The only time it’s acceptable to get up at 3:30am is when you’re catching a flight to go on holiday, right?
The excitement and anticipation that causes you to wake up just before the alarm goes off, get dressed and head off to the airport in the pitch black, before having to virtually get undressed again to go through airport security 😊.
But the moment you soar up into the sky and watch the sun rising above the clouds is a special moment. It always feels so spiritual to me to rise up above the world as we know it, and get a different perspective on life, as the sun symbolises the beginning of a new day.
Gazing out of the plane window, en route to Spain to run a 10k a couple of weeks ago, I looked down on the oh-so-British green fields, all appearing to be neatly fenced in in their ‘boxes’. And the motorways snaking their way through the landscape with a blur of different coloured vehicles, taking people from here to there and back to here again.
It felt like I was looking down on a board-game; a game of Monopoly where I could just reach down (with my massive hand 😊) and pick up any one of those vehicles and put it somewhere else on the board…maybe I’d use some of my Monopoly money and buy Mayfair and try not to land up in jail while I was at it.
But what if I picked up one of those vehicles and put it outside of the Monopoly board? What if that Monopoly board was just a mentally-constructed map of the world and the territory was oh so much bigger than those oh-so-British fenced in fields and those snaking motorways, which were so often blocked or had speed restrictions in place?
What if we realised we had a choice to step off that board and see the bigger picture; the expanse of territory that doesn’t keep us small and limited and doesn’t keep us in a state of fear and subsequently, in a state of physical disease?
What if we realised we didn’t need to be confined to a box where we had to keep going round and round seeing the same perspective, passing go and trying to make sure we had enough money to avoid going to jail?
We have a choice about what we choose to see. Our perception is unique, formed through sensory information that is filtered depending on what memories and previous experiences we have had, what our values are, what language we are using to think and talk about ourselves and the world around us and what beliefs we’ve learnt to be true – beliefs can be expansive or limiting and whatever we believe, we will find the “evidence” to back that up.
So what if that Monopoly board we are going round and round on is formed from a society-driven perception, filtered through others’ experiences of what is true for them? What if that Monopoly board we are going round and round on is formed through a “story” that has been written for us that we didn’t actually agree to or write for ourselves?
What if you knew you could re-write your story and you didn’t have to keep following one that was written for you? What would you do? Who would you be?
The mentally-constructed perception of “reality” as a human being, in my experience, pulls us out of a state of homeostasis where the body is able to heal itself. We are conditioned to live in a state of fear and feel disempowered to live life the way we truly want to because, for example, we have to earn a certain amount of money to live and meet our basic human needs.
And we typically learn from a young age that it’s not safe to feel and express all of our emotions; emotions that give us vital signs about what makes us happy, what makes us sad and what feels safe or not safe to us. We learn we don’t get our fundamental emotional needs to feel worthy of love, connection and belonging met if we express all of our emotions, so we learn to suppress them where the emotion (energy-in-motion) gets stuck and can lead to disease in our physical body.
So how do we step off the Monopoly Board of a mentally-constructed existence and out of a story that has been written for us, and re-write our own story? A story where we can create our own perception of life and who we are; a story where we don’t have to live in fear, stay small and limited. A story where we can fully express our emotions AND get our needs met so our minds and bodies can be happy and healthy.
Get in touch to find out how transformational coaching can help you release patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours keeping you going round and round the “Monopoly Board” of life so you can start to re-write your own story and live a happier and healthier life.
With love as always.
Sarah xx
Come to Byron with me my lovely!!!! Walk for miles through rainforests and meditate on the beach xxx