{Hint: You’ll Want To Make Sure You’re Not Falling Into This Trap}
Have you noticed how your Monkey Mind (that little voice in your head – or maybe yours sits on your shoulder?) likes to tell stories about stress?
Even when you’re not feeling particularly stressed, if it spots a stress trigger, it uses it as an excuse to start up the story machine again.
And it likes labels. It likes to put things in boxes: “That’s a stressful thing. That’s a difficult thing. That’s a happy thing.” When the stuff is in boxes, it makes life easier for your Monkey Mind, because then it knows which auto-pilot scripts and old habitual behaviours to run.
But there’s a problem with all of this.
The problem is that we believe the stories our Monkey Mind tells us.
If it tells us something is a happy thing, we believe it. If it tells us that something is a difficult thing, we believe it. And we feed the thoughts that support those beliefs.
Life is an objective, sensory experience, until you label it and attach the event to a story.
As soon as we use a label or put an experience into a particular box, we lose our flexibility and choice over how to respond.
The experience gets automatically connected to your body’s chemistry set, triggering the hormones and chemical reactions that impact your physiology and emotions.
The label – the story – impacts every cell in your body, without you consciously doing a single thing about it.
But it’s all a fib, because:
Tweet this: ‘Life’ isn’t stressful. The stories we tell ourselves about life create the stress. It is believing your thoughts that causes the pain.
The phenomenon of ‘stress’ comes from believing the stories your mind is telling you about it. Yes, some events have the power to trigger more stress than others, but ultimately it’s up to us to choose how to experience life.
Is this really stressful? Or am I just telling myself it is?
Whether it feels stressful or not is up to you. You get to choose which stories to feed in your mind. You get to choose which to just let float on through.
Tweet this: You are the author of your own story. So you can choose which story to write.
I know the idea of ‘choosing’ might feel difficult – and even trigger a few rotten tomatoes being thrown at me down computer screens – but it is something you CAN do. In fact, there’s a technique I’d love to share with you that could help you in the next sixty seconds. Are you up for it?
Want A Solution?
How to get your Monkey Mind to tell the truth – and reclaim your choice – a 60 second mindfulness technique.
- Start with 3 Mindful Breaths, breathing in through your nose and breathing out with a tension-releasing ‘ahhh’ sound. This brings you back into the present moment and into your body.
- Say to yourself: “I choose to press ‘pause’ on the story.” And mean it. Wait for the gap to arrive.
- Ask yourself: “What is real in this situation?”
- Be firm with yourself. If stories and drama surface, press pause on them and ask yourself again what’s real.
- If you get stuck, go back to describing the physical sensory experience, e.g. “When my boss said I have to do a presentation next week, I noticed the pit of my stomach tensing up and I clenched my jaw.”
- Sensory descriptions bring you back to what’s real and helps you to drop the label-addiction.
- When you distil the situation back to the essence of the sensory experience, and let go of the labels and the stories, it always feels better.
- If you want to try out solutions to the problem, imagine them and ask yourself how they feel. Your body will tell you whether the solution creates physical sensations that feel worse or whether it brings genuine relief. It’s easier to make decisions, when you work with your body’s internal barometer.
Did you enjoy this technique? It’s really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more I’d love to share with you!
If stress is a feature of your daily life – and you’re feeling fed up with being stuck on an emotional rollercoaster, then you’ll love my 14 day “Master Your Emotions” programme. You could set yourself free from that emotional cycle in the next 14 days – in just 10 minutes a day.
Here’s where you can find out more and get started today: Master Your Emotions
How did you get on with this technique? What did you notice shifted, when you turned from ‘story’ to ‘body’? How might you remind yourself to play with this?
I’d love to hear from you, via the comments.
With love, Namaste,
