As I ran through the park the other day, I felt the open sky and the trees on either side of me.
I wasn’t “trying to think less” or “trying to be present”. I just felt.
You know as a child when you spun yourself round and round; when you stopped you felt dizzy.
Or when you got off a merry-go-round…
When you’re constantly spinning yourself round and round trying to work life out and control it, the dizzy effect makes it harder for you to feel.
You might tell yourself a version of “I need to be more present” or “enjoy the moment” or ”think less”, but you’re simply not feeling it.
The day before I ran, I had seen afresh that I really don’t have to be afraid or ashamed of feeling anything and expressing it. After that, I started to feel everything more. Including the trees.
If we spoke less about “thinking positively” and more about “living wholeheartedly” (to extract Brené Brown’s term – from a sense of worthiness. With an open heart. Vulnerable), we might be less annoying.
If we spoke less about “being present” (it’s an overused term that we’re all murmuring about like robots) and more about being fully with what’s real, we might be less boring.
In fact, if we simply spoke less about how to think and got on with feeling, we’d probably be living simpler, more intuitive and impactful lives. Less violent…
It might not be the life that your ego grasps at, but that’s not real anyway.
That’s part of the spinny, confused, desperate realities we all get ourselves into occasionally… or in which some people spend most of their lives immersed.
If that’s you, at some point you fall.
If you are stubborn, you get up and back on the merry-go-round.
Until you fall again, harder…
But it doesn’t have to get to that point.
You can touch reality right now. And stay there.
As your dizziness fades, everything becomes clearer.
Let everything flourish as it must.
Savour it.