How to Weather Life’s Storms and Enjoy Every Season
Life is a constantly moving stream of experience. There will be inevitable ups and downs for us all during that experience. However, it’s possible to weather life’s storms in a more pleasant way than most people are aware of. It’s a Superpower and I’m sharing it here.
In a previous blog post, Mental Weather I talk about our thoughts and feelings being like passing weather that will blow through eventually, by nature. Really seeing this can allow space to pause before we react unconsciously to any passing, stormy mental weather. This pause can mean the difference between an ill-thought out and perhaps provocative reaction, and a mindful, more measured response. This is not to say that everything will pass easily and life will always be pleasant. What I can say is that you can enjoy a better general sense of contentment and ease if you consider this.
The Dentist!
I recently had a tooth extracted. It was a rather uncomfortable hour of my life for sure, but afterwards I was delighted to be pain-free without that errant back molar wobbling around and catching in all the wrong places.
Some people hate going to the dentist, but I’m pretty neutral and see that the benefits outweigh any temporary discomfort, so I went in feeling pretty calm. Once the process started, and it was pretty awkward and invasive, I noticed my body’s natural fight or flight response start to kick in. My heart rate went up and I could feel stress building. I hadn’t been expecting this, but after a nano-second of panic, I just allowed the feeling of stress to be there. After a while, my heart-rate came down and my calm returned. I mention this experience as a real time example of how you too can weather similar mind and body storms for yourself.
A healthy, adaptable nervous system
This is not always about deep breathing to try and relax, because the natural fight or flight response will arise at times. We want a healthy nervous system that is responsive to real and present danger.
The Superpower is allowing our experience to be exactly as it is, without us needing anything to change (unless you’re being chased by a tiger, then you’ll want to move or fight!) Most significantly though, this includes allowing the normal stress responses to be present in the body in the moment.
We can actually learn a lot from panic attacks here and how to truly manage them; which is to allow them, rather than fight them. This is counterintuitive, but is absolutely the most transformative solution.
Slowing down is Underrated
The Superpower is slowing down to the speed of life, ie, what’s here now. Slowing down and resting (or trusting) in life and our bodies - in the moment, allows our nervous system to FEEL safe enough to turn down the stress response.
Without this pausing and mindful ‘allowing’, we start to respond to the stress about the stress response!
I think this is worth really seeing. The fight or flight response is good and helpful, but our stress about the stress response, ie, why is my heart beating so fast and how can I make it stop, is the real thing that feeds any ongoing anxiety.
The Superpower of the pause allows us to notice the stress response and then wait for it to pass, showing our nervous system we don’t actually need to fight or flee.
Can you feel the difference? Once you see it, you’ll likely notice it more and more and be able to help regulate yourself more often. It’s a Superpower because we can feel better more quickly and we can focus our energy on moving forward with more clarity and alignment with the present moment, so it’s a win win.