Possible responses might include:
Having identified what you are pushing away, return to having harmony with life by resting instead of resisting. This easy exercise creates a moment of conscious calm. Provided, of course, that you are open to seeing that it is your allowing or resistance that is causing your negative emotions rather than your circumstances. Why intentionally go on resisting life if you know it is your resistance that's making you feel bad? That's not going to help anything because what you resist persists.
Resistance only keeps you stuck to what it
is you don't want. Instead, let your mind
become calm by rising above resistance.
One very direct way to rise above resistance is simply to say
bring it on
to whatever you happen to be resisting. Simple yes, but powerful, absolutely! Remember: resisting
what is
, is a core, hidden cause of having a hectic mind. Resistance makes your mind mull over the whys, whats, hows and what ifs of the situation - making it very easy to get lost in all of the stories. Whereas saying âbring it on' to what you're resisting means you can witness something quite remarkable happen: those external forces of circumstance lose their power over your inner experience of life. Amazingly, you can see how they actually needed you NOT to want them,
in order to have any authority over your wellbeing. Stop resisting and you immediately feel better.
Turn to what it is you think you don't want
and welcome it with a wide-open mind.
Bring it on
is a powerful antidote to judgement and resistance. However, again, let me reiterate. I'm not saying you cannot improve things. But instead, the three words âbring it on' are a determining factor in whether you experience stress, negative emotions and copious amounts of thoughts as you go about changing things, or whether you remain calm.
Attachment happens whenever you believe that being, doing or having x, y or z will make you happier, peaceful, loved, successful or some other desirable state. Being attached makes you move away from wanting certain things to believing that you need them to be OK. Attachment is based upon the illusion that you can't feel good now without fixing, changing or improving particular aspects of your body or life first. However, as you've already discovered, feeling calm, content and connected comes from no longer buying into the judgements happening in your mind or resisting life.
Growing up you probably learned what a good life looks like. How much money you should have, the kind of house you should live in, the type of person you should end up with, the shape of body you should have, even the make and model of car you should drive⦠the list goes on and on.
The criteria for a good life are perpetuated in the movies and media, and can often be unintentionally instilled by our parents and peers. Predictably you can pick up a checklist of requirements in order to enjoy a happy and successful life.
Highly motivated to achieve this good life - as, let's face it, your experience of happiness, peace, love and success depends on it - we take our rulebook of requirements and set about doing everything we possibly can to make it all happen.
I spent countless hours setting goals and working hard to achieve them. Totally lost in a âI'll be happy when' mentality, I was waiting to feel calm and contented in the future; when I'd ticked off my list everything I thought needed to happen. It was not only tiring but also torturous, especially as I couldn't help noticing how, even when I reached my goals, I only felt good for a short while.
Inadvertently being attached to future outcomes meant that my happiness and peace were only ever fleeting. Whenever I got what I thought I needed, my goalposts would always move to the next big milestone and then the next.
I remember getting into a convertible I'd just bought. Before leaving the showroom, I sat for a few moments looking around at my new purchase. I felt great! Then I looked to my right and noticed a little scratch on the side panel and thought:
Oh well, I'll be happy when I get that fixed!
Sitting in my expensive convertible, which I'd spent years working to get, my mind gave me about five seconds of pure joy before it found something to judge negatively and resist. Can you relate to this? Without realizing it at the time, I had immediately become attached to the scratch being removed before I could fully enjoy the car again. This is just one example of the many times when I inadvertently fell into what I refer to as the âAttach Catch'. Caught up in the belief that I couldn't be happy (or some other positive emotion) until certain things in my life were fixed, changed or improved first:
I'll be happy when I get my new home
;
I'll be happy when I've redecorated my new home
;
I'll be happy when I've paid off the mortgage
and so on. Left unseen, the mind can postpone your peace and happiness and be busy forever.
As an aside I still highly recommend goal setting, as having a clear purpose and doing what you enjoy can all help you to make the most of your gift of life. I still have many goals that light me up and drive me forward. I'm not sure if I would spend so many hours writing my books, for example, if I didn't set challenging goals to work towards. However, what is downright destructive to your inner calm is being attached to any of your goals ever happening. Attachment puts your positive feelings on hold until some future date in time and also limits your effectiveness in engaging in life fully.
The Attach Catch gets you totally caught
up in the mind, making you miss the
present moment, and unnecessarily
postpone your peace and prosperity.
There is a direct relationship between being attached to things being a certain way and the compulsion to overthink. Whenever your mind believes that it needs something to be OK, it becomes very active in trying to figure out how to get away from where you are now and into a more appealing time in the future. Attachment dulls your experience of now - the present. It stops the moment you are in ever being good enough, leading to discontentment. Attachment also makes you live in fear. Afraid of people disliking or leaving you, as they are your source of love. Or scared of losing the success you've worked so hard to get. Attachment leads to a very limited life in which you need to control and manipulate things to fit your rulebook of requirements. As a result, the mind is given good cause to start producing copious amounts of thoughts about how to improve your current set of circumstances.
