When Frustration Invites Us To Slow Down - Feb 05

Do you ever find yourself getting caught in frustration when things don’t go the way you expect? It’s easy to blame other people or external circumstances—but what if there’s another way of seeing it?

In today’s 5 Minutes in Nature, Liz reflects on slowing down and turning inward, discovering that the answer is, in fact, very simple.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott. Oh I'm just gasping for breath. I've been in my office today and it's quite cold in the house so when I find my way outdoors I like to walk quite quickly up the hill up onto Dartmoor just to try and warm myself up and this is gorgeous because we've had day after day of rain and dark clouds and just a dampness in the air and today it's the afternoon and the sun is shining and if I turn my face to the sun and close my eyes as I'm doing right at this minute I can feel the warmth on my face and it is so refreshing and so needed. You know today I've been in my office working on the book of my pilgrimage, The pilgrimage that I walked last year and I'm creating the blog posts into a book and I thought this was going to be a fairly simple task because of course when I was walking the pilgrimage I wrote all the blog posts and I thought I'd just stick them all together and make into a book and I've been working at this now revising and editing it and I'm on I don't know how what version version four I think at the moment of the whole draft trying to pull it together into a form that feels right in honouring the pilgrimage and also not you know it's this is not going to be a bestseller I understand that but I want to make it so it feels as though I've crafted it in a way that feels as though I've completely respected what I got from the pilgrimage and it will be of huge value for those that read it and today I've just got myself into a right pickle I was working on the computer and I was just adding some subheadings to the text and I don't know what I did but it ended up that what I thought I was doing was actually changing the whole text and I lost bits and it was one of those times I just felt like I wanted to pull my hair out I was so frustrated it felt like the technology was acting against me so today I've spent probably three or four hours and I've got to go back over everything and check that I haven't lost material and that I haven't changed things in the wrong kind of way so I feel like rather than doing a task and completing something I've actually created another job for myself and I felt really frustrated as I sat at my desk and then as always that frustration that rise of irritation that comes in such a wave and eats me from the inside I realized which I usually always do and this is what I recommend with you guys too it felt like my irritation was telling me about my inability with technical stuff and computers and writing and all of these things it felt like it was I was being told that my frustration was telling me that I was no good at what I was doing but actually as is always the case whether it's frustration or guilt or overwhelm or irritation or unsettledness those feelings are only ever telling me one thing one thing a hundred percent of the time my feelings are letting me know that I have got lost in thinking and I have taken my awareness away from who I truly am and as I remember that sometimes it takes minutes sometimes it takes me hours to remember but when I remember it I come back and then as I came back and I realized I needed to get some fresh air and go for a walk and that just made complete sense I closed my computer and walked away from it and that's where you find me now walking up on the moors and then as I was walking I started to chuckle because much of the book I'm writing about the pilgrimage is a reminder to me to slow down and I just felt like oh here I am writing the book and I'm actually trying to speed up trying to get to the end of this process of writing the book as quickly as possible and when I do that when I speed up it feels as though the universe presents me with something that is a challenge or is something that really gets in my way a real frustration or hurdle I need to get over and actually it's just a reminder to slow down slow down and look within so here I am writing the book about slowing down looking within and actually in the very process of writing it I'm still getting that message of slowing down and looking within and it made me smile so I just wanted to share that with you today maybe this is a message for you if so please take it on board slow down and look within that's all you need to do

Reviews

Thank you Liz, you brought a big smile to me as I listened to your tale of frustrations.
I too have had many of those moments of frustration when nothing is working out the way I was hoping in making a life change something similar and suddenly the penny drops and I realise I’d charged off in another direction with the bit between my teeth so to speak. You have to laugh at the absurdity of it as you stop and pause for a breath or two and reconnect with your true self don’t you.