A few years back, I took a trip to Seoul with a buddy of mine.

(I guess you could call that buddy my “seoul mate”?)

One morning, after a boisterous soju-soaked night out, I woke up feeling rough.

Really rough.

But when I glanced at my phone, my hangover disappeared instantly.

Covering my phone screen were about 20 text messages.  They were all in Korean so I had no idea what they said, but they were filled with red flags, huge exclamation marks, alarm bells and various other emergency symbols.

My mind started to race.

Was Seoul under fire?  Was crazy Kim about to launch an attack?

This might sound like an over-the-top reaction but these were the sorts of thoughts racing through my head. After all, I was acutely aware of the ongoing tensions between North and South Korea.  And why else would I have 20 intense warning messages on my phone?

As my buddy snored away, I walked to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked down through the snow at the street below.  

I could see people wandering about, crossing the road and getting on with their lives.  No-one seemed to be panicking.

That calmed me down slightly.

I grabbed my phone, fired up Google and searched “Korea phone alert”.  And up came streams of websites from tourists all asking the same question and revealing the same thing:

The phone alerts were weather warnings.

I remember letting out a chuckle, part with surprise and part with relief.

Now, you might be wondering why I’m doing the daily email equivalent of sharing my holiday snaps.

Well, I’ll tell you why.

The more I see about how our minds work, the more I see that thoughts are no different to these Korean weather alerts.

Sure – the alert might look scary, urgent or critical.

But it only looked this way because I didn’t understand what it was.

If I ever go back to Seoul, have a big night out, drink far more soju than is good for me and wake up to 20 alarming alerts on my phone, my experience of those alerts will be completely different. 

Not because I’ve “done” something in the meantime like think positively about the alerts, reframe the alerts or journal about the alerts.

But simply because I’ll understand the alerts for what they are.

Same thing with thoughts. 

On the surface, thoughts can look deeply worrying.  Our consciousness brings thoughts to life this way.  So it’s no wonder we start to feel anxious and take action when we have scary, urgent or alarming looking thoughts.

But once we understand thought for what it is, that changes.

Once we see thought is energy randomly buzzing round our brain and that having 20 identical thoughts isn’t telling us anything about the importance of that thought, let alone telling us anything about the outside world, reality or imparting some sort of “truth”, we can start to take our thoughts less seriously.

And our relationship with our thoughts will change too.

When we can see the trick that our thoughts are playing on us, we might even start smiling at some of our scary thoughts.

Good try, pal, but you can’t fool me!

And if you like the idea of taking your thoughts less seriously and being the leader of your thoughts rather than your thoughts leading you, it all comes down to understanding.

That’s the bottom line.

If you’re interested in exploring this more 1 on 1, here’s the link:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

 - Tom