Did you take yesterday’s lesson and start your morning off with an intentional approach to your day? Did you spark yourself with some energetic music or activity? Because if you want to have better days, you must start with as good of a morning as you can. To do that you need to take control of what you can and create the most intentional morning possible each and every day.
Yesterday I posted a singer that I stumbled upon and listening to that song accidentally lead me to listen to another song of hers and I thought I would post it today for two reasons. The first is that she’s discussing something very important for the management of your life, and the second is that as an artist she’s still way too small for her lyrics to be easy or even possible to find. Meaning; the only way you can actually know what they are is for you to listen carefully–something that rarely happens today.
You can start each day off as well as you can, but that doesn’t mean that either the day won’t deliver some challenging curveballs, nor does it mean you’re impervious to your own chattering mind during the day. So what’s a conscious person to do? Stay conscious.
This song’s called Worry, Don’t Weight Me Down. If you worry, that’s like inviting thoughts about fear, and that will lead you to feel badly. So that’s not good. But if you don’t fear worry, and if you don’t avoid worry, then low just is. Your fear doesn’t become magnetic nor compelling. But wanting it gone is to engage with it. So we can’t push worry away, we can only note its presence and permit its travel through us.
In essence, this is like having radar for when you’re afraid. This is where your emotions are less of a hassle, and more of an early warning system. Maybe your city has those amber alerts, where people’s radios and TV’s suddenly blare an emergency signal to let people know about natural disasters or missing children. Well your emotions should be a system like that. You don’t want to panic, but if you hear your own alarm going off it’s time to take action.
Many people will create dread, or fear and that ties them to original feeling. But if we recognise it as a shift, and we stay conscious, we will know that the way out is the same way we got in, only rather than unconsciously sliding down, we want to consciously float back up again. The way to do that is to let go of the thoughts that are weighing you down with the fearful feeling.
You don’t fight them, you don’t argue with them because that is putting energy into them. That’s feeding your dark wolf as the Natives say. You want to feed the white one. Feed the one about hope and meaning and grace and beauty. Learn to direct your thinking in ways that benefits you, all while understanding that you cannot even know to make these turns in your path if the world doesn’t throw some unexpected ditches at you. So don’t lament your worries. They’re as much a part of your path as your good times. Both would be meaningless without the other.
Listen to Ms. Costelo again. Listen to the words. Feel what it feels like to focus your mind and not have other thoughts intervene. Develop that muscle. That is the only one that will flex enough to actually improve your quality of life. A good life still has some difficult parts to it. But there’s never any doubt that a life well lived is always one worth living.
peace. s
Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.
PS A reader only recently noticed that I’m active on facebook and other social media. If you’d like links to articles or sites that may be helpful in your journey, considering joining me there as well.
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.