Power of Choice
‘Life is a rollercoaster’, as my grandfather wisely said; twists, turns, and high-flying excitement all wrapped up in the ride. A big part of the fun is not knowing when the next summersault is going to come and yet in real-life terms this uncertainty often leads to fear and anxiety.
image shot at Ara Ha
We may never be able to control the roller-coaster, but we can certainly learn how to enjoy the ride. This means being aware that we have the power of choice - we can choose a different ride, with a new track, and we can take a break when it’s all too much.
Power of choice relies on internal awareness and resources
Another aspect is having sufficient internal resources to gain a balanced perspective and make the journey a lot less scary. This includes elements such as nutrition, sleep, massage, meditation, yoga and ultimately awareness of how our own minds tick. One important understanding is the brain’s negative bias: - for every 10 positive experiences we have it takes only one negative to overpower them all and get stuck in our memory.
This was a clever strategy to help us to survive, think of the ever-vigilant meerkat and the advantage of its high anxiety level as it means life or death for them and their group.
Excessive vigilance is a virtue if you are a Meerkat!
However, hyper-vigilance tends to make for a pretty stressful existence as a human. The creation of social media and access to 24hr world news means we have a plethora of additional fears and concerns to absorb and understandably this can create an overload leading to people using poor strategies such as addiction, distraction or denial. The antidote is to be aware of our negative bias and counteract it with a clear choice to take care of our minds; to look for healthy ways to acknowledge and release negative emotions and to schedule time for things that offer balance and nurture for our body and soul.
Our internal compass can aid our journey through the rollercoaster of life; offering a gift of self-awareness; learning what nurtures and empowers us and adding these elements to our list of scheduled priorities.
Having resources, strategies and treatments that guide us towards greater balance both physically and mentally is the best gift you can offer yourself and this self-fullness will ultimately lead to healthy pathways for society as a whole.
