Monday 12 July 2010

If it's not this, it'll be something else.

Ever feel sometimes that you just can't get something off your mind? And I don't mean in a good way. I mean when something is just bothering you and you can't help but think about it over and over and over. You wake in the night thinking about it, every spare minute of the day there's some infernal, internal dialogue happening inside your head...

It could be about anything, but I'm referring here to something you really don't want, or something that's really worrying/annoying/frightening you. That's the trouble with creativity, as human beings we're creative all the time whether we want to be or not. We've all heard the ol' saying, 'you attract what you think about'

Well I'm asking, why is it so easy to think about the bad stuff?

The answer is often Stress.

When the mind is stressed, I'm told, the hind brain (which looks for danger) dominates. That's bad news as far as creating your own positive future goes. Forget visualising a mansion in the Bahamas and driving that Mercedes... that's right-brain, creative thinking and stress is making that hind-brain work overtime... so all you can think about is your debts all day long. Your hind-brain is actually LOOKING for things to worry about! Arghhhh...

So. Just. Relax. It's stress that's causing the problems.

I have a trick... whenever something is really rattling around inside my head, I say to myself

"if it's not this, it'll be something else' And it works!

It helps me disassociate my emotions from the 'story-line' and detach from the senario.

Just say the magic words... "If it's not this, it'll be something else' I accept that I have these emotions and they'll find a way of getting out somehow so I'll stop blaming the person/situation and think about something that I DO want and CAN do.

No matter how many times I do this, I still experience a huge sense of relief everytime. It just lets me off the hook somehow, and lets the other person off the hook aswell, knowing that I can change my stress levels now and don't need anyone else to be perfect or wait for external circumstances to change.

And because the perceived source of anxiety is gone, it helps me to relax and start thinking properly again. I can see that Mercedes now... it purrs like a cat and seats are soft, the music's playing, the wind's in my hair....