Fake Spring, real health

Here in Canberra, the weather is changing. The days are brighter, the air is warmer and flowers are beginning to perfume the world around them. It’s enough to make you feel alive again, as if the icy darkness is behind us.

(Note for my beloved international readers: if you’re thinking ‘huh, what icy darkness??’ remember that the southern hemisphere is in the grips of winter right now.)

In any other part of the country, I could look forward to a few glorious months of Spring. You know, before the sun explodes and ignites the atmosphere, or so every Australian summer feels.

But any Canberran will tell you to hold your horses.

This isn’t Spring – it’s Fake Spring.

Yes, things are beginning to warm up.

Yes, the flowers sure think it’s Spring.

But a that extra heat and light brews up chaos in the mountains. Chaos of the cold kind.

Storms and cold fronts are about to swallow this fair city, plunging it back into the throes of winter…

Possibly up until late Spring.

Personal growth can be like this. You find a new source of change, inspiration or growth. Things start going well for you.

You extrapolate from your early successes – if a week makes you feel this great, what will a year do for you?

Then…

Snap.

You hit a wall and you crash. And the crash is so much worse because you’ve tasted something greater, and now you’re back to…

This.

The Wall is real.

The Wall is not your friend.

It wants to keep you as you are. Change is scary, therefore it must be bad, therefore it fights it with all its being.

Even if the change is exactly what you need to be happy.

Or stay alive.

Smokers know what I mean. You know you need to quit to stay healthy. Yet some part of you puts up a fight.

Why would some part of your brain want you to keep poisoning it?

Especially when you feel so much better off the smokes? It only takes a few days of being a non-smoker to clear your blood and brain of most of the worst stuff.

Shouldn’t that taste of a greater life empower you to keep on going?

It does.

The Wall has other ideas, though.

Some stress, some confusion, some need for comfort and, bam, you can crash right into it. Back to where you started.

But what if the Wall got out of your way?

What if the Wall worked for you, keeping the saboteurs on the other side of it?

How would that change the way you quit, if every day got easier instead of harder?

An intriguing thought, no doubt.

Here’s how you put that thought into action:

https://guided-thought.com/downloads/breathe-freely/