A Kinder Way To Feel Relief From Pain

Hi,

It's Brooks and thank you for joining me.

Today I'd like to talk with you about distraction.

As a clutter buster I've really learned how much we've been trained to be distracted.

Marketing is constantly showing a person who's in some kind of ill state or another,

Either physically or emotionally,

They're in some kind of pain.

So this person is shown getting this product or service and suddenly they're better.

Like everything's better.

And we start to be trained that,

Oh if we're in any kind of pain we need to buy something.

We need to go on Amazon and buy something.

Go online buy it buy whatever it is that rings our bell.

Whatever it is that feels like that's gonna do it.

And we've been trained.

Stores understand that.

The way that they're designed and the people that they hire is very much to uplift you when you come in there.

It's just feeling that everything's better now.

If you just purchase this thing you're gonna,

Everything's gonna be transformed.

So we're really trained to get something when we're not feeling good.

And basically these things become distractions to us.

Because a distraction is something that takes our attention away from whatever it is.

In this case it's pain.

So you go on Amazon you're looking at stuff.

And then you click it,

Like buy it,

And there's this feeling of elation.

Like ah you know.

And so any sadness or discomfort or depression,

Whatever,

Overwhelm,

Anger,

It's like temporarily taken away.

And marketers understand this.

They've known this for a long long long time.

And it's been used against us.

So what ends up happening is we end up buying things that don't actually serve us.

Because we bought these things to get some relief.

And the relief doesn't come from that.

Long-term relief doesn't come from that.

You know you're talking maybe an hour relief.

What happens is we bring these things into our life because we're feeling out of sorts.

So we're not thinking that clearly when we go looking,

When we go shopping,

We're messed up at that point.

Our mind isn't clear.

So we go looking for some distraction because we've been trying to do that.

And we get that thing and we bring it into our life.

And that could be like also a service or it can be anything that we bring in.

Even a person in a sense.

And so suddenly here's this thing that comes into our life and because we weren't thinking clearly and we brought that thing in,

It's gonna cause us some discord.

Because clutter is anything in our life that doesn't serve us anymore.

And what it ends up doing is actually distracting us from our life.

Which is really interesting.

You know we got something to distract us from the pain and it ends up adding to the pain.

And it's really hard to question the things in our life because we've been trained that oh things are gonna make us feel better.

When we're hurting we bring things in.

We bring services.

We bring people in.

Then we're gonna be okay.

And so it seems odd to question that,

To go opposite to that.

But that's what I'm encouraging today.

I'm encouraging looking at things in a different way.

So pain is unavoidable.

There's this idea like you know I think marketing presents this idea of like you can always be happy.

Just get the things you need and bring them in and you're always gonna be happy.

But life doesn't work that way.

Life is continuous change.

There's pain and pleasure,

Pain and pleasure.

So I think first it helps to recognize that sometimes there's pain.

At least half the time in our lives there's gonna be some kind of pain.

So when pain happens there isn't necessarily because of that understanding there isn't gonna be perhaps that feeling of oh my god there's pain I got to get rid of it right away right away.

I got to go get something.

You know I got to go get something and then I'm gonna be okay again.

I think it can help for us to have that sense of oh there's pain.

Oh well pain happens you know.

Oh well what are you gonna do?

And right away there's some relief there.

Because there's there isn't that feeling of this shit and be happening and I got to fix this right away.

It's kind of like oh yeah there's pain.

Now perhaps we might be able to do something about it in a different kind of way.

Perhaps if we got a drink of water we might feel better.

Because when we get dehydrated we feel out of sorts.

It's very common.

Our body doesn't have enough liquids in it.

We start to feel off and we start to have erratic thoughts.

So rather than perhaps going towards shopping we might recognize I need a drink of water.

Or maybe our blood sugar's off and we need a snack.

But if from the old way of thinking we might feel like oh my blood sugar's off we might not even recognize it's the blood sugar off we just feel out of sorts.

So I need to go get something.

It needs to acquire something.

And it could just mean we need to get something to eat.

So these are the simpler solutions that don't cause pain.

They're non distractions.

I like to just call them solutions.

Because getting a drink of water or getting a snack doesn't create problems.

It takes away that pain we're feeling and then suddenly we have clarity and we're feeling good and we didn't add anything into our life that causes us more pain.

Or maybe you were tired.

That's very common.

A lot of us get tired very easily because we stay up late and we don't get enough sleep or very busy during the day and we get tired.

And that's a pain in one way or another.

It's uncomfortable.

And sometimes when we're tired we go try to buy something.

Try to bring something in again.

Again because there's that distraction thing that we've been taught.

So maybe when we're tired maybe we need to take a break.

Maybe that could be a solution.

You could take a nap or step away from what we're doing and go outside or do something fun.

Or maybe a nap.

So again it's a solution rather than a distraction.

And again we're the better for it because we get refreshed which is what we needed.

Distractions often have an adrenalizing effect.

When we go shopping we get something new.

There's this adrenaline that comes in.

That adrenaline can seem like it takes care of the tiredness.

But actually it's making us more tired because it's exhausting for the body to do that when it's tired.

So this talk is really all about reconsidering that old habit of going towards a distraction.

Because it's impulsive.

It's compulsive.

And we've been we've been trained to do that.

Marketing understands that really well.

They understand psychology really well.

They know that this works in their favor.

You know not in our favor but in their favor.

That doesn't mean that things are bad.

There are things that we need and we bring them in and that makes a difference in our lives.

But when we're feeling out of sorts,

We're feeling troubled one way or another,

In pain in one way or another,

That's often when this habit kicks in.

And just by being aware of this can help.

You can find yourself like,

You know,

There's edgy feeling.

You're like going to Amazon with this edginess.

I just I need this.

This particular thing is like a beacon in your mind.

This is gonna do it.

And but you maybe take a moment and notice how that feels in your body thinking about that considering that if it's clutter then then it's a jangly feeling in your body.

There's no soothing quality to it.

So this is really looking at this whole thing from a simpler way and a kinder way.

And at first it might seem odd but the more you do it the more natural becomes and the more you're able to take care of yourself.

And you actually end up saving money because you're not buying things that you don't really care for.

You know.

And you don't fill your life with things with clutter that cause a great discomfort.

Living with clutter makes life really difficult.

So I wish you the best with this approach.

I think that um I think you're gonna find this like really is a new way of looking at life and a kinder way of living.

And I also wanted to let you know I'm gonna be starting a talk a clutter busting talk on Insight Timer.

It's gonna be a live talk Wednesdays five o'clock Eastern Standard Time for half hour and it's gonna be every Wednesday at that time.

And I'm gonna be talking about clutter and you can ask all the questions you want about what about clutter in your life.

And you can listen to other people asking questions about clutter in their life and you'll be able to relate to it.

And I'm excited about it and you can sign up for an Insight Timer.

And I'm looking forward to doing that and if you can be there I would see you there.

I wish you the best.

Take care.

Bye.