Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and this is the second part of a conversation that I started yesterday.
I'm still in Exeter,
I'm just pausing in a little lovely little shaded street with some Georgian houses on my right hand side and some older cottages that were built beside the river and have got glorious window boxes,
Pinks and reds,
They look absolutely stunning and it's a warm day.
I don't want to get too hot and sweaty as I make my way up to the city to get myself a cup of coffee.
Yesterday we explored a little bit about the three principles,
The inside out understanding and do you remember we were talking about the nature of how it was when I was in a position as a coach and I just learnt lots of tools and techniques and wanted to try and fix everybody and fix myself and if only I could find the right tool,
Technique,
Combination of,
Everybody would be happy all of the time.
And then I came across the inside out understanding and everything changed and particularly when a friend of mine said you don't need any tools or techniques and it really floored me because that had been the whole focus of my life for over a decade when I heard her say that.
And I want to just try and give you a bit of a flavour of what I mean about the inside out understanding,
The three principles,
Because I think it's going to be really helpful.
The way it's described is that it is an understanding.
It's an understanding.
Now when you understand how something works,
When you understand how something works,
Then you align yourself with how it works and it might be as you align yourself with how something works,
It occurs to you to engage in an activity or a tool or a technique to support where you're at but fundamentally if you don't have that existing understanding of how things work,
You are forever in a state of battle and bewilderment.
I remember when I took my husband kayaking and I'm not a great fan of being on the water,
I've got to be honest,
But he loves it.
So as a treat I hired a kayak guide and this kayak guide who was amazing took us down the river dart and we started paddling with the tide that was with us.
So the tide at the time was going out and we were going downstream and then as we decided to turn around to come back,
We were told obviously now the tide was against us,
It was going to be hard work and my goodness it was hard work.
Before as I'd sort of been lazily paddling down the river,
I'd seen the banks sort of disappear at a beautifully lovely pace as I paddled onwards but now I was paddling and nothing seemed to be moving,
I just seemed to be expending a lot of energy to get nowhere.
Now I understood fundamentally there was nothing wrong with me,
I just understood that I was paddling against the tide and one of the things you've got to realise when you paddle against the tide is it's hard work.
So I didn't have any additional thinking about was there something wrong with me,
Was I not fit enough,
Was I this,
Was I that,
I just understood that the nature of the tides is that when you paddle with the tide it's easy,
When you paddle against the tide it's harder.
It's really useful information understanding the tides,
Like if you're going to go on the water and you don't understand the tides it's really,
It's bewildering once you understand the nature of the tides,
Well you align yourself with it,
You know that if you have to paddle against the tide it'll be hard and you know that when you paddle with a tide it'll be easy,
There's no point trying to change the tides,
That's not how life works and in essence that's what the three principles and inside out understanding gave me,
It gave me an understanding of the tides,
The way the tides work in the human psyche.
You see for a lot of the time I'd been trying to change the tide when I felt sad or upset,
I thought that was an indication that I needed to change something about myself to feel better,
Now I just realise that it's very natural to have these different rhythms of moods in my world and there are times when life feels hard and there are times when it doesn't and I adapt myself to the rhythm of my life now,
So in the same way when our kayak guide showed us some little tips to help us navigate as best as we could against the tide that was going against us,
So I'm not interested in trying to change my thoughts and feelings because to me that's like trying to change the tide,
What I'm interested in understanding the nature of how life works and the ultimate understanding which I'm going to just share with you tomorrow is the one that I come back to time and time again,
But today I just want to say don't try and fight the tides,
Don't try and fight the tides,
Tools and techniques have a place but not when it comes to fighting the tides of being human.
