It can be a hard task to isolate yourself from friends, family and community. All that time spent alone can really make you think. The trouble with this is that thinking can soon turn into worries and worries can soon turn to stress. This can then form a negative feedback loop where your stress can self perpetuate - it is often through the act of wanting something or wishing things were different. In Ancient cultures, this act of ‘wanting’ or ‘wishing’ is synonymous with suffering so in a lot of ways, through a cascade of processes that are largely out of your control, bordem can turn into suffering. Not quite fair is it?
The good part is that there are a few really easy things you can do that that can turn a wandering mind into a focused mind:
Accept
Create
Self discover
Firstly, accept the reality. If you’re rooted in the past or a different reality, you’re going to make the coming year rather difficult for yourself. Think about it this way - have you ever met an older guy who can’t stop talking about his golden days when he was the best cricket player in his school. Or the granny who talks about how everything was better in her youth? Everyone does it to some extent, it’s going to make your reality harder. Accept what’s going on now and you will start to feel a whole lot better. If this is hard for you, meditation can be a really helpful tool.
Create some intrinsic (something you can control) and SMART goals, these are:
Specific - make them as specific as possible, try not to be vague
Measurable - you can measure them somehow
Achievabe - be realistic
Relevant - goals should have an emotional attachment and me meaningful to you. Could be part of larger goals.
Timeframe - attach a timeframe to it
For example - an INTRINSIC goal looks like this:
To be able to do 20 pushups in one month
To do 10 of the duolingo classes in the next week
To eat a plant based diet for the next 2 weeks
To run 2km per day for the next 3 weeks
To contact my mum every 2 days for the next three weeks
An EXTRINSIC goal looks like this (not really reccomended):
To own 200 roles of toilet paper by next week
To have my co-workers like me in 2 weeks
To have my mum contact me every 2 days by 3 weeks
Goals are things that you can control - these are likely things that you already have made unconsiously through primal desires, you will likely just need to filter and work through the junk.
Thirdly, Self discover - check in with your values. Obviously, your values have been threatened to some point during what has happened. As with goals, there are values that are internal (that you can control) and values that are external (that you can’t control). If you value things externally, this introduces attachment and needs. This means that without really having this external attachment, you won’t really be content or happy because you lack something. So, to let go of this attachment you will need to identify whatever belief or value is standing in the way.
This is a crash course but is quite a simple process. Growth isn’t boring.
Theres 3 more tips you’d never think of in the ebook you can download for free:
Comments