Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh out and about on Dartmoor again,
It's so glorious and I'm just looking ahead of me,
The sun is shining on my back but as I look eastwards there's a big bank of very dark clouds,
They look like rain clouds and they're acting like a backdrop,
This dark backdrop and the hills in front of it are illuminated in the sun,
They look so clear and stand out so clearly against the darkness of the grey sky and I'm really hoping I don't get caught in that rain shower,
Hopefully it's not going to come my way.
Today I'm following on from what I was talking about yesterday which is to do with thoughts and thinking.
Do you remember I started to explain how thoughts and thinking come up and imaginations come up and they can frighten us and stop us from doing things.
It's so useful to understand the nature of thought and how it works,
The nature of thought is that it will create imaginings and will frighten you and if you don't realise what's going on you can get lost in anxiety and worry.
There is something that's there that you can trust beneath the anxiety,
Worry,
The unsettled thinking,
There is your intuitive wisdom,
It's the guiding light within you,
It's what I call my inner compass,
It's the thing I trust,
I've learnt to trust.
So I'm not saying get rid of thought and thinking,
I don't think you can get rid of it,
What I'm saying is there's something else you can trust,
It's sort of the balance,
The counterweight to the anxiety and worry you might feel.
So yesterday was reminding you to trust that,
Look for it within you and today I just want to explain a little bit about how thought and thinking works,
Anxiety and worry and it's a great example.
I went to my neighbour who's got a lovely little black Labrador puppy and I spoke about Reggie a few days ago and I've said to them if ever you want me to dog sit I'd love to come over and look after Reggie and I thought today was my day,
I was going to go over for a couple of hours in the day to look after Reggie but unfortunately Reggie in the morning decided to eat the cat food and they were quite concerned that he might have a bit of an upset stomach after he gleefully polished off the cat's food so they just said look don't worry we're going to look after him today but if you want to pop over and say hello to him that's fine but we just want to check he's not going to have an adverse reaction to the cat food.
So of course I thought yes I definitely want to go over and see Reggie even if I can't look after him and I took a friend with me who was visiting and Reggie as you can understand is this black Labrador puppy is very excited by everything and he was so so excited to see us.
Now I know how to deal with dogs I've had a dog and I know that if you've got an excitable dog what you want to do is try and calm them down rather than excite them even more so I ignored him so he rushed he bounded up to see me and started sort of jumping up and biting my clothes and I just from practice I just knew I'll just turn my back on him and let him settle down a bit and sure enough he settled down and then my friend came through and she was squealing with delight at seeing Reggie and Reggie who had momentarily settled down with me leapt up and started running around and biting her clothes and the more that she squealed and shook her hands and tried to get away the more that he followed her thinking this was the most amazing game and he was biting her clothes and trying to eat her jacket and she was trying to get away and squealing even more and well you can probably imagine it and for me that was such a brilliant example of what it is like when you engage with unsettled thoughts and thinking when you fuel them it's a little bit like playing with an excitable puppy if you actually want your thoughts and feelings to settle your anxious thoughts and feelings to set to settle ignore them don't give them energy and what happens is as they settle down you're able to listen to that wisdom you remember that wisdom I was talking about yesterday you're able to hear that more clearly if on the other hand you rush around trying to stop your agitated thoughts and feelings and the more that they rise up the more anxious you get well it's a little bit like playing with Reggie the puppy he'll just get more and more excitable so that's just a little reminder of how you might support yourself when you feel unsettled if you want your feelings to settle just turn your back on them allow them to settle don't rush around getting more and more agitated
