International Staff Care
  • About
    • The longer version!
  • Work with Kate
    • Set for Success
    • The Game Changer
    • Client Background Summary
  • About Coaching
  • Events
  • Client Stories
  • Blog
  • Contact

Anxiety. Who we are.

27/6/2020

0 Comments

 
One of the things coming up a lot in conversations is people feeling held back by their thoughts - thoughts about not being confident enough; thoughts about what happened yesterday and thoughts about what’s going to happen tomorrow, thoughts about coming across too arrogant or too humble.

Standard psychological or coaching practice is to look at these thoughts and try and understand why they are presenting, or how they could be replaced by other thoughts. For anyone who’s ever pursued these approaches you may know from experience that they can be fascinating, but ultimately exhausting, rabbit holes.

There is another place we can direct attention which is to look at what our (for example, anxious) thinking is actually made of. Ie. to ask: What, or who, are we? It’s a profound, yet simple exploration which will reveal that:

1. for definite: we are not only the content of our thoughts. How can we be when there is nothing static or stable about any of the thoughts which pass through our mind?
2. we are not only the observer of our thoughts – how can we be, as who then, is observing us observing our thoughts?
3. awareness (of ourselves, our thoughts, objects, other people) is the only thing which never changes, never leaves, is always consistently present.

​In other words: we are not our thoughts; we are not the observer of our thoughts, we are the space in which thought - the ‘idea’ of all objects (including a self) - arises and collapses, arises and collapses. Nothing more, nothing less. And if that is the case: if we are the all, in which, and of which, and as which everything occurs and is ‘made’, then we are not anxious, we are anxiety; we are not thinkers, we are thought. ‘We’ are a thought. And that anxious thought when it occurs may be a temporary expression of us, but it is not who we are.
 

0 Comments

    Kate Barsby

    Picture
    Coach and mentor to professionals, business owners, and passionate people leading busy international lives.

    Archives

    June 2020
    February 2020
    July 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    A Nicer Life
    Daily Habits
    Getting Things Done
    Gratitude
    Inside-out Understanding
    Networking
    Parenting
    Peace Of Mind
    Taking Control
    Three Principles
    Wisdom

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.