Category: Navigating Emotions

The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Feeling?

The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Feeling?

AP2

What on Earth Am I Feeling?

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal 

Disconnecting the autopilot is the practise of noticing when you’re distracted and then actively bringing your attention back to the present. 

But there’s a problem. It’s called turbulence. (Namely, your emotions.)

This is what happens when a pilot takes the autopilot out. For reasons only known to God, the ride gets much worse. (I swear it has nothing to do with my skills.)

The same thing happens when we remove all the distractions from our lives. The ride gets rather bumpy!

This is why meditation – which is essentially the practice of staying present with your immediate experience – freaks many people out. Why some people would rather electrocute themselves!

Because we are forced to deal with all the icky sticky emotions we’ve been bottling up for most of our lives.

Therapy achieves the same thing. 

You sit in a room – sans distractions – with someone who gets you to talk about the painful experiences you don’t want to talk about, while guiding you back to all the emotions you don’t want to feel until you capitulate into a big blubbering mess. (It’s a barrel of laughs.)

The Benefits of Disconnecting Your Autopilot

So what’s the benefit of doing this? 

Well, when we repress one emotion, we kind of repress them all. Acknowledging and letting them go enables us to feel the full kaleidoscope of experience. 

Of course, what we feel about things = who we are. 

This is what people mean when they prattle on about finding themselves or going on a spiritual journey. They’ve allowed themselves to start feeling again.

For those who have been bottling up their emotions for a long time this can be eye-opening. 

Maybe you realise, “Holy shit! I’ve been pretending I’m some badass macho man when, in reality, I’m really sensitive.” Or that you’re really competitive, but that was beat out of you during childhood.

A surprising emotion that came up for me in the wake of my depression was anger.

Now, I’d never thought of myself as an angry person. Indeed, I’m not. However, I almost never used to get angry. What I’d been doing was bottling the emotion up. I didn’t even realise I was doing it.

This was partly because I was taught not to get angry as a child. But also because I was bullied for over two years during my adolescence. 

Instead of expressing that anger as I should have, I turned it inward. 

As you can imagine, this created something of a fire-breathing dragon beneath the surface. It just laid dormant for years.

It wasn’t until I had my first child – whenever he started crying bloody murder – that I found I would get really, really angry. It was intense. 

Often I wanted to throw my kid out the window. Luckily I never did this! But I did have to go into another room and cool off. 

It wasn’t until I allowed myself to acknowledge said anger (and become clear that it had nothing to do with my child crying) that I was able to manage it more effectively. 

The Purpose of Self-Awarness

This is a good example of self-awareness doing me a massive favour – helping prevent me from passing on my own neurosis to my children (or at least limiting the damage).

But it also highlights why flying manually is so damn tricky. We have to reckon with who we really are.

It means acknowledging all the things about ourselves we wish weren’t true – all the ugly unsavory parts of our personality or nature – all our demons lurking deep beneath the surface (that we all have).

Coming to terms with these things can be very difficult – especially if you’re personality is as fucked up as yours truly. The desire is to judge ourselves or blame the world for all our problems.

Of course, this defeats the whole point of self-awareness – that is, self-acceptance.

We only feed the dragon if we refuse to accept it. 

Only by bringing these parts of ourselves into the light with compassion and understanding do we stand a chance of integrating the darker elements of our nature in a healthy way.

The Trap of Introspection

While these insights are extremely beneficial for helping us cope when we’re acting like a giant asshat, there is a bit of a trap when trying to understand why we are the way we are.

As it turns out, asking why we are the way we are is a surprisingly ineffective Self-Awareness question. It’s so ineffective, in fact, you really ought to stop asking it!

Research has shown we don’t have access to many of the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives we’re searching for. And because so much sits outside our conscious awareness, we often invent the reason why. 

Aside from being wrong the bigger issue with asking why is that it never stops. It’s like peeling an onion. Underneath the first layer may be an important insight. But after that, it’s just more onion. 

You have to be very careful not to keep peeling in a desperate attempt to try and find the grand cosmic truth for your existence (because there isn’t one).

