Hey,
Welcome to this travel companion The perfect meditation to make sure you never feel alone no matter how many or how little people you travel with Today's session we're dealing with being stressed about travel Before we get into today's session.
I wanted to share a quote from one of my favorite stoic teachers man by the name of Seneca He writes the following All this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief For you're traveling in the company of your own emotions Followed by your troubles all the way I'll explain a bit more about what this exactly means and how it applies to today But first I want you to get into a nice comfortable seat.
I want you to sit up tall relax your shoulders relax your jaw and Even relax your eyes to close Begin to breathe in and out through those nostrils And with each cycle of breath just inviting some relaxation into your life Nowhere to be nothing to do So welcome to this meditation Now your bags are probably packed already But spoiler alert you may have over packed both literally and metaphorically You see we all have a knack for taking more than we need with us it's kind of human nature Many of the things that we take with us only serve to take up space though and weigh us down and The same can happen to our mental state as it does to our luggage state You see there's a good reason why they call it emotional baggage unbeknownst to us We may be carrying thoughts and worries that do not serve us,
But weigh us down Nonetheless as a result we can feel anxious or exhausted for no apparent reason You see as a serial overpacker myself.
I know the solution is strikingly obvious and practical Even if we don't do it all the time What we need to do is examine each item and make a conscious decision if it needs to come with us on this journey or not So when I pack I have to now lay out my clothes and put them into categories.
I then ask What good is this item and last you decide if it should come or not?
This is how I often find out that I've packed five black t-shirts for weekend away,
But no underwear That's an actual true story I want you to do the same now,
But with your thoughts While you do nothing,
But breathe I want you to become aware of what thoughts come into your head and then decide what category they belong to then decide how useful if at all that thought is and lastly is This something you want to take with you is this a thought you want to carry with you taking up this real estate of your mind Let's do an example together So just as you are now sitting and breathing just allowing this relaxation to come over the body You let whatever thought comes up come up Now for instance you may notice that you're worried about your flight being delayed In this instance you would categorize this as a worry Then you decide if this worry is of any use any utility to your situation which in this case it's not worrying about your flight is not going to stop your flight being delayed or speed up the flight and Then lastly you decide if this is a thought that you want to keep with you or that you want to exhale out In the situation I would want to exhale that worry out and so I will You get the idea let's do it together now Sitting breathing and just letting whatever thoughts come up If the pressure has made you go blank,
That's okay.
Just rest your mind on your breathing until a thought does come up As that thought comes up decide what category it belongs to Decide how it would be used or if it is useful in any way And then decide to either keep that thought or exhale it out with the next exhale You can do this for as many thoughts as you want Just try and not get lost in thought so that you go on some journey of Chain thinking Be very deliberate Take note of the thought as it comes into your mind Categorize it Label it Decide if it's useful and then keep it or let it go If no thoughts in particular come up just rest your awareness on the breath And patiently wait for the next thought to come up Wait for that next thought You may have 101 thoughts coming in at the same time Take your time choose one And slowly just work your way through them At this stage you may notice some categories are quite prevalent again take note of this And you can slowly start to bring your awareness back to your breath now And be aware that this is a practice you can do both formally and informally Instead of being led by our thoughts we can take control of our thoughts by paying attention Instead of being passengers we can be the captain Safe travel Safe travel and I'll see you soon
