Hello and welcome to 5 minutes in nature with me Liz Scott on an early morning walk.
I've taken a slightly different route than I normally do because there's a footpath with long long grasses that usually I walk along.
We've had so many rain showers recently I know that these grasses will be heavy with water leaning over the path and as I walk through it I'm going to get wet legs so I've come a slightly longer route to keep my legs dry but to enjoy a morning where the sun is shining.
We've had a lot of rain recently and we're actually forecast to have more unsettled weather but there's about an hour an hour and a half where today we have forecast a bit of blue sky and sunshine and I am walking in that blue sky and sunshine and it is beautiful.
The hillsides here on Dartmoor are now absolutely thick with green bracken.
Of bracken has been coming up over the last few weeks and then suddenly the leaves are all out and it's tall and it's green everything just feels very very green and today's reflection is based on something I heard recently about one of the symptoms,
The positive symptoms or consequences of the inside out understanding and we talk about the inside out understanding,
Well I do,
A lot and there is a course on insight time about the three principles,
Which is another way of talking about the inside-out understanding.
It's called the three principles and introduction.
But one of the things that I love,
And somebody said,
And I said,
Yes,
That's me too,
Is I am not so bothered at being bothered.
I'm not so bothered at being bothered.
What do I mean by that?
Well,
It means that for many,
Many years before I came across the inside-out understanding,
I was battling my thoughts,
I was battling uncomfortable feelings.
If I felt frustration or anger or overwhelm,
I would pile on more unsettled thinking,
Feeling like I shouldn't be feeling that way,
I should be feeling better.
And what I love about the inside out understanding is as I understand what's happening with my thoughts,
As I understand that unsettled thoughts roll in and roll out,
I no longer feel the need to try and control them or stop them or quash them.
It's like I recognize what they are.
They're just thoughts they will fly through.
It reminds me a little bit of yesterday.
We had short,
Sharp showers.
They came heavy,
Fast,
And they would speed through.
I was out yesterday looking at a wildflower meadow,
And I could see this shower of rain quite literally disappear down the valley.
And I was standing back in blue sky and sunshine,
And you could see the rain move down the valley and off into the distance.
And that's a bit like unsettled thoughts and feelings,
They come in,
They dump their load and they move on.
They don't hang around.
And it's just useful to understand that that is the way that they work.
And there is real peace in understanding that.
There's real peace in recognizing that I am not my thoughts.
I might get lost in them,
But I am not my thoughts.
And yesterday I was feeling quite unsettled.
I had many deadlines that were looming and there were bits of work that I don't really enjoy all around my book actually about checking and double checking and doing some work on the computer get it formatted correctly and all of these additional jobs that really I found kind of felt like they squeezed me in and I felt a bit restricted.
And it was a bit like my mind was like the sky with the rain showers rushing in.
Sometimes it felt a bit overwhelming and sometimes it didn't.
But the one thing I've got is I am not bothered by being bothered.
And that for me really is a beautiful way of summing up how I feel now.
I met up with a psychiatrist who also is deeply moved by the inside-out understanding,
The three principles,
And she describes mental health.
It's mental health is being at peace with the mind.
Being mentally healthy is being at peace with the mind.
Even those words just had me go.
.
.
So today is just a reminder of what mental health is,
Being at peace with the mind,
And a really great reminder that when you cease to be bothered by being bothered,
Well,
You are on the route to that peacefulness of mental health.
Let me know your reflections,
And don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