Most of my issues are rooted in low self-worth. The reason for this is multi-fold based on a series of shit sandwiches I was served in my younger years. The temptation for me is to keep asking why. 

Was it because my parents doubted me? Was it because I was bullied? Was it because?.. 

It’s irrelevant! I understand the false belief that regularly causes my autopilot to fly me inverted straight toward a mountain. I know where it comes from, broadly speaking. 

That’s good enough. 

If I keep peeling the onion it indicates that I’m not accepting the truth about who I am. As a result, I end up trapped in unproductive thought patterns about the past – trying to unearth some grand cosmic truth that will set me free. 

(FYI, this is why frequent self-analyzers are more depressed and anxious and experience poorer well-being.)

The Ultimate Self-Awareness Hack.

None of this is to say you shouldn’t practice a little introspection. However, there is a far far better question to ask than why.

This really is a massive self-awareness hack. It’s so huge, in fact, I will bold it for you. (Mainly because I wish someone had told me this about a decade ago.) 

Ask what, not why. 

Asking what helps you frame the context of who you are regarding the situation you’re in much better. Put another way, what is solutions focused. 

In one study, psychologists J. Gregory Hixon and William Swann gave a bunch of undergraduates negative feedback on a test of their “likability and interest­ingness.” 

Some were given time to think about why they were the way they were, while others were asked to think about what kind of person they were. 

When the researchers had them evaluate the feedback, the “why” students spent their energy rationalising and denying what they’d learned, whereas the “what” students were more open to learning. 

Hixon and Swann concluded that “Thinking about why one is the way one is may be no better than not thinking about one’s self at all.”

To use a personal example, being fatigued is a major trigger for me. Following a long-haul flight, I would often turn into something of a giant asshat. Asking why only compounded my misery.

It wasn’t until I was brutally honest about how depressed I became for days following a long-haul trip that I realized I couldn’t keep doing it.

My body was telling me things my heart didn’t want to hear. Eventually this reached a tipping point where I felt the pain no longer justified the reward. 

It was a major reason why I quit my job. 

This, ultimately, is the whole point of asking what we are: To figure out what we should do about it. 

Summary:

  • Disconnecting the autopilot is the practise of noticing when you’re distracted and then actively bringing your attention back to the present. 
  • Flying manually (practising mindfulness) helps us understand how we feel about everything.
  • Asking why we are the way we are keep us trapped in unproductive thoughts about the past.
  • Asking what kind of person we are is solutions focused. It frames the context of who we are regarding our situation much better.

This is part 3 of a series of posts on the topic of Self-Awareness:

Part 1: The Automation Paradox

Part 2: The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What on Earth Am I Doing?

***

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The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What On Earth Am I Doing?

The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What On Earth Am I Doing?

AP2

The Three Areas of Self-Awareness

According to Tasah Eurich – author of Insight: The Surprising Truth about How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think – there are 3 major blindspots to self-awareness. 

Those are:

  1. Behaviour blindness.
  2. Emotional blindness.
  3. Knowledge blindness.

Behaviour blindness is being oblivious to your own actions. Not noticing when you are getting distracted or why. 

Emotional blindness is being oblivious to your own feelings. Not understanding how you actually feel – what situations trigger specific emotional responses or why.

Knowledge blindness is being oblivious to what others think about you. Where they believe your strengths and weaknesses lie.

To help place a spotlight on each, I’ve come up with 3 stupendous questions:

  1. What on earth am I doing?
  2. What on earth am I feeling?
  3. What on earth are you thinking (of me)?

It works like this. 

We first learn to manage our autopilot before we practice hand-flying. Finally, we ask our trusted co-pilot for some much-needed feedback. 

We then use that information to fly our aircraft toward a more desirable destination – so we don’t act like a giant asshat the next time round!

Today, to avoid overloading your minimal attention span (no offence), I will tackle question #1, What on earth am I doing? and teach you how to first manage your autopilot. 

Let’s jump right in.

What on Earth Am I Doing?

Why you engage your autopilot.

