Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott on a really glorious summer's day.
It's so warm I'm dodging the sunshine to stand in the shade and talk to you and I've come to a little place in our village which has got a few trees.
The grass is being cut in one of the main areas of our village so I'm really hopeful that that mower machine isn't going to head my way because it's quite noisy but there we go height of summer the mowers are out the grass is being cut it really is a summer scene and I love this part of our village because in the centre of this grassy patch the grass is quite long and there are white clovers and buttercups poking up through but in the centre of it there is a bit of a wildflower meadow.
It's a small patch really but it's so glorious to see the longer grasses and the plantain and just swaying in the wind it's beautiful absolutely beautiful and today my reflection and what I've been reflecting on and I want to share with you is the is the sense that you are not alone and this came to me because I was reflecting on how I have a bit of a propensity sometimes when I feel unsettled and I feel a little bit discombobulated it I look around at everybody else and I'm feeling impatient or not feeling good enough or got low self-esteem and it just seems as though everybody else is swanning along happily in life great relationships with a purpose they seem to know exactly what they're doing and it just looks to me in that moment as I am the only one who is not successful or doing life in the right kind of way and I'm wanting to say this to you because my hunch is you probably feel that too sometimes is that you look around and you think everybody else seems to have got this thing called life cracked everybody else seems happy or contented or they look like they've got great relationships and wonderful jobs and are just swimming through life with such ease why am I finding it so hard well the message for today is that you are not alone you are not alone and it's so helpful for me to realize this and it's so helpful for you to realize this too you are human we're all human and part of the human experience is that we actually have our ups and downs it's just the way it happens it's like when I get lost and unsettled thinking I feel flat and low it's the same with other people and it's really helpful to realize this and I'll give you an example I was asking a favor of a friend the other day and he unknowingly to me had just finished a very long road trip to arrive back home when I phoned him up I'd asked him if he would do me a favor and he hadn't got back to me so I phoned him up and I just said just checking up are you able to do this favor for me and I got a real sense on the other end of the phone that he was irritable and he'd he said I've just you know I haven't had a chance to look at my diary and he was quite short and short-tempered with me in his response now knowing what I know which is that he is a human being he'll have his ups and downs I absolutely knew not to take offense at the way he spoke to me because I just got he was just he was actually just in some unsettled thinking and the way that his unsettled thinking showed up for him is it showed up with impatience and he was a bit snappy with his response so as I understand and this is what I'm asking you to understand as you understand that we all have our ups and downs then one of the symptoms for me is that I just feel a little bit more easeful when other people get lost in their thinking they get lost in their unsettled thinking and equally when I get lost in my unsettled thinking I'm kinder on myself too because I absolutely realize that I am not alone other people have these unsettled thoughts and feelings too it's part of being human so today I just want you to reflect on the fact that if you have these unsettled moments of thinking and everyone else seems to have got it cracked you are not alone we all have moments when it looks like everyone else has got it together and what I also want you to realize is that as you realize that part of the human experience is that we all have ups and downs that you might be more forgiving of another person when they're in one of their unsettled down stages and you might also be kinder to yourself when you find yourself feeling unsettled and down too
