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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

Practice Social Distancing, Especially from the Wrong Crowd

3/23/2020

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The world has become a different place in just a few weeks, hasn’t it? We’re being challenged to respond in a way that’s almost unthinkable for us in the US. And even though physical distancing is becoming the new norm, there’s still the possibility that we will end up hanging out with the wrong crowd - albeit 6 feet apart.

A few days ago I had a conversation with someone in which we were discussing the consequences of being stuck in fearful thinking. It occurred to me that spending time continuing to think about scary things that could happen (but haven’t yet) or questioning whether what we’d already done had been a good idea was akin to hanging out with the wrong crowd. They’re never a good influence and are likely to make matters worse before we realize our relationship with them isn’t going to make us better, more intelligent or happier with our lives.

When I was in junior high school I found myself for a while being drawn to a group of “outsiders,” kids who didn’t fit in, who were considered wild or dangerous or bad. There was something fascinating about them - they didn’t conform to the same social norms, they openly rebelled; they seemed reckless and daring by talking rough or doing bad. I found that strangely attractive, watching them push the boundaries of safety and common sense.

What I didn’t see until I had gone down that road with them for a while was that it’s one thing to question our assumptions in a way that opens us to new and healthy opportunities and quite another to question assumptions and beliefs when it puts us or others in harm’s way.

It’s the same way with our thinking. There’s often a lot of drama, that adrenaline-spiking fascination with “what-iffing” that gets our imagination and our biochemicals going off the charts. Some of us are so used to living in a heightened state of stress that it can take a while to realize it’s not serving us when we try to figure anything out from there.

But is that really the place from which we can truly know what’s right for us? Any sort of knee-jerk, biochemical-induced reaction (triggered by our fearful thinking) is not intelligent, nor is it likely to be true.

What is intelligent (and true) is to recognize that any thought which doesn’t originate from our own deeper wisdom - accessible even, and especially in times like these - will keep us caught within the swirl of fear and danger, not peace and well being.

​That’s the beauty of how humans are made: regardless of whether it’s the outside world or our own thinking that’s in turmoil, humans have a built-in GPS that can always be depended on to provide real-time direction based on a higher and wider perspective.
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