A pilot engages the autopilot because it makes life easier. With the autopilot engaged, we can put out feet up, flirt with the hostess, stare at the clouds, or even read a newspaper. (What’s a newspaper?)

When we take the autopilot out, however, we start to sweat. This is because we must constantly scan our instrumentations – our speed, heading, altitude, etc. 

This is on top of all the other stuff we usually do when the autopilot is engaged, such as monitoring the radar for weather, looking out for other aircraft, or flirting with the hostess. 

So our work is cut out for us.

Now, you’d think the predominant emotion of a pilot taking the autopilot out would be confidence – “My, what big cojones you have el capitan!” – but I can tell you from personal experience the predominant emotion is fear. 

That’s why most pilots engage the autopilot approximately 4 to 5 seconds after take off. (Phew!)

As it turns out, we engage our mental autopilot for the same reason. We do it to avoid feeling pain or fear, or crippling self-doubt. 

How you engage the autopilot.

How exactly do we avoid these difficult emotions? Through distraction. 

“Distraction is the mental equivalent of engaging your autopilot.”

So we reach for our phones, mentally check out, wander over to the fridge, grab the bottle of tequila, binge-eat Ben and Jerry’s, or binge-watch NETFLIX. 

Basically anything and everything to numb ourselves from the intensity of existence. 

A big part of the problem is our repetitive thought patterns – which are themselves a form of distraction. Of course, these pesky thoughts tend to ruminate about how we’re deeply flawed human beings or worry about an apocalyptic tomorrow (thanks, Putin). 

This manifests itself as pain in the present, which we seek to avoid at all costs by either keeping our heads stuck in the clouds or, if that’s too much, reaching for the bottle or our phone.

“Click.” Autopilot in. (Phew!)

Contrary to popular belief, distraction isn’t the root of all evil. Sometimes it’s needed. We should schedule a time to let our minds wander and otherwise fuck around. 

But the key word here is awareness. 

We want to remain aware of when and why we’re engaging the autopilot. We want to stay conscious in case we need to reign it in. We want to make sure we are choosing our distractions instead of having our distractions choose us.

Put another way – we want to manage our autopilot – not get rid of it. 

Trying to get rid of it is the mental equivalent of going to the supermarket and buying a lifetimes supply of toilet paper whenever someone mentions the word pandemic. It’s overkill. All you’ll end up doing is pissing everyone off. 

What we really want to get rid of are our compulsions. 

How to manage your autopilot.

“If distraction costs us time, then time management is pain management.”– Nir Eyal

One of the best ways to manage your autopilot is to schedule time for your distractions. 

That is, you should allow yourself to check out occasionally. But you want to do so in a way that is both healthy and satisfying. 

So don’t stop watching NETFLIX or playing video games. No, no, no! Schedule time for it – but set a hard limit – make sure you have allocated the time for that purpose and nothing else.

Nir Eyal – author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life – calls this time-boxing. 

You’d think you’re supposed to time-box your work first and then allocate whatever time left over for your family or the hobbies you wish to pursue, but Nir recommends you take the opposite approach. 

He suggests you time-box play quality time for yourself first. 

The reasoning behind this is straightforward: if you are not caring for yourself, everything else, from your work to your marriage, will suffer. 

So, you will want to kick things off by setting aside enough time for sit-down meals, a good night’s sleep, and some of your favourite hobbies. Follow this by scheduling quality time with your friends and family. 

Finally, fit work around all of that. 

(Who would have thought that work was supposed to support life, not the other way around?)

Once these boundaries are firmly established, you can start to note when your autopilot takes you away from your intended flight path in a given moment. When you find yourself wandering off to some alternative head-space universe. When you are deviating from your planned activities, pursuits, or conversations. 

Here are some questions to think about.

Look for the patterns and note them down. I suggest you reflect on these questions every day as part of a journalling routine.

A final point. 

Whatever you do, don’t judge yourself. The goal with all of this is self-acceptance. Remember, you’re human. Learning to manage the human autopilot is hard fucking work. Perhaps the hardest – so stay kind. 

