The Real Cause Of Stress - August 5th

What if there were a single cause behind every bit of stress and anxiety you experience in life? In today’s 5 Minutes In Nature, Liz reflects on something that’s almost always overlooked. While most people focus on changing their circumstances or fixing external situations to feel better, the real source of distress is rarely the event itself. More often, it’s the thinking we attach to those events—the mental noise—that truly drains us.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott and you find me in Mid Devon very close to a town called O'Campton well about 10 miles away actually and I'm right in the middle of rural Devon standing in a field and there are I was going to say bales of hay but they're sort of cylindrical they're not square like you would imagine bales of hay they're sort of these big fat cylinders probably a good sort of four five foot tall and I'm overlooking a view that's an expansive view over arable land and greenery and fields all the way up towards north Devon and I'm actually a speaker at a festival a happy festival or happy fest I think it's called where I know the person who's running it she asked if myself my husband might speak and she's raising money for a community cafe a well-being cafe in the town of O'Campton so we jumped at the chance and we're in our camper van and I've actually just walking a little bit away from the field there's a lot of music and noise and people and I just thought it'd be just nice just to breathe in find my peace and to reflect with you and today it's a simple reflection which is the cause the common cause of stress worry and anxiety like if you were to have a common cause something that was common to every single situation what is it and I'm going to tell you the answer to that but first let me explain the context during our talk my husband and I were talking about well-being listening and you can find a well-being listener course on insight timer well-being listener introduction on insight timer if you're interested to learn more about well-being listening but as part of part of our conversation with the group the workshop that we were doing we asked people just to let us know all the things that cause worry and anxiety and we just wrote a big long list and we ran out of space on the bit of paper in the end and you can imagine things came up like family relationships work money too much work not enough work to not too much money that didn't come up but not enough money cost of living illness someone's building a house they said house building caring for elderly relatives all these all these things came up and we put them on the board and it looks like doesn't it it looks like all of these things cause worry now if you see that worry and anxiety and stress is caused by all these things then it makes a lot of sense to try and sort out everything and in turn until you can get rid of that worry and stress but there is a common feature to all of them that is often not seen and the common feature is that it isn't the thing itself that causes the stress it's the thinking around it so for example if someone's caring for elderly an elderly relative and says that makes me feel trapped well it's not the caring for the elderly relative that makes them feel trapped if you were to write that out as an equation it's caring for my elderly relative plus a lot of thinking makes me feel trapped and likewise with somebody who's building a house it's not house building that causes me to have a sense of this is a nightmare project it's house building plus a lot of thinking about the house building makes me think this is a nightmare project or if you've got something that's happening in your family you know it's tempting to think it's a bad behavior of my son is causing my stress but it's not the bad behavior of your son it's the bad behavior plus all the thinking about it that causes your stress and it's really helpful to understand that it's not the thing that we think that is causing our stress anxiety and worry it's the thinking that we have about it you see we are equipped to deal with whatever life throws at us and life throws us curveballs and it's bumpy and there are hurdles and challenges along the way but when we engage in life and we recognize that beneath the thinking we can access wisdom well that's when things really take a turn for the better it makes things more easeful and tomorrow i'm going to share a quote with you that really has helped me see this more so today just be curious about your thinking is it the thing that is causing you stress or is it the thing plus your thinking that is causing you stress and worry have a think about that and we'll connect tomorrow

Reviews

I’m a little bit behind on these five minutes of nature because I’ve been fairly sick with pneumonia. But today this one really struck for me. I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks and I know deep in my heart that is myself who creates this from exactly what you’re talking about here. I just have not grasped yet how to knock myself out of that perpetual thinking rabbit hole. No matter how hard I try to redirect or meditate or try to focus on changing the situation I go right back down the rabbit hole. So I look forward to tomorrow and what you have to say more about this in hopes that I can find Some tangible ways to get out of this perpetual cycle. So much gratitude for these five minutes every morning I promise to catch up soon thank you thank you thank you

Thankyou Liz 🙏🏼
This is a worthwhile way to look at stress via the thinking. I wonder if I/we have an automatic response of thinking 🤔
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