If you’re anything like me, one day you can be on top of the world, loving every minute of life and completely content with who you are, and the next, you can be steeped in doubt and worry and crushing feelings of dissatisfaction.
If I’m really honest this doesn’t just happen one day to the next but can happen one moment to the next. Quite often nothing significant has changed in my external world, yet my inner world feels completely different.
To be clear I’m not talking about the kind of mood swings of extreme high and low that are associated with mood disorders such as bi-polar.
What’s going on I’d often wondered? So I started to plot my moods throughout the day and this simple act honed my focus on my mood in any moment, fine-tuning my self-awareness and I clearly saw that whenever my thoughts are in the past or the future I am far more likely to be dissatisfied, far more likely for my positive or neutral mood to change and typically not in the direction I’d like.
When I slip into the past, I can find myself awash in feelings of regret, guilt, grief and loss.
In thoughts about the future I can feel despair, hopelessness, confusion, uncertainty.
There comes a point in one’s life when a certain amount of tiredness meets with a little knowledge and understanding, to cause a deep change inside of oneself, which, once it happens, is difficult to ever go back from.
I now notice much sooner than I ever have when my mind is drifting into time zones that don’t serve me aka the past and the future. I am able to step in more quickly and take steps to stabilize my mind and bring my attention to the smoothness of the cup in my hand, to the click of my heel on the pavement, to the sound of the chimes swaying on the patio.
Yes I am the only person who can pull myself down and I’m the only person who can come back into the moment where nothing is ever really wrong or lacking, where there always seems to be beauty and sufficiency.
Can you relate?
With great warmth
Heather
