Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott,
Out and about as always.
Just come back to the campsite.
I'm away for a few days and we've got a really welcome autumn bit of warmth and dryness.
Not too hot,
Not too cold,
But you can really notice the change in the seasons.
And I'm just beside the camper van and having a little peruse of the grass and admiring some of the little white daisies that have survived being cut by the campsite owners here and you know today's reflection came about when I was in the gym so I go to a gym and there are usually about 10 of us that attend each session and mainly most of us are women and older women at that and we really are supportive of each other I love being in that environment where there's a bit of physicality there's a bit of training but there's also this sense of support there's not competitiveness any Anyway,
We were there having a chat in between exercises,
Talking about dog training.
One of the ladies is about to get a little spaniel as a puppy,
And we were all talking about our experiences,
Either those of us who've had dogs or still have got dogs,
With training,
Laughing at some of our inability to keep our dogs well behaved.
And someone came up with a phrase that I'm going to adapt for us today here as a reflection on Insight Time.
She said,
You know,
One of the best bits of advice I got when it came to dog training was that if you don't give your dog a job,
It will become self-employed.
And we all laughed,
Those of us who have dogs,
Because we completely understood what she meant.
If you don't give your dog something to do,
Or you don't keep it occupied,
It will go off on its own and get up to mischief,
Basically.
If you don't give your dog a job,
It will become self-employed.
And then it occurred to me that maybe this is what happens with our minds.
And it's slightly different with our minds,
But bear with me,
Because if you've ever experienced that whir of thinking and overthinking and confusion and storytelling and crippling paralysis about what to do next,
What may or may not happen,
Then you have been in a self-employed mind.
If you don't give your mind a job,
It will go off and become self-employed.
Self-employed by getting busy looking at all these things and imagining all these things that may or may not happen,
Giving you a frightening set of imaginings to deal with.
And it is exhausting.
If you don't give your mind a job,
It will become self-employed.
But the thing that makes this difference is I don't mean that you give your mind a job that comes from more thinking.
It comes from a different place and this is the key.
Is when you find yourself listening into that deeper intelligence,
That deeper wisdom,
And we touched on it yesterday,
When you allow yourself to listen and give that space to come through you,
That creative expression that wants to come through you,
That nudge to take the next step in life,
When you listen to that,
And your mind then becomes this of that deeper intelligence,
Then that is the job you want to give your mind to do.
Like,
That is what we're talking about.
We're not talking about being busy and having lots of projects on the go.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm not talking about you endlessly setting goals or plans.
I'm talking about something different.
It's firstly listening into that intuition,
That wisdom,
Allowing it space,
Feeling it,
And then letting your mind bring that deeper wisdom,
Those creative ideas that come from that wisdom,
Letting your mind find its way to make them a reality,
To bring them into form.
That's the best use of your mind.
Mind a job,
It will become self-employed and it will become self-employed with anxiety and worry because that just tends to be what it does.
And when you give your mind a job,
And that job comes from your deeper intelligence,
That wisdom,
That essence,
That soul calling within you,
When you give your mind the job to bring that into the world,
To bring that to fruition,
Then that's when you're using your mind in the most beautiful and effective way.
And it doesn't become self-employed with a lot of unnecessary thinking,
Thought,
And scare stories.
So give your mind a job,
A job from wisdom,
Rather than letting it become self-employed.
Let me know your reflections on that.
And don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
