Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Every day in January I'm bringing you outdoors as I go walking and together we listen to nature's wisdom.
And there's still snow on the ground and it's this lovely crunchy snow,
Quite fresh still as I crunch through it up on Dartmoor,
But it's sticky snow.
It's the kind of snow that's really good to make a snowman or to make snowballs because when you scoop it up it sticks together.
And I've been reflecting as I've been walking about the kind of well-being work that I engage with because I guess I'm different in many ways,
Different to how I was 10-15 years ago.
I no longer am that interested in helping people with tools and techniques or strategies around well-being.
Certainly that was something I used to do and I craved and I used to go on lots of different courses and I learned lots of different techniques and tools trying to feel better in my life.
And I spent hours and hours reading and going on courses and writing journals and just trying so hard to be a better person.
So I do know all about the tools and techniques and the tips that are out there and I used to crave them but I really don't anymore.
And when people come to me I have to be very clear that I'm not someone that's going to be pointing out tips or tools or techniques to make them feel better.
That's just not what I'm interested in.
The work that I'm most interested in now is helping people realise the nature of thought,
Of thinking,
Of awareness,
Of who they truly are.
When you start to understand something,
When you understand the nature of something,
Then what happens is you shift your behaviour accordingly.
So you don't need to remember a tool or technique because you understand the nature of something,
It ceases to make sense to do the same thing and expect different results.
And the snow is a really great reminder of this for me today because if I was to make a snowball and then to roll it along the ground,
Because the snow is sticky,
The snowball would get bigger and bigger and bigger.
You'd eventually be able to make a snowman.
Because the nature of this snow means that if I roll it in more snow,
More snow will stick to it,
The snowball will get bigger.
If I understand the nature of two things about snow,
One is that if I roll it up it gets bigger and the second thing is that if I leave it in the sun it will melt,
Then if I don't want to make a big snowball I won't roll it in the snow.
And if I want the snowball to melt I will place it in the sun and the sun will do the heavy lifting.
And it's such a great metaphor for how I see thought and thinking and stress and anxiety.
Most people I come across want to have tools and techniques to make them feel better,
Where in actual fact I just want people to understand the nature of thought and thinking.
And the nature is this,
Is that the more you think,
The more you try and solve something,
The more agitated thinking you add when you're feeling agitated,
The more agitated you become.
That's just the nature of the way thought works.
And when you start to understand that,
Or certainly for me when I started to understand this,
When I had the feeling I was getting agitated,
Rather than going down that thought loop,
Which is a bit like adding more snow to the snowball,
I realise what's going on and it's like,
Oh I am lost in thought and thinking and it feels uncomfortable because that is the nature of thought and thinking.
And the surest way I know to help dissolve anxiety and stress and worry is to bring my attention back to my true nature,
That settled space within me,
Is to bring my attention back to that and feel that in my world.
Because that in essence is a bit like putting the snowball in the sunshine,
It will melt.
It might take a while but it will melt eventually.
Because when you understand the nature of how your mind works,
Then you naturally will align yourself with how it works and you will find that when you do feel anxiety and stress,
And you will because you're human,
You won't add to it unnecessarily.
And you'll know to bring your attention back to the warmth of who you truly are and allow that sunlight of who you truly are to do the heavy lifting of dissolving and evaporating the anxiety and stress that you might feel in your world.
