I lost my keys today while walking my dog at the local park. Worse still, I only realised when I got home and wanted to unlock the front door! Immediately I went into a mild panic and many thoughts crossed my mind like the rolling captions that sometimes run along the bottom of some newscasts.
Questions like:
“Where could I have dropped it?”
“Has someone already found it?”
“Will I be able to find it again?”
“Who can I call on to help me with this?”
“Will I need to change all the locks?”
“Do I have a spare key for my car?”
Then the inevitable “What if’s” and the associated thoughts that come with those answers …
“What if someone finds it before I do?”
“What if I can’t find it?”
Next of course, was the barrage of blame:
“How stupid of me!”
“I should have been paying more attention!”
“If I was more mindful, this wouldn’t have happened!”
The thoughts just kept coming and created an anxious feeling, quickened heartbeat and a distinct queasiness. That’s the power of thought – they actually create a physical response in your body!
And that’s when I stopped in my tracks and took a deep breath.
In that moment I realised that underneath all the personal thinking that I was experiencing, I was okay. I reconnected with myself. The constant me. The me that was okay before I lost my keys and is still okay despite whatever happens.
Relief flooded through me and my head cleared. I felt peaceful and purposeful as I began to retrace my steps. The calmness I felt moved me - it was something beyond words. An
d after 30 mins of scouring the fields that my dog and I had tracked, I found the keys!
The peace and clarity I felt is always there though sometimes it gets masked by the hundreds of thoughts that cross our mind. These thoughts may seem like good thoughts or bad thoughts, positive or negative – but they are all just thought. It’s only when we start to take them seriously that they create a panic situation in our minds.
As I set forth this year creating my niche in peace of mind and resilience coaching, this episode was a timely reminder that it is human to fall into the trap of taking our thoughts seriously and just as easy to reconnect again with the peace and clarity that is our default state of being.
Are you curious to see life in a new way? To understand exactly what anxiety is and where it comes from? Ready to spend more time in a calm, connected frame of mind? Get in touch to get started.
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