Peace from mind

There is a concept called ‘emotional leakage’; it’s about letting your emotions overflow into your external behaviour. In simpler terms, you show exactly what you’re feeling.

Like this article notes: “For overcontrolled (OC) people who tend have a lot of impulse control, showing a flood of emotion externally and in a situation where others can see it, might be very uncomfortable or shame-provoking. Emotional leakage happens when an OC persons self-control has failed and their inner feelings are revealed and expressed more intensely than preferred. Emotional leakage isn’t a problem per se, except when it’s followed by self-criticism.”

This leakage, however, is often expressed in negative terms – in psychosomatic symptoms which our body uses to raise the alarm, to signify to us that something is wrong, that the entire system is not working properly and we need to change something.

If you think about it, when we’re happy, when we’re satisfied with work, we have a steady income, a stable life rhythm, everything seems to be going perfectly and the whole world appears wonderful in our eyes. But when an adversity strikes, when unexpectedly you’re forced to search for another way of surviving the increasing expenses and nothing seems certain, you view the world much differently and not so idyllic.

We’ve all been on both sides of this spectrum. But we tend to forget it or overlook it.

“Happiness itself is fleeting,” says Rob Dial in this fantastic podcast titled “You don’t want to be happy”.

He explains that happiness is an emotion. And just like any emotion, it will be passing and gone eventually. Emotions change. So, what we want more than happiness is peace. Because peace is a state we enter in, and it’s harder to get in and out of a state rather than in and out of an emotion.

In the moments of our greatest happiness, we’re in our moments of greatest peace. Because we’re right there in that moment, thinking of nothing else. In our highest moments in life, we are so present in them that nothing outside them exists. You’re not thinking of your to-do list or of past mistakes or future challenges. Your mind simply goes quiet. And that constant story inside your head doesn’t seem to be screaming at you. That dumb story you’re telling yourself about who you are and why you’re that way is quiet in your highest moments. You reach a state of euphoria.

We want that peace from mind. From our thoughts. From our own self.

The mind is an extraordinary organ. It tries to protect us by fast forwarding about what’s going to happen and projecting into the future – it’s how we survive. It considers potential threats in order to keep us safe. But if you manage to focus in the present moment, your mind goes quiet.

The mind is an amazing yet complex tool. But we’re not taught how to use or control it. And instead, this tool becomes the master when it’s supposed to be our servant.

We have millions of ways to distract ourselves constantly – screens of all sorts, abundant information everywhere – it all stimulates our mind and keeps us wanting more. We become addicted to the temporary high.

However, there are various techniques to help you reach that much-needed state of peace. Meditation, for example, is tyring to get you to a state where you’re free from your mind. Allow yourself to calm down. It takes time, but it’s worth it once you get there.

Mindfulness is to place yourself in situations you find peace of mind as often as possible. Focus on that very moment and disregard everything else. It will help reduce stress, lengthen attention span, maximise awareness, decrease anxiety, etc. Our mind is like a computer – in some, like myself, there are at least two browsers running with a dozen tabs open in each. At some point, it will start being held back and running slower.  We need a restart every now and again to reboot and refuel.

Fear, stress, anxiety, and worry are all programmes of the mind. We need to cultivate silence as much as possible. To silence our thoughts, place things in order, and see things a bit more clearly.

If we take things one steady step at a time, perhaps they will work out more effectively and without harming our health in the meantime.

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Choose your outlook

“We’ve been through so much already,” the little girl said, tugging on her father’s coat. “If someone offers us help, I say we take it”.

He looked at her. It was true, leaving your homeland with only whatever you could carry was a torment in itself, and a heavy burden for any nine-year old to bear. The series of misfortunes that ensued was something refugees were prepared for. Particularly those violently expelled from their own country. 

They had just met someone who promised to get them to safety. But after a couple of failed attempts to believe people who vowed the same, the father was now distrustful.

“Not everyone is good”, he told her.

Her mother soon arrived, her eyes drooping from exhaustion. She took the little girl’s hand and gently placed her arm around her husband.

“There is still so much good out there”, she hummed. “But life is how you want to see it”. “If you want to find the good, you’ll find it. And if you’re constantly looking for the bad, it’ll catch up with you”.

They all breathed a little slower now. The realisation of this truth sinking in.

“We need to acknowledge that practical optimism is a much better framework on life than default pessimism”.

“Let’s choose to believe that everything will work out”.

