Hello and welcome.
My name is Rachel and I am a Transformational Change Coach.
Today I want to talk to you about how we can find peace,
Even in the most challenging of times in our lives.
Life is stressful at times,
Right?
It can often feel like a whirlwind of demands,
Responsibilities and pressures.
It's easy to find ourselves caught up in the chaos,
Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
Stress and burnout can seem like inevitable companions on our journey through life.
In my own life,
I hit burnout many years ago when I was working full-time in a career I loved.
I had young children and was going through a divorce.
Life had just become too much.
There were too many plates to keep spinning and as much as I kept going for a long time,
In the end,
My body refused to move and forced me to stay in bed for some much-needed rest.
It looked to me like my job,
Marriage and being a parent were the causes of my burnout and they certainly were challenging times and extremely stressful.
And yet through my recovery journey,
I found a simple understanding that helped me see that my experience was exacerbated by what was coming from within me and my thinking about all the things I had to manage.
And how had my life ended up here?
In this session,
I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I started to see,
How it helped take things off my mind rather than keep adding to the stressful train of thought I was having.
So what if I told you that peace and resilience are always within reach,
No matter how chaotic life may seem?
What if I told you that the key to finding relief lies not in changing our external circumstances but in understanding the nature of our own thinking?
This understanding is based on an inside-out perspective,
Which means that we learn that our experience of life is created from the inside rather than our external circumstances.
It's not necessarily the situations themselves that lead us to burnout,
But rather our thoughts about those situations.
Now,
Does that sound odd?
Let's take a moment and think about it.
Have you ever noticed how two people can face the same challenge yet react in completely different ways?
One person may feel overwhelmed and stressed while the other remains calm and composed.
Why is that when the situation or circumstances are the same?
In addition,
You may have had the same situation occur more than once,
And on one occasion you were completely overwhelmed and stressed,
And the other you seemed unaffected by the situation.
Well,
It all comes down to our thinking in the moment,
And our thinking is changing moment to moment too.
Now,
I'm not saying that there aren't very difficult situations that we have to deal with in life.
Of course there are,
But when we become aware of the role that our thinking plays in those situations,
Then we feel more able to deal with them without making things worse.
Let's go back to our thoughts for a moment.
Our thoughts come to mind,
Appear and disappear like a heartbeat.
Take a moment here to observe.
If you think about your thoughts right now,
Do you know where their last thought came from?
Do you know when your next thought,
Do you know what your next thought will be,
Or the thought you'll have in five minutes time?
Can you see that you can observe your thoughts with curiosity and compassion?
Are they true,
Or are they just passing through consciousness?
Coming in and going out from your awareness.
When we recognize that our thoughts are not absolute truths,
But simply passing clouds in the sky,
We create space for clarity and insight to emerge.
We no longer need to react impulsively to every thought that arises.
Instead,
We can pause,
Breathe and choose our response consciously.
In this space of presence and awareness,
We begin to access our innate wisdom and resilience.
We realize that we are not victims of our circumstances,
But powerful creators of our reality.
So the next time you find yourself feeling stressed or on your way to bed,
Remember,
Take a pause to observe your thinking.
Is it helpful to your current situation?
Take a breath to connect beyond your thoughts to the one with peace that resides within you.
Know that within you is the key to your own well-being.
Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration today.
With love,
Rachel