Ever catch yourself thinking this classic attachment thought?
I'll be happy whenâ¦
Take a moment to consider all the things that you think you need to change, fix or improve before you can be truly happy and enjoy Mind Calm. Whether it is your job, relationship, finances, the healing of a physical condition or something else. Take note of any reasons you can think of for not chilling out and being calm now.
If you feel discontented with any
aspect of your life, then there's a high
chance that you're attached.
Once you have your list, see what happens if you ask this curious question:
What happens within me if I let go of needing this to be any different to how it is now?
Consider it in relation to one or more of the items on your list. Then notice how you feel when you let go of it needing to be fixed, changed or improved? Remember I'm not saying you can't at some point take steps to make things better, but I care most about how you feel right now.
What happens when you let go?
When I invite my coaching clients and course or retreat participants to do this exercise, I see the same transformations happen time and time again. Common responses are âI feel relief', âI feel calm', âI feel free', along with a range of other really lovely experiences. What happens for you when you are courageously contented? I say courageous because I appreciate it is common not to want to let things be. Your mind may temporarily kick up a fuss that you really must improve things first. It might even tell you that I don't know how bad things are for you, or some other judgement. But if you are willing to be brave, by letting this moment be good enough, exactly as it is, I'm really curious as to what happens inside you.
Time is a major hidden cause of getting trapped in the mind. When thinking, you are in an imaginary story about something relating to the past and future. You are either thinking about something that's happened in the past, appears to be happening now, or might happen in the future. With an unlimited number of scenarios available to you to get caught up in, you can unwittingly waste years entangled in the time trap.
Going into the past offers, quite literally, a million memories to choose from for as far back as you can remember. Obviously, this can play havoc with your mind calm now if you regularly take jaunts down memory lane (or for some, memory highway!). Not only that, but if you believe in past lives then you can also end up sorting through memories from an infinite supply of other lifetimes, too. Adding to the time trap, you also have the future to contend with, which also brings with it an endless stream of potential scenarios for the mind to become embroiled in. All the time, missing the present moment. The Time Trap, left unseen, makes mind calm near impossible.
Even thinking about what's happening now is a subtle Time Trap. Incredibly, all of our thoughts are about the past and future. Yes, that's the reality of the situation, every single one! There is no such thing as a present-moment thought. All your thoughts are about the past and future, meaning that if you're thinking, then you will inevitably end up missing the moment you're in.
Although now is the only time anything can happen and so your thoughts are happening now too, the
content
of your thoughts is always about the past and future. Even attempting to think about what's happening now, the moment has always moved on before your mind can process what is happening. To enjoy mind calm and truly experience reality in all its glory, you need to be willing to see when you've left now and gone into an imagined story in your mind. Otherwise you risk spending all your time in your mind.
There is a direct relationship between believing that the past and future are relevant to your current levels of peace, happiness, love and success and the compulsion to overthink. If you believe that you need to resolve all the âbad' things that have happened in your life to date, then you will feel compelled to think at length about past memories. Similarly, if you believe that you need to have a better future so you can feel good then, again, you can find yourself needing to engage your mind anytime it presents thoughts about the future, and thinking, for example,
Remember, we have a problem anytime we judge and resist âwhat is'. Entering the past and future presents your mind with infinite opportunities to judge and resist what's happened in the past or might happen in the future. You can find yourself trapped in judging and resisting made-up future possibilities that haven't even happened. It's such a waste of time! To enjoy mind calm it is vital to accept that whatever's happened in your past or might happen in your future need not have any impact on your current levels of peace.
The only time that you can
experience mind calm is now.
When you learn how to be here now, tapping into the inner reservoir of goodness that resides within your current conscious awareness, the lure of leaving your calm consciousness to go into some imagined story in your mind diminishes naturally. You see clearly that now is the only moment you can ever experience clarity, contentment and connection. When you leave now, it feels flat compared to the aliveness of the magnificent moment you are always in.
Escaping the Time Trap involves turning your attention towards now. I'm going to share many ways to do this with you, but one of the simplest is what I like to call having a Reality Check.
Right now, as you read these words, take a moment to notice what you can see - colours, shapes, objects, etc. Now notice what you can hear. Better still, listen for a sound that's been happening but you haven't noticed previously. What sounds can you find in your immediate locality? In order to hear them you need to be really attentive, and thus present. Now, notice what you are physically touching, including the book (or reading device) in your hands, the pressure between your backside and the seat or your feet pressing against the ground. What can you smell or even taste, right now? Totally tune in and have a Reality Check into the immediate here and now.
For a few moments aim to do nothing except be attentive to whatever is being presented to you right now. When doing this, you may notice that your mind becomes stiller. Especially when you give all your attention to what you
can see, hear, feel, smell and taste. It can also be fun to see how, in order to re-engage any thoughts, you have to take your attention away from this moment. You will discover later just how important it is to see that shift of attention but, for now, I want to finish this section on the Time Trap by sharing a few words on how to live with time, without being trapped in your mind by it.