July 2008

As I sit to write this month’s scribe a question forms in the front of my mind – ‘How can one find peace in amongst the chaos?’

With my eyes closed and my breath deep in my heart my minds eye is drawn to a marketplace where all the colours are vivid, the joy and happiness of all of the people fill me with joy and happiness and I feel so relaxed and yet vibrating with all of life. I take a moment to breathe all of this into my heart and reflecting back upon my question I know that it would just as easy to feel stressed in this marketplace with all its perceived beauty.

Where once the people around me filled me with happiness and joy to feeling very irratated because I’d chosen a busy time to come. Where once the colours were vibrant all around me and sang to my heart to barely noticing that there was any colour at all around me.

So…I ask myself…’what changed?’

It’s the same marketplace filled with the same people and same colours. In my first visit here I was relaxed and happy and enjoying every moment to the depth I could experience it. The next visit filled me with stress. I felt angry, put out, bothered and wish I hadn’t come.

This example is a reflection of life. One time an experience can leave us breathless and yet the next…it can leave us feeling very stressed indeed.

Another question forms..is it us..? or is it the experience?

We all know we are the common denominator in our lives. We know the times we just don’t feel great and our day, our experiences unfold as such and we end up having a ‘not so great’ day. Other times we feel awesome and funny enough, our day, our experiences pretty much fall in line with that helping us to have an awesome day.

So, does this mean we are just’ puppets’ to our experiences, to our emotions?

Or, is it true that we can choose to feel better and therefore improve our experiences?

Yes. Absolutely we can. We do it by being conscious and taking deliberate steps to feel better.

So, how do we do that?

Here’s an example to help us relate to an experience:

Tammy has woken up late for work. She dives in the shower and while she is ‘barely washing’ her mind continues to feed her negative thoughts – things like ‘you shouldn’t have stayed up so late’, ‘you are going to be in so much trouble’, ‘you are so undisciplined’ etc..etc…

She jumps out of the shower and quickly dries herself and then still in her mad panic tries to find something to wear, which doesn’t go well at all, causing her to feel even more stressed. She doesn’t eat breakfast as she has no time and races out of the door (forgetting the important papers she was meant to post to her accountant) and hurries to the train which is running late making her feel even more stressed. Her breathing is rapid and shallow and she is feeling angry and unsettled.

She eventually arrives at work, 45mins late, she not only bumps into her boss on the way in but her ’stressed self’ has radiated out to all of her co-workers causing them to notice how late she is and she notices their stares and feels their judgements and negative energy coming towards her as a result.

Her morning continues on the same ‘destructive’ path. By lunch time she has already had 4 coffees and two sweet, sugary cakes in an attempt to find some happiness somewhere. She suddenly remembers that she has forgotten the important papers and then spends the rest of the day beating herself up about that. She finishes work and grabs some takeaway and a bottle of wine and heads home to drown her sorrows and eat junk food in order to ‘fill some hole’ within her. She falls into bed has an awful nights sleep as a result of the heavy, greasy food and one too many glasses of wine and the cycle begins again…

This might seem like an extreme example, or maybe not stressful at all to some of you who experience far worse on a regular basis. The whole point of the example is to show you that at any point Tammy could have made a conscious choice and taken deliberate action to feel better and therefore change the experience.

Here’s how it works:

On waking late she could have taken a moment to affirm to herself that she has plenty of time. As she raced into the shower, she could have spent the moments while she was washing to do some deep breathing and continue to affirm that she has plenty of time and that everything will be okay.

…therefore…changing her experience.

Before she raced out of the door without any breakfast, she could have taken a moment then to settle her breath and affirm to herself that she feels relaxed and calm and her day is filled with joy and happiness.

…therefore…changing her experience.

As she sat on the train she could have put her earphones on, closed her eyes and listened to some uplifting music.

…therefore…changing her experience.

Before she walked into work she could have noticed her rapid breathing and taken that moment to settle and calm herself down by doing some deep breaths into her stomach and repeated in her mind ‘my day is awesome and I feel fantastic’.

…therefore…changing her experience.

When it got to lunchtime and she realised she had left important papers at home, she could have simply taken some deep breaths, affirmed to herself that everything is in perfect harmony and rung the accountant (to find out they needed to be witnessed prior to her posting them).

…therefore…changing her experience.

At any point, at any moment of your day you can make a conscious choice and take deliberate action to change how you feel and therefore change how you experience a situation.

We all live busy lives. We all have ’stuff’ competing for our time and energy. We have health, finances, families, homes, work and friends that all carry many experiences to us and some of these experiences can make us feel very stressed indeed.

However, we have the power of choice.

We can choose to let an experience affect how we feel, just as we can choose to let a feeling affect an experience.

We have at our disposal an endless supply of tools to help us feel better about any situation – yes, any situation!

BREATH – Breathing deep into your stomach and then releasing tension out of your body with every out breath.

THOUGHTS – Positive thoughts that lift you and help you to centre yourself and feel better about a situation.

AFFIRMATIONS – Positive statements that are repeated over and over and over help change how we feel.

CONNECTION – Feeling positively connected to our breath, to the blessings we have in our life and the love we share with others brings joy, happiness and love into our being.

These tools are free and they reside within each and every one of us, and what’s more they are easy to use – we just need to remember.

These tools can help you to feel better about any situation regardless of how ‘bad’ things might seem. Instead of adding more stress to an already stressful experience – take a moment to be conscious and take deliberate action to feel better within yourself which in turn will only help with the experience itself.

As life quickens and we demand even more from it and ourselves it helps to know that we can choose to feel differently, that we can choose to react differently, that we can choose to be centred and balanced and have love and peace in our hearts no matter what is happening around us.

Thank you for taking a moment to connect in with this month’s scribe I do hope you have enjoyed it.

Much love, many blessings. Julianne xxx