You create your reality. Either consciously through mindfulness (awareness of and disidentification from your thoughts) or unconsciously (by allowing your mind to run amok and create problems where there are none so it can then save you from the nonexistent problems that are very real to your mind). Until you disidentify from the mind, you experience life through the filter of your mind which can create some really bonkers shit.
You don't have to believe every thought your mind creates. You don't have to believe any of them. The ultimate goal is to be able to step back from your mind and live through your heart, only using your mind when needed. It's a thing. I promise. And it's so much easier.
I lived primarily through my mind for the first thirty years of my life. I truly was a "mind creature." I was an A+ student in school. I graduated cum laude with a marketing degree. I was an atheist. I would decide (with my mind) what I wanted to do and then do it. Hard exam coming up? I'll study the shit out of the material obsessively until I have mastered it. New job? I'll ask lots of questions and read up on unfamiliar subjects in the evenings until I feel fully competent. Less than perfect performance in academics or professionally was unacceptable. And I managed to pull it off. Thanks to anxiety. Anxiety fueled me. I would go go go until I accomplished whatever was my current goal.
I also knew that I had a gut feeling that would pop up sometimes around big decisions. For example, I just "knew" my husband was The One from very early on. We partied in the same circles and hung out occasionally throughout my later college years. I was always very aware of his presence whenever he was around. I didn't know why, but he was always on my radar. We eventually started dating and walked down the aisle two years (to the day) after our first kiss. I knew he was it. My mind tried to tell me to date longer and not rush into things, but it also liked the benefits that would come with marriage (those fancy pants benefits that came along with his fancy pants new job, etc.). I "knew" he was it, so we just went for it and got married. It was absolutely the right decision. My heart knew it, but my mind had to justify it before I took the plunge.
Things went south in the anxiety department when I had our first daughter. I was unconscious (living through the lens of my anxious mind) for the first 2.5 years of her life. I decided that I was going to crush it at motherhood because I always did everything perfectly, so I would do motherhood perfectly too, obvy. Turns out, motherhood is 24/7 and no one can be perfect at life every second. It was a very hard lesson for me to learn.
My intuition/heart/gut/soul/inner self had always told me that I would be a mother and I would stay home while they were little. My intuition guided me towards natural birth and attachment parenting, then my mind researched the shit out of those topics until it was satisfied that it was right for me. Seriously. I was at home full time with a tiny baby. I had sooooo much time to obsessively pour over articles about how cry-it-out was detrimental and cosleeping was beneficial. Thank goodness The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was recommended to me while I was pregnant, and it supported my instinct that on demand nursing was the way to go. Thank goodness for Facebook groups full of other attachment/peaceful parenting mamas who posted nonstop scientific based articles on the benefits of parenting in the way that felt right to me.
Motherhood was my introduction to truly following my heart, I just had to do it through the filter of my mind for a few years. More on that to come...
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