Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott up on Dartmoor.
The moorland where I live is five minutes walk to get up onto open moorland from my house.
It's evening,
It's a little bit dimpsy dark,
Grey clouds around,
It's a bit chilly as well.
And beside me is a holly tree which has got red berries on it.
It's very festive,
It's just a little bit not the right season.
But I think what that shows me is that probably we've not had such a cold snap that the birds have stripped the berries from the tree.
And today is day two of a seven day reflection with you,
Alongside you,
Which is about living from love and not fear.
And I'd really encourage you to take a look at my course on Insight Timer called Living from Love and Not Fear.
Yesterday we just started to discern the difference between fear which is unsettled thinking and love which is settled thinking.
And living from that place of settled thinking is what we are sharing and exploring over these coming days.
And I wanted just to make a little distinction which I think will be helpful for you.
And it came about with a coaching conversation I was having with a client.
And when I share about unsettled thinking and the way that thought works,
Which is very much part of my work,
People often ask the very question that she asked.
And she asked the question,
How can I get rid of that unsettled thinking?
How can I get rid of it?
And it makes a lot of sense doesn't it?
It's like how do I get rid of that thinking?
And for me that is not the right question to ask.
Because to me this isn't about getting rid of unsettled thinking any more than it's me standing here trying to get rid of the grey clouds or when it's raining me going outside and trying to get rid of the rain.
It's the wrong question to ask.
What's much more helpful to ask is what do I know about unsettled thinking?
And how in that knowledge of unsettled thinking might I return back to love or settled thinking?
In other words what do I want to avoid with unsettled thinking?
Well for me what you want to avoid is you want to avoid adding more thinking to the mix.
And most people what they do is when they feel unsettled,
And this is what we would call in this experiment coming from a place of fear,
When you feel unsettled you try and squash those feelings or think more positively or you try and work out and analyse the situation in front of you.
This is really different.
What I suggest is you use those unsettled thinking experiences as a bit of feedback.
It's giving you feedback into whether you are in a settled place of mind,
In a peaceful state of mind,
Or whether you are lost in fearful thinking.
So when I feel overwhelmed or agitated or guilty that's not telling me anything about myself or my circumstances,
It just lets me know that I am in unsettled thinking.
And that is really useful information and I don't want to get rid of that.
And likewise when I'm in a settled state of mind I feel grounded,
I have a knowing,
I am present,
I feel rock solid in the world.
Well those are my feelings letting me know that I am coming from a place of love.
So the first thing I want to share today is that don't try and get rid of your unsettled thinking,
That's not what this is about.
What this is about is recognising and noticing when you are in unsettled thinking.
As soon as you realise you're responding from fear,
As soon as you notice it,
That noticing is in fact love tapping you on the shoulder.
And the way to align yourself with unsettled thinking is to not fuel it,
Don't feed it.
Imagine your unsettled thinking is like a fire,
If you want to let the fire go out then you don't add oxygen to it,
You don't put on fuel.
It's the same with your thinking,
If you're coming from a fear into the mix.
So living from love and not fear is not about getting rid of fearful thinking,
Being human you will have fearful thinking.
Living from love and not fear means that you recognise when you get lost in that fearful thinking,
That unsettled thinking,
And you use that as a nudge from love itself to come back to the centre part of you,
Your essence,
To your true nature.
So over the next few days we're living from love and not fear,
Join me again tomorrow and we'll continue this in another exploration of five minutes in nature.
