You are not special, trust me, everyone has times when life just feels impossible, yukky, difficult, challenging, unsettling etc. We innocently get lost in the content of our thinking and believe that our circumstances or certain people are causing us to feel unhappy, sad, angry etc.
It is at these moments that the last thing we want to hear is someone telling us to calm down or that everything is going to be alright. Worse still in my experience is someone sharing, “It’s just your thinking”.
The inside of my mind is like a carnival sometimes and the other night I suddenly woke up slap, bang in the middle of the night with some crazy, insecure thinking going on in my head. I started to feel tense, insecure and noticed a sense of nausea rising from my stomach. My brain started to look for the reasons why this was happening. (It is actually very good at finding reasons as it searched through all of my memory banks looking for an answer and of course a solution.)
But then something happened.
My mind whispered a beautiful fresh new thought…” Take A Knee”. I burst out laughing at the incredible timing of this revelation and then I went straight back to sleep.
I know that doesn’t too exciting but what I experienced in the wee small hours is what can cause people to lose loads of sleep. It is what can cause others to become depressed, addicted to substances or develop compulsive behaviours. I simply believed what I was thinking and forgot that thought in itself is a divine neutral gift. The script of our lives is ALL thought…..wonderful, neutral, vanilla thought until I add my spicy consciousness to it.
Let me explain.
Here is the science part…..In a small study by the University of Colorado, they found that when humans wake in the middle of the night, having not had enough sleep or the quality of that sleep is poor the impact can be worse than being legally drunk. Our brain is far from having its finest hour during these periods. Now imagine or remember making decisions when you are over-served or overtired. Did it all work out well for you?
Our brains are biological, they are machines that need to be looked after, fed, watered, and nurtured. I often think of my brain as being like a car engine. On very cold mornings my car takes a while to warm up and get going…why should my brain be any different in the morning? It requires oxygen and nourishment. So a morning walk or exercise and a hot drink usually do it for me. I don’t believe a thing I think I think until I know I have fired my brain up. But here is the thing even that I totally make up.
But then there are other times when I get totally sucker-punched and believe what is going on in my head. We all do. We consistently swing from clarity to cloudiness. That is the human condition. No big deal.
When I heard “Take a knee’ it was a beautiful new fresh thought but it was also a pattern interrupt. It woke me from my cloudiness quickly and efficiently through laughter. Insight often happens that way.
“Take a knee” was a phrase used by Will Smith in the film, After Earth. He commanded his son to get down on one knee and become grounded, to feel, see, hear, and feel what was happening to him at that moment only.
I was feeling anxious in my groggy state, was believing what I was thinking and was speeding away into the future and sliding back into my past all in the blink of an eye, making myself feel sick and nervous. When I metaphorically took a knee there was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. I was not in immediate danger. I was just lost in the content of my thinking.
Next time you are feeling anxious or concerned I invite you to take a knee and put yourself firmly back in the here and now.
All my love,
Jacquie Forde RGN RM
