Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I've walked to a place called Peekmoor Gate on Dartmoor.
So this is one of the entrances onto Dartmoor.
I've walked along some country lanes and I'm just pausing,
I might be a little bit out of breath,
I've just scrambled up a slope and I'm just pausing by a rowan tree which has got thick red berries on it and the leaves are starting to go this orangey red,
Another sign that the seasons are on the turn.
And if you remember yesterday I was a bit bleary-eyed,
A bit slow when I talked to you on my morning walk.
I'd had one of those three o'clock in the morning moments where my thoughts went a bit wild and today I'm going to reflect back on that.
You see one of the things that I share with you is not giving you tools and techniques to try and live life with more ease and the reason I don't do that is because I spent years gathering tools and techniques and then I came across something that helped me more profoundly than any tool or technique and that's the inside-out understanding or the three principles.
And one of the things that makes the biggest difference to me now is that when I understand something I align myself to what's going on.
It doesn't mean I don't use tools or techniques,
It doesn't mean I don't go walking,
It doesn't mean I don't take deep breaths or give myself time for a quiet space of reflection or quiet meditation,
It doesn't mean I don't engage in these things but these things occur to me once I understand what's going on in the moment.
And I'll give you a little example because yesterday I was tired and I understand that when I am tired there are a few things that I find really difficult.
I am less patient,
I am not good at making decisions,
I know that when I project into the future or I think into the future I will feel defeated and negative.
I know that when I'm tired I'm more prone to feeling like who am I and I'm no good and all these repetitive negative thought loops that come into my world seem to really crowd in when I'm feeling tired.
In the past I would have tried to have fixed all of that,
It was like something's wrong with me but now I just understand it,
It's like no I understand that when I'm tired I need to be kind to myself and look after myself.
The other day my husband and I we were walking across this very rocky pile to get to a rock that meant we could stand and look at the view,
Beautiful view.
As we were walking on the rock pile our whole attention was focused on where we put our feet,
Making sure we weren't going to twist an ankle.
It's like we didn't look at the view as we were climbing up onto the boulder where we actually enjoyed the view and that careful looking at our feet and carefully me looking at the way that I walked through life yesterday is a very similar thing.
So yesterday I aligned myself to feeling tired.
I didn't look at anything that was going to be planning the future,
I knew that that wasn't good for me.
I had fewer conversations with my husband because I knew that if I started talking I might fall into a spiral of negativity and I know because I understand it the way negativity works the more I feed negativity the bigger it gets so I restricted the conversation I was having.
I did things during my work day that required patience.
I needed to do some technical stuff on my computer and I knew that yesterday was not the right day to do it because I get quite frustrated when I can't find things how things work.
I was kind to myself.
I made sure I went to bed early.
I didn't beat myself up for being slow and sluggish and feeling more prone,
A bit more impatient.
I was just kind to myself.
So today is just a reminder if you're feeling tired or you're feeling if your emotions are feeling wobbly just be kind to yourself.
Be kind to yourself and that is a message from today.
