Letting The Future Unfold - November 02

If you often find yourself catastrophizing about the future or worrying about what’s ahead, consider approaching things differently. In today’s 5 Minutes In Nature, Liz reflects on the power of staying in the present—even when you sense that something might not go as planned. When you stay grounded in the moment, new ideas and solutions naturally arise. You are beautifully designed to handle the here and now.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott. I'm just walking across Dartmoor heading home now and this is the last time I'll be talking from Dartmoor for a little while because we're off to Spain. I'm off to Spain with my husband and we're going to a retreat in Spain and I'm going to hopefully talk to you from Spain so you'll get a bit more sunshine I think from me when we're out in Spain because right at the moment it's very low grey cloud. I think the rain is once again on its way and I want to talk to you about something that is so helpful in my world and I'm hoping it will be helpful for you too. My husband and I we both understand and practice if practice is the right word but we both deeply understand the three principles or the inside out understanding and there is a course on Insight Timer about three principles called an introduction to the three principles if you're interested to learn more and what we understand deeply both my husband and I when we bring our awareness within to that solid loving settled peaceful wise space within us then we're able to navigate with ease and what we both know absolutely is that there is no point trying to fix a future that doesn't exist and this has come in really helpful because we've booked to go to Spain we're going to be there for a few nights and when we're away we are going to a particular hotel and the hotel was recommended to us or somebody who lives locally said why don't you try this hotel good prices and we went ahead and we booked up several nights in this hotel without really checking it out first we just thought oh this is a good recommendation we'll go for it and then today my sister came over and she said oh great what's the what are the reviews like on this hotel have you looked at the reviews and we were like no we haven't actually and we went on to the computer the internet and started checking out the reviews and the reviews were really bad like really really bad there were people saying this is the worst hotel i've ever stayed in and you know it's clean but that's about it the food is dreadful it's you know we had there were lots and lots of negative comments than the odd comment that wasn't dreadful but it was like they were few and far between and my husband and i looked at each other and we're like oh silly us we should have looked at that before we booked but but hey ho we we didn't now the difference between us now and how we were a few years ago before we came across this understanding is that in the past we would have gone into a bit of catastrophizing this sort of sense of oh no what have we done shall we rebook shall we cancel shall we find a new hotel what if it's awful what if the food's dreadful what if we do this we would have gone into a lot of what if somebody calls it what ifery and i quite like that but for both my husband and i we kind of we both just get that we'll work it out and there's something really reassuring in knowing that we're going to go somewhere it's probably good to have a heads up that this might not be the most palatial beautiful hotel we've ever stayed in and it might be when we when we get there we we make some different choices or decisions about what we do but what we don't do is we don't disrupt our settled space of being now worrying about a future that doesn't exist because the truth is we don't know we don't know what we'll be like we don't know what the hotel would be like we don't know if it would be okay we don't know but what we do know is that the wisdom resilience resourcefulness that space of who we truly are when we just are in touch with that wherever we are in the world we will come from that place and we can make good quality decisions we don't have to have all the answers up front we don't have to try and answer questions that we don't know the answer to so today is just a reminder of the importance of staying present when you look to the future you might have information or an inkling that something may or may not go well or there might be something you need to do or address and that's really useful information but the trap is when you go beyond using that as useful information and you fall into the trap of worrying and getting anxious about the future i know for sure now that whatever the future shows up or turns up or when i get to that point i'll just know what to do and i'll know what to do because there is no future no it's just the present moment it's the same for you it's the same for me and the reminder today is that you are built for what's in front of you you're built for here and now you are not built to try and work out and sort out a future that doesn't exist that's where suffering and pain comes from

Reviews

Yikes-this way of being is definitely not how I am. I would have to take action because I see it as having a new here and now (new info about my choice) and look at other hotels. Hmmmm…🙏🏻