Step 1 is to simply understand where your autopilot goes and when. Once you have a clearer picture, we can consider why. 

That brings us to the next week’s question: What on earth am I feeling? 

Summary:

  • Distraction is the mental equivalent of engaging the autopilot
  • We use distraction to avoid feelings of pain or fear.
  • The best way to manage our autopilot is to schedule time for distraction.
  • We want to take note of when we’re getting distracted throughout the day.

This is part 2 of a series of posts on the topic of Self-Awareness:

Part 1: The Automation Paradox

For a collection of meditations designed to help you navigate your fears, generate lift and take command of life – join my weekly Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. 

The Joy of Running Around Naked

The Joy of Running Around Naked

AP2

So my kids have started doing this thing. Every evening before bath time – after we take their clothes off before they get into the tub – they run around the apartment like crazed feral wild cats. Screaming and laughing. 

Pure unadulterated joy.

It got me thinking about the clothes we wear, metaphorically speaking. 

A kid doesn’t question why we walk around with clothes on (when you live in Singapore, there’s a good argument not to). They simply follow the herd to blend it. Because that’s the safest bet.

It’s for the same reason they imitate our actions. As much as I tell them not to act like the giant ass hat I am, they do anyway.

As adults, we’re no different with the character armour we assume. The social conditioning we’ve all undergone to varying cultural degrees. There’s a code of conduct we must follow.

For women, that’s typically something along the lines of never speak up. Always look pretty. Be perfect. Don’t over step your mark. 

For men it’s something like don’t cry. Man the fuck up. Never ask for help. Figuring it out on your own or drown trying.

Of course, it’s all bullshit. 

It’s all clothes we’re told to wear so we don’t make each other feel uncomfortable. Because who wants to deal with someone else’s vulnerabilities? I’m having enough trouble preventing people from seeing my own.

Thank you very much.

I wonder, though, what are we so afraid of? Of upsetting someone else? Why? That’s their problem, not yours.

But that’s not it. 

What we’re really scared of is being vulnerable – of feeling exposed. We want nothing more than to be seen, heard, and accepted for who we are.

What we fear most is rejection.

We’re scared of being laughed at and ridiculed. We’re afraid of having our hearts stamped on.

But what happens if we say fuck this? If, despite our fears, we remove our clothes and let who we are all hang out, warts and all?

We may get laughed at and ridiculed. If you are, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. 

It might mean you need new friends!

At any rate, it’s a risk we have to be willing to take. If only to find out who are friends and family really are.

The truth is the character armour we can carry around is far heavier than the clothes we wear on our backs. We can only carry it for so long before it weighs us down.

That’s why we need to be around the people who will let us take it off – who will accept us when we do. (Even if they can’t help but laugh sometimes.) 

The reward of course is the feeling of aliveness. The feeling of running free. The feeling of pure unadulterated joy.

You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

Stuck in the Clouds: On Navigating Turbulence and Becoming a Pilot.

Stuck in the Clouds: On Navigating Turbulence and Becoming a Pilot.

AP2

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that believes you should take the autopilot out when you experience turbulence…

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!

3 Thoughts:

1) “If we want to stop being a passenger and become a pilot we need to disconnect the autopilot and direct our attention to the present. This is what it means to fly manually. We deliberately focus on the present. We sink into our body and pay attention to what we’re feeling. But here’s the trick. We only use effort to maintain focus – to observe. After the fact, we must let go. If we try to control or fight or judge the turbulence, we’ll only make it worse. Instead, we should simply ride it out. Eventually, we will find the clear air beyond.” – click to tweet

2) “When a pilot anticipates severe turbulence they will turn on the seatbelt signs and make a PA telling everybody to take a seat. When we experience inner turbulence one of the most dangerous things we can do is carry on with our normal service. This is when people get hurt. Sometimes it’s best to take a seat and wait for the turbulence to pass.” – click to tweet

3)  Repeat after me: “To remain present. To treat each moment as my last. To savour this one life I have. To really see what/who is around me. To respond to all things with compassion and love – including myself. To be grateful for all that I have – to express that gratitude to all that I love.” – click to tweet

2 Quotes:

“My deepest belief is that to live as if we’re dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things.”

