Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh this is a lovely lazy day on holiday.
I'm sitting in a beautiful park.
There are trees dotted around.
I can see through the canopy of the trees below me down towards the blue of the ocean.
The sun is out.
There are children playing in the park,
Families walking,
Dog walkers,
The occasional jogger goes by.
I've just sat down on the grass in the shade of one of the trees wanting to speak to you.
And today and tomorrow I'm going to reflect on the power of thought.
It's something that comes up occasionally and I just think it's really helpful to explore it and for me to share what I've seen about thought.
Having spent years,
Decades on different psychological trainings,
Counselling,
Coaching,
Neurolinguistic programming,
But the one thing that I found more recently when it comes to consider thought is looking at thought as a principle,
The principle of thought.
And one of the things that I used to think,
And many people still think,
Is that situations in the outside world can make you feel a certain way.
And over the last few years I've seen that that isn't true.
And I'm going to share with you what I've seen and today and tomorrow we'll reflect on thought,
The power of thought and feelings and emotions.
Because I'd love you just to reflect on this for yourself.
I'm not asking you to believe me.
I'm not asking you to take this on as something to believe in your world.
I'd love you to be curious though and go,
Is this so for me?
So there is a perception and a cultural assumption in our world that situations and people can make us feel a certain way.
Somebody does something and that makes me feel happy.
Somebody does something and that makes me feel frustrated.
When I get stuck in traffic I get annoyed.
We have these assumptions that something happens and then there's an emotion that is linked directly to that particular experience.
Well the thing is that's just not true.
It's not true in my life and I'd love you to be curious about whether it's true in your life.
One of the stories I often share when I'm training people around this area of thought is the coffee cup story,
I call it,
And I'll just briefly share it with you again now.
So just imagine I come down one morning and I see that my husband has left a coffee cup.
In the kitchen,
A dirty coffee cup in the kitchen and he's left it just above the dishwasher and he hasn't bothered to put it in the dishwasher.
Well,
On one morning,
I might come down and see this dirty cup and just feel a frustration and anger.
And I might wonder about all the other things he doesn't do in the house and all the things I do.
And then I might consider all the things he's done in the past that have irritated me.
And maybe this marriage isn't such a good idea.
And suddenly I've gone from seeing a dirty coffee cup to considering whether or not I need a divorce.
And that happens on one morning.
And then the next morning I come down I see a dirty coffee cup on the work surface above the dishwasher and I smile to myself and think I must remind my husband to put the cup in the dishwasher next time I put it in the dishwasher and I get on with my day.
You see,
It looks like the coffee cup had the power to make me feel a certain way,
Particularly on the first occasion when I started doubting my whole marriage with my husband.
But you can see that the same circumstance,
The same situation can seemingly have two different responses emotionally in my life,
Which means it can't be the thing that I thought that made me feel a certain way.
Does that make sense to you?
And I don't say this to make you try and think different thoughts or beat yourself up for getting annoyed or frustrated.
That's not what this is about.
This is actually just about helping you understand how life works and it's just really useful to understand that thought and thinking is a really powerful gift and it's so powerful it can quite literally change the way that we see the world.
One day we see the world where we were a victim,
We were a martyr,
Life is out to get us and the next day no circumstances have changed in our world but we feel grounded and loving and generous and kind.
Different days,
We feel different thought storms,
Different moods and we see the world through our mood.
So that's what I wanted to share with you today,
Just get you to reflect on that.
We don't see the world as it is.
We see the world through thought.
And if we're in unsettled mood,
We'll see an unsettled world.
If we're in a happy mood,
We'll see a happy world.
If we're in a settled frame of mind,
We'll see a settled world.
The world doesn't make us feel a certain way.
We experience the world depending on our thought,
Thinking and mood in the moment.
Have a little reflect on that for yourself and I'm going to continue this conversation again tomorrow.
