When you are confronted with a crisis or something unexpected that throws you off balance, your body and mind are primed for a fight or flight response. This is your natural survival instinct.
For example, when a child runs across the road while you’re driving and you brake just in time. This works fine if the crisis situation lasts for a moment and you are back to normal immediately after.
The problem starts when you are in a prolonged state of stress or distress that lasts for days, weeks or months. This could be due to a number of things such as:
- The death of a loved one
- A diagnosis of a terminal disease
- You lose your job
- You feel like you keep running into a brick wall over and over again
- You can’t seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel
- You feel hopeless
The prolonged stress starts to distort your vision of reality and changes your mind and body as you keep struggling to get out of that situation.
When you are hungry, it can be hard to think of anything other than food. Think of going shopping when you are hungry. You end up buying stuff you don’t really need.
When you’re desperately poor, you may constantly worry about making ends meet.
Becoming aware of how your brain and body respond to hard situations is critical to pulling through.
This podcast from The Hidden Brain explains the phenomena of tunnel vision when we are faced with scarcity and how that affects our ability to see the big picture.
This is where I believe a deliberate and sustained practice like meditation can help us become more self-aware.
- Stop
- Be still and silent
- Breathe slowly
- Reflect
- Act and live in the NOW!
We are addicted to our way of thinking…We all take our own pattern of thinking as normative, logical, and surely true, even when it does not fully compute.
Richard Rohr in Breathing Under Water
Exodus 