Calm is a Superpower.
History's successful warriors used this secret weapon: staying calm.
“Mind your mind; guard it resolutely. Since it is the mind that confuses the mind, don’t let your mind give in to your mind.” -Samurai Shosan
"Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased." - Samurai Miyamoto Musashi
Right from the start, I will say, I write this as I practice daily re-sets in staying calm, in mind and in body; in emotion and in spirit. This awareness of how anxiety creeps in and hijacks the mind is personal and possibly universal...and so, I share....
Awareness is essential to start discerning when we are being hooked by our chattering thoughts; and then slowly we can shift to not being owned by these turbulent pervasive thoughts and emotions...
Anxiety has a role. It makes us want to MOVE. It is a primitive survival tool to launch us into a sprint; to save us from a predator tiger. It is built into the core of who we are. Modern day tigers appear as anything that moves our body and mind into a cycle of whirlpool-like thoughts as we engage in fear-based scenario planning all day long... And it's not our fault. Thoughts just come up. We can't control them. Really, we can't.
No matter how much yoga or meditation or counseling we do, our thoughts will bombard us. Our fear-button can get jammed, and habituated to hypervigilantly looking out for threat and seeking confirmation bias. And this is all amplified in a time of widespread societal fear.
What we can do, is change the relationship to this chatter. We can practice sitting still and observing, and creating space between the racing thoughts. As fear-beliefs keep us separate and threatened, true refuge comes when we unhook from limiting stories.
But when we are filled with anxiety, we may not even know what it is- it is maybe a low-level hum; and it may show up as obsessing about something, trying to solve and fix something, disconnecting to depress the chatter, distracting with work, or scrolling to the bottomless pit of internet-land. In this urgency to escape the discomfort of anxiety, we are uncomfortable just sitting still or being quiet. We are on edge and usually unwilling to face this time with ourself. We are stuck in our head.
Our intrusive thoughts are stories. They are oftentimes laced with seemingly realistic backdrops, characters, and plots. They may be expressed in dreams or in our awake mind (also kind of like a dream), but they are actually just ideas that our mind weaves together, making judgments about what could be or projecting fear onto sometimes warped perceptions. We are convinced these are truth, because they are manifested in our head, a part of us.
We can call on our superpower by separating from our thoughts; calming the turbulence in our mind.
DON'T BELIEVE EVERY WORRIED THOUGHT YOU HAVE. WORRIED THOUGHTS ARE NOTORIOUSLY INACCURATE. -Renee Jain
Superpower. Calm. How do we get from being stuck in our mind with endless chatter to a peaceful warrior superpower? How do we access the calm, which sets the conditions for compassion, gratitude, clarity, wisdom, connection, collaboration? First, we recognize the energy waste of spinning in rumination. Then we realize that creating space and calm, maybe with a breath, maybe with a meditation, maybe with a yoga practice; is an effective place to hang out.
We can bring light to our provoked anxiety and choose to step into calm.
Calm as a superpower. It takes trust. It takes patience. It takes practice. Just like the warriors who practiced and lived this way of being, we can be warriors of calm.
And we can keep starting from here. There is no failure. There is always starting from here.
Grateful to be able to share this. Because I know I'm not in it alone. We are all somehow connected through our warrior path. Maybe we can all access our superpower today- maybe just for one moment.
Love,
Jessica
To get these weekly episodes of THE SHIFT in your inbox, free…. sign up here THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER
