I had an interesting experience the other day and as usual, it got me thinking!
I was driving and to be honest, I was a bit daydreamy when all of a sudden, a baby deer ran out into the road. I slammed on my brakes and narrowly missed the baby. I was obviously shaken but my initial action surprised me. I just said thank you, thank you to the Universe, I assumed my reaction would have been “oh shit!”.
Lately, I have been really working on affirmations around trust and a big part of trusting, for me, is feeling safe, protected and guided by the Divine. So, I was impressed my initial reaction was gratitude which I did feel, at that moment, that I was protected.
So yay me!
I recognized that this incident had got my adrenaline flowing so I literally shook it off to release the energy and did some deep breaths. When I had calmed my body, I was good! (This all happened within the span of a minute.)
What happened next was confirmation on how powerful our minds are and if they are left misunderstood and operating under our awareness radar how much it affects your life. It also was an affirmation that the personal work I have been doing was paying off!
Now let me remind you I was completely safe, I had literally shaken off the energy and was again driving. It was at this point my mind kept trying to bring me back into that state of fear and hyper-alert. It kept thinking about what ‘could’ have happened. That started an interesting internal dialogue.
My mind, “you could have died” it thought, my response “yes but I am safe”.
Next thought, ramping up the fear a bit “you could have killed the baby deer” (and to me that would be beyond tragic) and to make it more impactful this time it added an image of a bloody deer. My response again, “yes but I am safe!”
This continued for a while where each time I would let it go, my mind would bring it up again. Trying to remind me I was ‘almost’ hurt and ‘almost’ killed a deer, and ‘almost’ wrecked my car. My mind as it naturally does also started creating scenarios where I totalled my car and tried to get me thinking about how would I get a new one.
I found this all really fascinating, I was the awareness behind the thoughts. I observed how my mind was trying to keep me in a heightened state, it wanted me to be fearful and it did not want to let it go. Observing this I kept telling myself “yes but I am safe”.
What this showed me is that even with all the work I have done on understanding my mind and working with it, its instinct is to keep me safe and not let me forget that I was in danger was still there, and probably always will be. Our brains are hard-wired for negativity, that is why they are great at pointing out dangers. If we let them run on their own with no awareness they are fear-inducing, it’s no wonder people are anxious. Had I not had the tools that I do to be the awareness behind the thoughts, I would have probably been replaying the horrific scene over and over and telling everyone, each time retraumatizing myself. My body would have been stressed and I would (to say it bluntly) be in shit state, ruminating and flashing back to it whenever I got in the car.
But, because I understand my mind and have that awareness, I saved myself hours, if not days of stress. I was able to release the energy from my body so it did not get trapped and I was able to remain calm, truly calm, not just faking it!
It was an interesting experience for sure one that reinforces to me all the work I have been doing is truly life-changing!