Building patience

Patience is something we develop over time.

It’s not easy to build. Because just when you think you’ve got it all under control, something else happens to get you all worked up again. Life so happens to be constantly full of surprises, mishaps, misfortunes, and unexpected circumstances – both good and bad, that we need to always be prepared for any conditionality.

We are told to expect nothing to avoid disappointment. But even that is something that requires mastering. Because emotions are concerned, and they are the most difficult to harness. Excitement, above all, can get to your head. But so can disenchantment.

We need patience to allow life to play out before us. We can act on whatever we have control over, and everything else will develop per se.

Our lives seem better when we are mentally calm and relaxed. We can do that by building patience to develop that much-required serenity to deal with whatever comes our way.

And that is created progressively; brick by brick; day by day.

The harmony of a puzzle

Going through life is like making a puzzle.

You have to face the bafflement of having all the pieces muddled up in a pile before you and not knowing where to start.

You need to get organised and comply with a plan to get started. You first dig through the pile, carefully searching for the pieces with a straight edge that will form the frame of it.

As you complete more pieces, you learn to become more focused searching for specific aspects: a side bent awkwardly, a strange shape, a distinct colouring.

You find that once you begin and get drawn into the whole process, you become more concentrated, devoted to your target: one more piece that will fit.

You manage the irritation of having to twist and turn the pieces around, trying and failing endlessly until you find the right one.

But then, you are able to fully appreciate the satisfaction of everything falling into place as you find the pieces that perfectly attach to each other effortlessly.

The way you handle a puzzle may also be seen as a metaphor for life.

It teaches you to be patient, to have a plan and be organised, to be methodical and concentrated, to focus on your goals, to try and fail numerous times without giving up, and to value every success, no matter how small and how long it takes to achieve it.

But most of all, it teaches you that harmony comes with trial and error, that it is the small pieces that will eventually compose the bigger picture, and that sometimes you need to attempt with the wrong ones before the right ones come along that will fit perfectly into place.

When we say we’re fine

When people ask each other “how are you?”, the response is a reflex answer of “fine, and you?”. Rarely does the question delve deeper into how the other person actually is. We ask about our news, our novelties, our gossip, work, relationships etc, but hardly does anyone actually look into how we really are; how we feel, in what mental state we are in.

This year (2020) has been hard. Almost six months have passed, and we have but a few days in which things actually progressed and we have something to show for them. Otherwise, all we have done is stayed at home, explored our neighbourhoods, developed our cooking skills, irritated the people we live with, become depressed at being alone, and wasted an obscene amount of time on Netflix and social media.

Undeniably, even doing a bare minimum – or absolutely nothing – takes a toll on our mental health. We tell each other we’re fine to believe it is true. Because if we don’t overanalyze, we won’t have to admit to ourselves that deep down we are not as great as we want to appear. We are lacking security, the freedom of movement, the capacity to make plans again, having something to look forward to, the prospect that we will get to see our loved ones again soon in a scheduled time and date without the fear of risking a new lockdown or quarantine measures being imposed on you.

We’re only as fine as we believe ourselves to be. Yet, we prefer not to talk about what is bugging us in an attempt to override it. It’s like sweeping the dust under the carpet. Just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Mood swings and mental breakdowns don’t necessarily need professional help to be overcome or healed. Sometimes all we really need is people around us who care enough to offer the help we don’t dare to ask for. It’s enough to know that there are friends and family there who can offer a hug, a random talk when needed, and a simple confirmation that we’re not facing things alone. Because in the end, what we all need is the sentiment that better days are coming no matter what, and the incentive to garner the patience to deal with it all.

Compromise in the right timing

Compromise entails a powerful connotation. Because those who can appreciate its meaning can comprehend that it is better to bend a little than to break.

In order to meet in the middle, both sides need to make an effort, and stretch a  bit to reach out to each other.

Sometimes it is not enough to be right. Sometimes being right does not change a situation or bring a desired outcome.

In the same way, sometimes it is not enough to want something tremendously. Or to have great chemistry.

Sometimes it is also about timing. And timing doesn’t always agree with us.

Things will happen if you insist on them. If you work towards a purpose. If you try hard enough. And if you persist in what you want.

It’ll all fall into place when the time is right.

Just be patient.

The story of a needle and a thread

“Take this,” the Master presented his young Disciple with a thin piece of thread and a tiny needle.  The young one took it in reverence. He was terrified that if he dropped it he wouldn’t able to find it again.