― Anne Lamott

“I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your deathbed with a to do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Let the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that’s how something amazing grows, through the cracks.”

— Mark Manson

1 Joke 

My wife offered me a plum the other day, but then she dropped it.

I told her it took a plummet.

You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

***

To have my weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox sign up for my Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. 

Stuck in the Clouds: On Being Stuck in the Clouds and Zooming the Lens Out

Stuck in the Clouds: On Being Stuck in the Clouds and Zooming the Lens Out

AP2

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that promises to deliver what you can only do for yourself.

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!

3 Thoughts:

1) “Which came first, the thought or the feeling, is a bit like asking whether it was the chicken or the egg. In either case they perpetuate one another. Negative feeling creates negative thought creates negative feeling creates negative thought… Thoughts themselves are often a form of distraction we pursue to escape our pain.

So our heads get stuck in the clouds.

To escape the emotional rabbit hole it’s useful to ask what basic emotion it is you’re avoiding. Then practise letting it go. Once you’ve done that, you can examine the thought from a more objective place to determine whether it’s grounded in reality or not.” – click to tweet

2) “If you’re feeling overwhelmed try zooming the lens out and consider the bigger 10-year picture. Use that to remind yourself there is no need to rush. Then, keep zooming out to the end of existence itself and remind yourself that nothing fucking matters. Then come back to what you were doing.” – click to tweet

3)  “Being successful on the wrong path should scare you far more than any amount of failure on the right one.” – click to tweet

2 Quotes:

“Never attach yourself to person, a place, a company, an organization or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep your power and your peace.”

― Elon Musk

“When letting go, it’s not helpful to “think” about the technique. It’s better, simply, just to do it. Eventually it will be seen that all thoughts are resistance. They are all images that the mind has made to prevent us from experiencing what actually is. When we have been letting go for a while and have begun experiencing what is really going on, we will laugh at our thoughts. Thoughts are fakes, absurd make-beliefs that obscure the truth. Pursuing thoughts can keep us occupied endlessly. We will discover one day that we are right where we started. Thoughts are like gold fish in a bowl; the real Self is like the water. The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.”

— David R. Hawkins (from “Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender”)

1 Joke: 

My wife got annoyed at me for failing to clean the coffee machine.


She said it was it grounds for divorce.

You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

***

To have my weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox sign up for my Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. 

Stalling: Why Letting Go is the Key to Regaining Lift

Stalling: Why Letting Go is the Key to Regaining Lift

AP2

“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and results come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity.” 

– Aldous Huxley

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to the Earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.”

– Jacques Cousteau

Drown-Proofing 

When it comes to our psychology what’s happened is this.

Our hands and arms have been bound together, and we’ve been thrown into the deep end. The more we struggle, the faster we sink. The more we panic, the more oxygen we burn, the quicker we drown.

As it happens, this is something navy SEALs do as part of their bat-shit-crazy survival training. It’s called drown-proofing.

The trick to surviving drown-proofing is to let go. You must surrender in the face of death and allow yourself to sink to the bottom of the pool. From there, you lightly push off the pool floor to rise back to the surface. 

Finally, you take a big gulp of air before repeating the whole process over again.

The problem with drown-proofing (the reason so many cadets fail at it) is it’s completely counter-intuitive. It’s counter-intuitive for two major reasons.

First, are our deeply ingrained survival instincts screaming at us to do something. (This is what makes drown-proofing such a cruel training exercise: Your survival instincts are pitted against you.)

The second reason is our deeply ingrained belief that we must exert some kind of effort to exact any sort of result.

Diminishing Rates of Return

The logic goes the more I put into something, the more I get out of it. 

When it comes to effort versus reward, we assume it’s one-for-one. Twice the effort garners twice the reward. But this is only true for certain menial tasks like washing the dishes or folding the laundry. 

The reality is the vast majority of things work on a diminishing rate of return. That means the more you put into or experience something, the less rewarding it becomes over time. 

To use work as a classic example. 

