Over the weekend, Lauren and I took a trip with Baby Grundy to the market town of Ross on Wye.

We had three days of ice cream, cider, boat trips, penny slots and fish & chips.

But the real action happened on the way there.

I was driving along the motorway, minding my own business and gazing idly at the road, when all of a sudden, a big yellow exclamation mark started flashing on the car’s dashboard.

Then a warning message popped up:

TYRE PRESSURE LOW!

A pressure reading flashed up for the back right tyre. As I kept watching, the reading began to go down. 

I started to get nervous.

I glanced at the road, then back to the dashboard. The pressure reading was still going down.

“I think we’ve got a puncture” I said to Lauren, scanning the hard shoulder for somewhere to pull over.

But then, all of a sudden, the tyre pressure started to go back up!

I thought this was bizarre. How can a tyre’s pressure GO UP while I’m driving on the motorway?

That’s when another message flashed up on the dashboard:

SERVICE TYRE MONITOR SYSTEM!

As soon as that message came up, I clocked it. The problem wasn’t the tyre. It was the system that monitors the tyres that was on the blink!

As I chuckled away, I turned back to Lauren.

“This will make for an awesome daily email!” I said, as Lauren rolled her eyes.

But I couldn’t not write this email. And that’s because there’s a great metaphor here.

See, most of us treat our anxious, stressful or worrying thoughts like a puncture. We pull over, slam on the brakes and start scrambling for a fix.

But we’re looking in the wrong place.

It’s not what we think that matters. It’s how we think that matters instead.

Until you understand the source of your tyre alerts, you can’t trust what the alerts are saying. 

In exactly the same way, unless you get clear on where your thoughts are coming from, you can’t trust any of your thoughts.

And if you can’t trust them, they’re meaningless. 

This really is the whole shebang right here.

If you want to spend less time in your head, this is the answer (because you’ll spend less time thinking about your thinking).

If you want to feel less stressed and more at ease, this is also the answer (because when your mind settles, you settle).

Even if you’re a go-getter “A-type” who wants to climb the greasy corporate ladder, leapfrog all your team-mates and get ahead at work, this is the answer too. While 99% of your colleagues are busy paying attention to all their thoughts, you’re acting from clarity and cracking on with the job at hand.

This is what Seneca was getting at all those years ago when he said “we suffer more often in imagination than in reality”.

i.e. it’s rarely a puncture and usually a dodgy warning light.

Honestly, this is is a huge part of the reason I was so stressed at work for so long. I thought I needed to find “real life” solutions to my stress.

But it’s impossible to find a "real life" solution to a puncture that isn't real.

Great thing too.

Trying to control the outside world is nigh on impossible (have you ever tried controlling your boss or your workload? Good luck with that!)

But we can all understand how our minds work. 

In fact, it’s one of the very few things we have a real say in.

Understanding the source of thought is also the bedrock of my coaching.

More info here if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com