“The task is to pass the thread through the needle five consecutive times. Consecutive,” he stressed the last word.

The young boy gasped. Surely his Master wasn’t serious.

“Consecutive?” he emphasised it too. “But that’s impossible”.

The Master said nothing. He turned around and left, leaving the boy to his task.

It took the Disciple ten times alone to simply pass the needle through the thread the first time.

He was already tired. That’s when the little devil inside him began to speak. His Master wouldn’t know if he hadn’t accomplished the task. Or if the five times were not consecutive.

But then that other voice appeared. The one his Master had infiltrated his mind with. “But you would know”.

The boy continued. He had managed three consecutive times. And then after what seemed like hours, four. But five seemed literally unachievable.

He stopped. Cleared his head for a minute and inhaled deeply. He looked across the horizon and experienced every sound and smell present around him.

Then he began again more determined than before.

And all of a sudden, he had done it. He himself couldn’t quite believe it. He yelled in excitement, so loudly his Master came almost running. He smiled at his Disciple.

“What did this teach you?”’ There was always something to be learnt.

“That nothing is impossible?” The young boy was hoping this was the right answer. His Master disliked that the boy was missing the point of the exercises by trying to find a “correct” answer without being certain of it.

“What did you receive from it?”

“Irritation, anxiety, anger….but then determination, strong-will, and…patience. Patience, above all”.

The Master smiled. “Nothing is truly impossible. We just need the patience to discover it can be done”.

DIY relationship tests

There is a modern saying that you haven’t tested the limits of your relationship with someone unless you try to build a closet or bookshelf with them. If you have ever bought a do-it-yourself piece of furniture, you haven’t yet realised the truth in this.

Good things take time they say. Three hours is long enough. That’s how much time it usually takes to build a closet. Because you first need to organise the what-seem-like-a-million parts, discriminate between all the different type nails and screws, find the required screwdrivers and hammer and distinguish which part belongs to which number in the instructions leaflet. The same leaflet usually says that a minimum of two people are required to assemble this piece of furniture.

It usually helps when the instructions are in a language you understand.

It also helps when you aren’t exhausted and tense from everything else that overwhelms you during that period.

But what helps above all is having patience. Because it is absolutely true that patience is a virtue. One that is also easier advised than actually had.

Cooperation is key in any joint endeavour. But communication is vital. And like everything in relationships and life, it is only when we indulge in something that we can find out how far we can go and how much we can achieve if we put our hearts and minds into it.

And if we are determined, then no matter how difficult, we will succeed.

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind”

Blissful

“Beauty is whatever gives joy” (Edna St. Vincent Millay). And what is joy? It “is a net of love with which you can catch souls” (Mother Theresa); “it is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognise how good things really are” (Marianne Williamson).

Sometimes – too often – we allow ourselves to be carried away by our anxiety, stress, anguish and worry to truly see all the things we should be grateful for. Our good health, our homes, the loving people around us.

There comes a moment when you feel you are drowning in engagement, in evergrowing “to-do-lists”, in increasing obligations that you persuade yourself to believe that something is wrong. But if we just stop, take a deep breath and look around, we see that there is a different perspective to life. One that is calmer, brighter, and a little more blissful.

Sometimes it takes a surprise, a gift, an escape journey to make you see it.

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls” (Joseph Campbell).

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Bliss

The Elegance of Grace

She grew up in a bedroom that was as big as some apartments she later saw during her rent-hunting period. She had always thought that was the norm. That all children were brought up in loving families that looked after their every need and sacrificed (themselves) for their own welfare. Finding out the truth hurt.

Elegance, her mother had always told Grace, was something that you learnt to impose on yourself to the extent that it came out as natural. It was like the pain a dancer felt, but to the audience it seemed like blissful gliding. That was the essence of elegance. To appear to have everything under control, without worries, stress or agony. It was not easy.

As she grew up, Grace lost her temper a lot. She was often nervous, allowing her agitation and fear to overcome her. Uncertainty did not fare well with her. She wanted things to be organised so that she could feel that she had the ability to impose some order in the chaos around her. But that wasn’t always possible.

It was only when she returned to ballet that she remembered. It reminded her that not everything had to be forced. Some things needed calm and patience to work out well and everything took time. It all fell into place at the right moment with the proper strain. The elegance was knowing how to acknowledge that and be prepared for when that moment arrived.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Elegance