Here's a few minutes to reconnect with truth from a three principles perspective.
For a long time I believed the societal story that stress was caused by the outside world.
I definitely would have said when I burnt out that that was the result of many different things that were going on in my life at that time.
In actual fact stress is not caused by the outside world.
I know that can be a bitter pill to swallow,
But in actual fact when we experience those sensations of stress in the body,
That is arising from the inside,
Not the outside.
Stress arises from thought believed in the moment,
Not from our circumstances.
So many things in my life looked like they were causing me a problem for a really,
Really long time.
I overthought everything though,
And that really was the problem.
I spent all day,
Every day,
Caught up in my head,
Overthinking and thinking very unpleasant thoughts about a lot of my life,
And that's really what caused the problem.
Now stress can show up in a lot of different ways.
It starts often quite subtly.
To me,
When I feel a little bit stressed now,
It's like a hamster wheel spinning around in the middle of my chest.
What happens over time though,
If we don't listen to those subtle signals from our body,
Is that then it shows up as other things.
Sleep disruption and eczema for example,
Those are just two things that I've experienced recently and I hadn't really realised that I was still carrying around a little bit of stress,
And that there were certain ways of thinking that I got engrossed in that were creating these problems in my body.
Because I didn't listen to the quieter signals that my body sent my way,
It made other parts of my health feel uncomfortable.
If we don't listen to the body,
It just shouts louder.
When I was on a trip recently,
I spent a lot of time in the three principles conversation,
And all of a sudden,
A particular part of my life that had been taking up quite a lot of my thoughts,
Just suddenly stopped making sense to think about.
A habit of thought fell away.
Something that's been around in my life for about ten years,
Related to dealing with a particular person,
Who it turned out I didn't actually need to deal with.
That was the issue really.
All of a sudden I saw that I didn't need to engage with this person in the way I thought I had to.
And it wasn't because they were causing the stress,
It was because I got very stirred up in my thinking about them when they did certain things.
All of a sudden,
It didn't make sense to think like that anymore,
And it fell away.
Spontaneously,
Within a few days,
My sleep righted itself,
Having been a bit of a problem for about two decades,
And a horrible patch of eczema on my foot just stopped being itchy.
Isn't that interesting?
When thought quiets,
The body settles,
And healing naturally unfolds.
Those two things that healed for me were pretty spontaneous,
And all that happened,
All that changed in my life,
Was that I put down a certain way of thinking about a certain person.
Underneath the noise of the mind,
There is always this peace,
Love and wisdom available to us,
And I encourage you to spend time just noticing that,
And to rest more of the time in the truth of who you are beneath the noise of the mind.
It's not always easy to do,
But if you check out my other content on stress on Insight Timer from a three principles perspective,
That will get easier and easier over time,
I promise you.
Thank you so much for listening,
Take care,
Lots of love,
And enjoy your journey.
