Living in Presence…not Pressure

I was visiting my parents in Ireland one summer, and I knew something had shifted in me after I didn’t take my father’s reaction personally.

It had occurred to me to invite him to go for a walk.

As I went into the kitchen the table was covered in financial papers.

My Da has always been interested in finances, unlike me he knows everything about that world.

But....

He comes at it with pressure, stress and worry.

So as I walked into the kitchen that day, inviting him to go for a walk his response was:

“No, can’t you see what I’ve got going on here? You’re always on holiday, I’m not.”

Usually this response would make me feel guilty, wrong or bad about my choices.

But unlike my father I'd learned something powerful about the role of thought and how it is always painting our experience in every moment.

With that knowledge, I saw the innocence in his response.

I saw that his response had nothing to do with me personally and everything to do with the pressured state of thought he was living in.

Instead of reacting I simply said: “Ok, I’ll go for my walk, see you in a bit."

As I went to prepare myself and was tying my shoelaces, my father came out of the kitchen having changed his mind and decided to join me on the walk.

What I noticed continues to influence me and my work to this day.

He went from pressured and stressed, living in what I call “home thinking” to relaxed and at ease, in the space of minutes....

The first thing he noticed was how beautifully the birds were singing.

He then became even more aware of the miracles of nature surrounding us.

Pointing out the flowers in bloom, naming the types of trees, he lightened up.

What happened?

He got present.

He fell out of all that worried thinking.

He got into the moment and immediately his true nature came forward.

Because that's how it works, for all humans.

It would be easy to attribute his change in mood to the walk but knowing what we now know about the mind we can see it was falling out of habitual thought that led to this less pressured, more graceful state.

Isn’t it good to know you’re just one thought away from a much nicer state and with that state you can go back to whatever you’re dealing with, however pressured, and simply get it done?

Hope this helps you today whatever you’re facing. ❤️