Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature.
I've just walked up a very steep hill.
Let me catch my breath.
I'm here in Exeter helping the car after my mum.
Just walked up from the river and sort of continuing this conversation a little bit of what I was talking about yesterday.
And if you remember yesterday was all about helping people to know which thoughts to trust or to see which thoughts they can trust and which thoughts they don't trust.
That's basically what I do.
My job is to help people see which thoughts to trust and which not to trust.
Thoughts not to trust and then I guess the follow-on from that is that when that is the case people.
Feel better,
They fall back.
MTV.
Clarity and peace of life,
The flow of life again.
And so today is really just a little reflection on the importance,
Or I guess sometimes we may overlook the importance,
Of interactions with people.
Where people at the end of it feel better.
And the emphasis here is that people feel better,
Not that you've been clever,
Or you've solved their problems,
Or you've given them advice,
Or you've told them to think positively,
Or that they haven't got it as bad,
Or things won't last long,
Or whatever your good intentions are as a listener.
The actual way to help people feel better is so very simple,
But it's counter what we've been taught,
So it can feel a little bit uncomfortable if you are the listener in the first instance.
So when someone comes to me and they are feeling agitated and they're feeling uncomfortable in their thoughts and feelings.
I absolutely know the answer does not lie in trying to work out the rights and wrongs of what's happened to them in their lives.
That for me is the equivalent of a snow globe.
Which has got all the snow and glitter whizzing around in this snow globe.
It's the equivalent of shaking it up even further.
And actually what people really want is they want a clear head.
They want that snow globe to settle.
And the way you can help facilitate a mind or a snow globe settle is you leave it alone.
You don't add anything else to the mix.
So today's reflection is that,
It's just an encouragement that when you're with someone who feels agitated,
Particularly if they have an issue that feels quite complex or rooted in traumatic things from the past or real worries about the future,
The temptation can be to try and fix it,
Give them answers,
Help them come up with a very simple ABC,
Strategy or plan.
But it doesn't work like that.
Recently,
I was talking to a friend of mine and he was telling me that his wife was going through quite a lot of stuff around the health of her elderly parent.
And he,
In the best possible way,
Was concerned about her.
He said,
Oh,
She gets really lost in stressful thinking and I'm telling her,
You know,
She can't think about it like that.
She needs to give herself time off.
Create boundaries.
All of what he was saying was coming from a really good place.
He cared for his wife and he wanted her not to be in pain.
But the thing that he could have given her that he didn't realise is that she wasn't looking for answers to her problem.
What she was looking for was to settle in herself so she could hear her own wisdom.
Which is pretty much what I was saying yesterday.
I help people to recognise which thoughts to not trust and which thoughts to trust.
So when I'm with someone,
I really tune into those thoughts I think are trustworthy that the other person is saying.
So for example,
With somebody in a similar situation who's maybe worried about an elderly parent and they live a long way away and they can't visit them,
I might think,
Ah,
This person is such a caring individual that they love their parent.
I'm going to feed that back to them.
I trust that.
I trust That is what I'm seeing,
And I trust that that is helpful for them to see.
So I feed that back.
I might say,
Gosh,
This is really worrying for you,
And I can really hear that you love your mum so much.
That's how I might respond to that.
I'm not trying to fix it.
I'm not trying to change it.
I'm just pointing to something that I see that is ultimately true.
And when she is reminded of the love that she feels for her mum,
And with that,
She feels that resilience as well,
That's the best possible place to settle and to feel better.
And remember,
If at the end of a conversation someone is more settled and they fall back in love with life again,
You've done a really good job as a listener.
Let me know your reflections on this and don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another 5 minutes in nature.
