Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott out on Dartmoor.
I'm not actually high up on Dartmoor today,
It's a bit of a grey day.
I'm actually walking on a low path which takes me right on the edge of the moorland.
Beside me is a hedge,
Devon Bank,
Which is a stone wall which is covered in moss and undergrowth and a few trees poking out of it as well.
And the trees at this time of year completely naked of leaves,
Just their bare branches silhouetting against the greyness of the sky.
This really is a damp January day where that cold flat dampness gets into your bones and I'm looking forward to getting home.
I think a fire is being lit as I speak and warming up in front of the fire.
And my reflection today relates to a conversation I had with a client.
It was all about thought thinking and unwanted thinking and she explained to me about a situation that she found herself in and she's a manager in her place of work and she said that sometimes what happens is she kind of knows what she needs to do and she might need to put her attention on to a particular project or to get something done.
But she says that what happens is that she has these whispering doubts that come into her mind and she stops doing what she feels she ought to do,
Listens to the doubts and gets distracted doing something else.
And we were having a conversation about this because like many people what she thinks she needs to do is she feels that she needs to get rid of that sense of doubt,
Those thoughts of doubt,
Those feelings of uncertainty in her world.
And I'm really clear that that's just not the way it works,
That's not what you need to do.
What's most important and what I began to explore with her is that you listen into that wisdom and intuition,
A quieter voice,
A quieter knowing.
For me it often turns up as a feeling.
So when you begin to trust that more,
When you begin to understand that you can trust it,
When the doubts come in and they will because we're human,
Or the uncertainty or the insecurity,
When those insecure unsettled thoughts start to creep in,
You know not to trust those unsettled thoughts and feelings.
And rather than trust them or listen to them,
What you do is you use them as a warning sign.
You know if you're driving a line,
If you're driving along and a light goes off on the dashboard of your car sort of alerting you to something,
Maybe it's alerting you to the fact that you're running low on fuel,
Then if you're running low on fuel you go and fill up on fuel.
You don't see the light on the dashboard and think that it's telling you you're a bad driver or you're a bad person.
You see the light on the dashboard for what it is,
It's just a warning light.
And what people don't realize is that those feelings that you have,
Feelings of overwhelm,
Insecurity,
Doubt,
They're just warning lights.
They're not actually telling you anything about yourself,
They're just telling you that you are moving into unsettled thinking.
And the warning light is saying when you move into unsettled thinking,
The worst thing that you can do is layer on more and more thinking.
The warning light is letting you know that it's time to bring your awareness back to that settled space within you,
That space of awareness,
That place that is the observer,
The witness of life,
That sense of being,
The sense that is present,
Is ever-present.
So your feelings aren't telling you about the situation,
They're just letting you know that you are moving into unsettled thinking.
And that always is a reminder to bring your awareness back to that present space of who you are.
So today is a reminder for you really that when you come across unwanted feelings,
Feelings of guilt or anxiety or worry or stress,
Use them as signals.
Use them to alert you to the fact that you're about to get lost in thought and thinking and that's not where the answer lies.
That they're alerting you to the fact that you're starting to blame the outside world for the way that you feel.
Use them instead as a reminder to bring your awareness back to that place within you,
Rather than overthink,
To bring your awareness back to that settled space which is calm,
Clarity and peace at the heart of it.
That's all your unsettled thoughts are ever telling you.
They're just reminding you to come back to who you truly are.
