The season of Advent has begun…yes it means Christmas is getting closer which for many is a time when the stress levels increase. Although advent calendars begin on 1st December the season of Advent actually begins four Sundays before Christmas. For the church calendar Advent is all about expectation, looking forward to what is coming, the celebrations of Christmas. It can be great to have something to look forward to.
I used to work for an airline and we got free air travel on the unsold seats however you couldn’t plan too far in advance as you could never fully predict which routes would have empty seats when you wanted to travel. For us it meant holidays tended to be last minute organising, although cheap! We once went on skiing with friends on a coach. One of the things I loved about that holiday was it was booked way in advance, no worrying about whether we would get seats or not and I could enjoy the build up, the expectation as it got closer, there was certainty to it happening.
Although we may not be aware of it our minds spend a lot of time thinking about the future and often not in joyous expectation. Our minds spent a lot of time time-travelling in to the future, predicting future events, playing out scenarios to ‘prepare’ ourselves, thinking about all possibilities and eventualities. This future thinking may be based on past experience so our mind also goes back in the the past as well as the future. All this time travelling can be exhausting….and stress inducing. Ekhart Tolle talks about getting caught up in the ‘content’ of the hear and now, which prevents you being in the present moment, that is what happens when you are time travelling.
If you feel stressed, anxious, nervous it probably means your mind is doing this time-travelling. It means you are not fully present, in the present moment. Stress, anxiety and nerves do not exist when you are fully in the present moment. If there is a tiger in the room with you that is different, that is fear.
Gavin DeBecker, who wrote a book called the gift of fear, talks about fear as a survival mechanism allowing every rabbit, every gazelle, every Lion, every human being to access an incredibly powerful energy for getting into place of safety. He explains how fear is always to do with the present environment you are in. And yet my guess is there are people reading this who maybe experiencing anxiety or worry about something, however that is not fear because fear always relates to something actual in the environment, right now. Whereas anxiety and worry relate to the past and the future.
DeBecker makes the point with this story. If someone’s at an airport and they’re feeling stressed or afraid about getting on a plane, if it’s because of the scary news story they saw two weeks before where a plane got hijacked or crashed or something, that’s not fear. That is stress, anxiety or worry because its not present in the environment. But if it’s because they saw the pilot stumble out of the airport bar, and slur his speech as he crawled into the cockpit, that would be a genuine fear.
So fear only relates to real stuff in the environment, present stuff. Anything else is a stress, anxiety or a worry, relating the the past and future.
So how do you be more in the present and stop your mind time travelling the the future/past, fuelling your anxiety, worry or stress? Here are some tips:
- Sit with your feet flat on the floor, in a comfortable, aligned position (spine straight, hands on your thighs or at your sides, breathing comfortably.) With your eyes open or closed, allow yourself to become aware of the different sounds, sights, smells and sensations around you. This is the present moment.
- Gently place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth (continue to breathe easily.) Imagine you are holding a tiny droplet of oil between the tip of your tongue and the roof of your mouth. This stops your internal chatter, which can allow you to be more fully in the present moment.
- At any time you can bring your attention back to your breathing, your body which is always in the present moment. Focus on your breath, noticing it, the depth, the pace, without controlling it just become fully aware of it. This allows your mind to stop the time travelling the rest in the present moment.
Enjoy playing with these and beginning to notice how you start experiencing life in the present moment. Enjoying each moment more fully whatever you are doing. Being in the present moment will allow you to enjoy the season of Advent more fully and stress free! To help me I adopt the phrase ‘everything is perfect’ – in that moment it is, it is only when we time travel and worry about consequences our experience of the moment changes.
