Some years ago, I read Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now’. It was a difficult read at the time because I found it hard to grasp both the complexity and the simplicity of what he was saying. Complex if you are in the throes of living a busy, heady, left-brained life, but simple in that the core tenet of it was simply to learn to separate ‘yourself’ from ‘your mind’, which should be a tool that you use, rather than the other way round.

But most of us are in the habit of believing everything ‘our minds’ tells us about ourselves and doing everything our mind tells us we ‘need to do’. By the time, we reach adulthood, we have absorbed so much from outside of ourselves whether through family, school, peers or other influences, we are so conditioned into thinking a certain way, to holding certain beliefs about ourselves and others, to identifying with our ‘mind’ and all it has accumulated over the years, to the extent that this becomes our personality. However, the reality is that this is rarely who ‘we’ really are, merely who we have become, to fit into the particular world in which we grew up.

Not all, but probably the majority of people, if they can separate themselves long enough to actually listen to their mind, will notice the volume of ‘negative self-talk’, the fear-based thinking or maybe on the other hand, it will be the judgement of others rather than themselves, but nonetheless stemming from fear and insecurity if you look deeper.

The mind tends to keep us very busy, mostly in the past or in the future, but rarely in the present moment, which is when our life experience is actually happening, so technically we are not present, available, conscious or aware for most of the minutes, hours, days and years of our lives, and to truly appreciate all we proclaim to value about it.

Think about it. How much of your day today so far do you really remember, in detail? Did you do anything on autopilot while ‘your mind’ was elsewhere? Was that almost all the time? What percentage of it was positive as opposed to critical or negative? If you tried not thinking for one full minute, how successful would you be? Who or what is controlling you then?

Would this reality give any insight into why we operate so much from fear-based thinking, why we react almost unconsciously rather than consciously respond, and why we struggle so much to enjoy the simple pleasure of whatever is going on in the moment?

We try to control so much with our minds when in fact the mind is controlling us most of the time.

Much of positive psychology teaching and tools today, emphasise non-resistance, letting go, accepting the ‘isness’ of the moment as a way of letting go of the struggle, simply accepting what is, what has already occurred or is happening, doing what you practically can do about it and then getting on with life, without overthinking, without trying to control it all. This goes against natural instinct for most ‘fixers’ and ‘doers’ out there. It’s a simple shift in perspective, but one that releases a lot of pressure and responsibility. Simple but complex!

Before you can achieve that goal however of real presence and acceptance in everyday life, it’s usually necessary to find a way to re/connect with yourself, to get out of the head and into the body.

In this process you start to observe thoughts, patterns, habits, self-talk and conditioned ways of being, reacting, of seeing and presenting yourself. Once you do this, you can start to make changes, to choose different perspectives, to choose better responses, to develop new habits and in doing so, change the quality and direction of your life. That shift in perspective towards accepting what already ‘is’ (as there is nothing you can do about something that has already occurred) is a prime example of how you can use your mind differently, to choose different responses to situations as they arise. You then start to become more your true self, rather than the conditioned, artificially created one.

Interestingly, as people progress along this deeper path, they tend to start to enjoy simple things more, whether it’s a nice sunset or a brief chat with a stranger, they spend more time with this increased ‘space’ doing what they enjoy, now that they actually know who they are and what they like, as opposed to the ‘conditioned’ version they mistook for themselves or buried under all the busyness and ‘to do’s’. They are letting go more, resisting less, trusting more, in the universe, in God, in the quantum field or whatever expression of personal or spiritual growth or self-actualization they identify with.

‘People need something to hold onto, especially when times get tough’, is a phrase I have heard multiple times, usually from the older generation, usually referring to the demise of traditional religious practices among ‘younger people’, which is basically anyone under 60 or 70 from their perspective.

But past generations trusted and believed that they weren’t on their own, that they didn’t need to solve it all, fix it all, pre-empt it all, they just needed to do their best with the right intentions and they would cope as best they could with whatever life threw at them.

So maybe people are indeed searching for something and finding it, in themselves, in a more connected, intuitive and natural way of living, as a modern-day form of spirituality in place of or alongside traditional practices, and the interesting thing is that more and more people are doing this, usually without others knowing!

“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.” – Eckhart Tolle  

Breda Stewart

Core Needs Coaching

You’re always making choices … even when standing still

Email: stewartbreda243@gmail.com
Phone: 087 7436254
Web: www.coreneeds.ie

As we appear to be exiting the worst of the pandemic and re-entering the world we used to know under somewhat different terms and conditions, many people are questioning what’s important to them going forward into the next phase of their lives, recognising maybe for the first time what they really value, want more of, what they can no longer tolerate, what they simply do and don’t want.

While whirring away in the daily routine of life at work or home for years, there was little time or inclination to take this sort of ‘helicopter’ view. But Covid-19 and all its trappings, changed that. We had time, and plenty of it, in confined spaces with a limited number of people, working and ‘Zooming’ from morning ‘til night or getting to know every blade of grass in a 5km radius, depending on whether you were front-lined or furloughed.

But this new perspective presents a different kind of instability than was experienced over the past 18 months when we were told what we could and couldn’t do. This came with the ‘you can now hug your granny’ set of instructions.  Now the choices are increasingly ours to own, and people are feeling challenged in ways they never were before.

Resistance to the norm, the ‘done thing’, the unquestioning ‘normality’, has increased and this is something we often don’t know how to navigate. For much of our lives, we have followed familiar and often expected pathways. This internal shift has happened somewhat by default, through circumstances beyond our control.  

On an everyday basis, this is what we unknowingly tend to do. We wait for things to force change, rather than choose change, we stay in 'the comfort zone'. Other times, it’s unfortunate, unplanned events, such as redundancy, illness or bereavement, that foist change upon us. But in these times, the tendency is to feel more like victims, rather than creators of a new life experience more of our choosing.

If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that everything can change in an instant, there are no guarantees, there is no controlling everything, there is only making the best decisions you can with the information you have at any given time, over and over again. But I believe it has also taught us that we only have one life to lead and that we should value it and make the most of the experience.

Change challenges us, so we have a choice to stay as we are until life changes things for us, that is, we respond to external forces, or we can choose to design our own lives, with all the opportunity and challenge that may bring. We may revert back to comfort zones or we may build confidence and resilience as we live life more as we choose to. There is no right or wrong decision, only what works best for you. 

Breda Stewart

Core Needs Coaching

You’re always making choices … even when standing still

Email: stewartbreda243@gmail.com
Phone: 087 7436254
Web: www.coreneeds.ie