Many productivity studies show that most people max out at about 4 to 5 productive hours per day. The rest is just fucking around. Usually, to appease some CEO who feels the need to get their money’s worth. 

Obviously, 4 hours of work is better than none. 8 hours of work is better than 4, although those extra 4 hours will be less productive. 

However, the difference between an 8 and a 12-hour workday is next to nothing. Whereas the difference between a 12-hour and a 16-hour workday is undoubtedly counterproductive. (Factoring sleep deprivation and the probability that the quality of work will have diminished significantly.)

At this point you’ve stalled. You need to let go and return to earth for the night before you make everything worse. 

Of course, this is how an aeroplane works.

If I pitch up, I increase the amount of lift my wings generate. But I also increase the amount of drag I encounter. Depending on my performance (and what it is I hope to achieve), there is an optimum lift-to-drag ratio. If I exceed that ratio, I get a diminishing rate of return on my lift.

If I keep pitching up, eventually, I’ll reach a point where the air separates from the top of the wing resulting in a substantial loss of lift. This what’s known as the stall.

Understating where this point is important so I don’t exceed it. Of course, prevention is better than cure. However, understanding what to do once I have stalled is even more critical.

Not just because it constitutes an emergency, but because the way to recover is, you guessed it, counter intuitive.

Increasing Rates of Negative Return

This is the main point I want to make today. 

The moment we stall in life, the exact opposite of what we believe is true. Effort no longer corresponds with an increase in reward – even on a diminishing rate of return. 

Instead, we enter into an increasing rate of negative return. 

That means the more effort we put into something – the more we try to exact a result – the worse everything becomes. The more we pitch up, the deeper the stall becomes.   

The only way to recover is to let go. 

We must then point our aircraft toward the ground to avoid hitting it. It’s completely counter-intuitive, just like drown-proofing. If you don’t want to drown you must sink to the bottom of the pool.

Here’s the mighty big thing. 

When it comes to our psychology – when it’s something that exists purely within our mind – this is always the case. The more we try to control our emotional aeroplane – the more we try to fight the turbulence – the worse the ride becomes.

Happiness is the classic example here.

The more we desire happiness – the more we chase after it – the further the carrot moves. The more we wish we didn’t feel so anxious, or angry, or sad, the more gasoline we add to the fire.

The more we crave love and acceptance from others, the harder we find it to love and accept ourselves. The harder we try to fall asleep, the more we want to pull our hair out.

I could go on. So I will!

There’s one more example I want to bring up. The one I’ve been building to. One of the four forces of life known as meaning – the human equivalent of lift. 

The more we crave a meaningful experience – the more we desperately try to find meaning – the more meaningless everything starts to feel. The more we wish our lives or experience didn’t mean something, the more we believe it does.

Meaning, like all of the above, requires a counter-intuitive approach.

The Psychology of Letting Go

As complex as our psychology is the reason for this is surprisingly simple. It’s because our mind is both the cause and the effect of the thing we desire. 

We tend to treat our minds like a car we must drive to reach our destination. But the mind doesn’t work like that. This is because the mind is both the destination and the vehicle itself. 

When Buddhist monks preach about already being free, this is what they mean. You can’t drive yourself out of the destination your mind is already in. You can’t swim when you’re arms and legs are bound together. Your only option is to let yourself sink. 

You must sink into the uncertainty, pain, and fear. 

When you learn to do that – as petrifying as it is – you’ll find something remarkable happens. As if by magic you’ll find the clarity and perspective you need. You’ll understand where your fear is genuinely rooted.

You’ll find the bottom of the pool. 

From there, you won’t have to think about how you should act; you’ll know. You’ll push off the pool floor and launch yourself to salvation. You’ll realise that the only to fly upward from here is to point the nose down. 

God willing, you will avoid the ground in the nick of time. 

This is part five of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.

Part 1: Stalling: The Aerodynamics of Life

Part 2: Stalling: Why We Lose Lift

Part 3: Stalling: Why We Lose Lift (2)

Part 4: The Paradox of Meaning

***

You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com