Which holds the answers and solutions to any questions or problems we may think we have.
As we are all unique in our thinking, no other person views the world as we do, or can fully understand what’s going on in our minds!
Our thoughts about life have been individually shaped by our childhood, culture, levels of learning, and our life experiences. All of which leads us to our own unique perception of the world.
You too can experience a simpler life.
In understanding how my mind works, my life has become a lot simpler. The world now looks a lot brighter to me and a lot less scary than before.
I now experience life with less fear, pessimism, and turbulence. I am much more grateful and hopeful and am more at ease. Now I approach life in a much more graceful, light-hearted way, enjoying a more peaceful mind.
What I have learned most throughout this journey is that no one else holds the answer that is right for me. I can only find the answers I seek within, through insight.
Where is your focus of attention?
Softening our focus of attention on our thinking expands our intuition, allowing us to tap into our innate wisdom. Thus making it easier to hear the answers to any question we have.
Developing the ability to rest in stillness and peace is possible for all. This means that at any moment throughout our day, we can rise above the noise (be it from our inner turmoil or our perception of our outer environment).
Leaving us with greater space for insight, inspiration, and creativity for whatever we wish to experience in life.
If you would like to work with me to explore this further, contact me at [email protected] to book a free discovery call. To read more on what having more peace of mind can do for you, click here https://angelamcevitt.com/responding-from-a-space-of-peace/.
With love,
Angela
Namaste- I honour the place in you, in which the entire universe resides. I honour the place in you, of love, of light, of truth, and of peace. And when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.