It’s not your fault - it’s the sneaky defaults

If you sit in a cafe for a while and watch people meeting for lunch you’ll hear the same kind of verbal exchange over and over again.

• “Hey! How are you?” 

• “Hey! I’m good! How are you?”

• “Yeah I’m great - you?”

• “Good! How are you doing?”
  

This can go back and forth for quite a while - but more often than not, these aren't intended as real questions and nor are they intended as real answers.

In reality, it’s quite rare to take the time to look at what’s actually going on in the mind, and to reflect clearly on the kinds of feelings that are playing out.

Normally we have the sense that our mind looks out at the world in a neutral, dispassionate way - as though our mind is like a window revealing the world exactly as it is.

But there’s so much going on inside us prior to that - before you’re in any external situation you’re always-already ‘situated’ within your own mind.  

This is important because, if you check, your mind has a sneaky default setting - or rather, three concurrent defaulting settings that all too often go under the radar and massively affect our experience.

In my work, I refer to these as The Three S’s of stressed, scattered, and shut down. 

And when people come to me with health problems or seeking to make significant breakthroughs in their lives, I encourage them to explore these often unnoticed defaults.

Through this, the people I work with learn to tap into and ‘pro-cure’ their own innate wellness - rather than merely ‘cure’ symptoms or problems temporarily

Let’s look at how this works.

Recognizing the Defaults

Take a moment now to reflect upon your own inner ‘situation.’ 

Think about the kinds of thoughts and feelings that, day to day, come up quite normally in your life.

How do you normally feel when you’re walking down the street?

How do you normally feel when you’re driving?

How do you normally feel when you’re listening to someone talk?

How do you normally feel when you’re sitting alone in a room?

If you check, it’s entirely ‘normal’ to feel distracted by stressful thoughts and feelings. So that means it's also normal to be absent - to miss out on and not be present to the actual reality before us. 

Because of this, it's also normal to feel distant from others - to miss out on genuine intimacy and connection in our relationships.

So, if you put all these together - AND recognize that this is happening pretty much all the time - it adds up to something quite shocking: our ‘normal’ experience really is The Three S’s.

Most of the time we’re stressed, scattered and shut down - without even realizing it. That’s the apparently neutral ‘window’ we’re looking out at the world from.

No wonder then, that health, happiness and wellbeing are apparently in such short supply!

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Many of us have ongoing health problems or major obstacles in our lives not because of something external, but because these powerful default settings are at work all the time under the radar.

Break those cycles and shift those habits - and suddenly a whole new vision of what’s possible opens up before us.

Innate health and happiness are right there to ‘procure’, all you have to do is recognize the sneaky defaults and stop them from making you stressed, scattered and shut down - all the time.

Shifting into Freedom

Having become aware of the sneaky defaults the next task is learning how to shift out of them.

Often, just recognizing their presence can weaken their power, but here are three helpful techniques to get a stronger foothold in your mind, and to gain the inner ‘traction’ necessary to shift out of distraction, and into a greater sense of agency and intentionality.

1. Mindful Questions

Pose these corrective questions to bring yourself back in the here and how:

• Where am I? (spatial correction) 

• When am I? (temporal correction)

• Who am I? (identity correction)

2. Breath it Out

Practice deep, smooth, slow breathing:

Breathe in through your nose (if you can) for a count of 4, pause on the in-breath for a count of 2 or 4 (if comfortable), and breath out for a count of 4 through the nose. Then pause for a count of 2 or 4 on the out-breath.

Repeat 3-5 times or more. 

This type of breathing shifts your nervous system from sympathetic (fight, flight, or freeze) to parasympathetic (rest, restore, and repair). 

3. Correct Your Posture 

Shift your attention from thoughts and emotions in the mind to the physical experience of the body. Stand still, breath deeply, and take a few minutes to ground yourself in a balanced, natural posture.

For more information, read this related article on How to Stop Stress from Hijaking your Life.
Every Wednesday I’ll be diving deeper into these topics as part of Sovereign Tea Time. To find out more, click on the button below.