A few weeks ago, Lauren and I took a trip to a sleepy Thai Island called Koh Lanta.
I was kicking back with a sudoku in our room on the first day when, all of a sudden and from nowhere, I heard a huge and thunderous CRASH.
I sat up, bolt upright.
The crash was unmistakeable and it was very close by.
I could feel my heart beat faster as adrenaline started pumping through my body.
Had someone thrown something at our window? Had a mirror fallen off the wall? Was an intruder trying to break in?
I called out at Lauren who was in the other room:
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeh” she called back. “I think it was just a bird landing on our roof”.
As soon as Lauren said that, a wave of relief washed over
me.
No-one had thrown anything at our window. Nor were we under attack from a gang of masked intruders.
It was simply nature doing its thing.
Over the next six days, that same crashing sound happened a couple of times a day.
(turned out it was actually nuts falling from a tree)
The noise still made me jump. But now I realised what was happening, I didn’t set off down the same thought avenue about smashed windows or intruders.
So why am I sharing this with you?
Well, it’s not just nuts in Thailand where our minds create threats out of nothing.
In fact, our minds play this trick on us every single day.
You might have your own examples. Like seeing a
menacing-looking shadow at home late at night and believing it’s a ghost or monster. Or getting a short & snappy text from a friend and worrying that they're mad at you.
Our minds are constantly creating problems and threats that really, really, REALLY look like they exist in the outside world.
But they don’t. They only exist in our minds.
Which leads me to the quickest, easiest way I know to let go of overthinking.
And that's getting a glimpse of how our minds are creating the problems which we then use our minds to try to solve. Once we start to see the extent to which these problems exist in our thinking rather than in the world, there simply won't be a reason to try to think our way through them.
I’m going to talk more about this in
a free Zoom training I’m hosting on Wednesday.
I’m calling the training Mind over Matter.
The theme of the training?
The best way to use our minds and stop our minds from using us.
The webinar will take place on Wednesday 15th May 2024 at 10am PST/1pm EST/6pm UK Time. It will last about an hour.
If you’d like to join, hit reply and I’ll send the details straight over.
That’s all for today.
- Tom