Part of being mindful is the ability to step back and get some perspective on life.
It can be very easy to get caught up in the day to day events and small inconveniences can seem like almighty disasters when we are submerged in the fog of unconscious living. Let me give you a prime example. The other day I was preparing for a big presentation to a client and as I took a sip on my first soy latte of the morning the lid slipped off and coffee spilled onto my pristine white shirt. In that moment my monkey mind went into overdrive “How could this happen to me before a big presentation?”, “why did the coffee shop give me a faulty cup… its their fault!”, “The presentation is going to be a disaster now and I’m not going to win the business”… A mix of anger, frustration, annoyance and panic were all bubbling up inside me.
Right in that moment would have been a good time to get some perspective.
So lets take a moment to explore the idea of perspective. The definition of the word is “A particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view”. But Sometimes our attitude towards something can be distorted because we lack any context in the moment.
There’s a little routine that I like to go through after my Morning meditations which energises me, fills me with gratitude and provides some context on life so that in moments of disaster such as my spillage, I have the awareness to step back and not over react. The routine is to spend five minutes contemplating the ‘Miracle of life!’. Let me take you through a sequence of amazing facts that you can sit and ponder which will help you gain some perspective.
Firstly lets rest our attention on the universe. The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our solar system. Aside from Earth there are at least 100 Billion planets in the Milky Way and over 300 Billion stars so in the context of our galaxy our planet is just a spec of dust. But thats not all because outside of our galaxy there are thought to be over 100 Billion other galaxies all with over 100 Billion planets… Now that makes Earth really, really, really small in the context of the universe and surely out there somewhere in another galaxy or even our own there are other living beings going about their day to day life?!?!
But lets bring our focus back to this planet that we are lucky enough to be living out our lives, and lets contemplate life itself… where did it come from? Well I’m afraid theres no answering that one either because no one really knows. What is estimated, however, is that homo sapiens have been around for approximately 200,000 Years, but thats only .0044% of the four and a half Billion Years that this planet has been floating through space and at some stage in the future it is virtually certain that the sun will explode, we will get hit by an asteroid or we might just wipe ourselves out first and life on Earth will cease to exist… And the universe will just carry on without this spec of dust, none the wiser. The point here is that human existence is tiny in comparison to the existence of this planet and your life span is just a teeny tiny fraction within that… you’re not here for long… Are you making the most of every day?
And finally, if its not already a miracle enough that theres life on this spec of dust floating through space, then you only have to contemplate the likelihood of your Mum meeting your Dad and that one successful sperm winning the race to make the one and only unique you. People have tried to estimate the likelihood of you or me being born but really it is about as close to zero as you can get so for ease lets just accept that the marvel of nature that you are with your 1.1 Trillion cells and 100 Billion neurons in your brain allowing you to experience, feel, breath, live… is a MIRACLE!
Albert Einstein once said “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”.
When you realise the odds of you being alive on this planet at this point in time are so slim its practically unmeasurable… in that moment of mindful realisation its hard to view life as anything but a miracle. For me its like a charge of energy through my body or a glass of ice cold water being thrown in my face… it snaps me out of daily hum drum. I suddenly feel a huge sense of gratitude for the opportunity to be here now and I have some context on life.
So back to the coffee incident. The second I consciously realised that the monkey mind was catastrophising (which is a natural human tendency by the way), I snapped myself out of it by putting some context around my perspective of this disaster.
Another handy tool in these situations is something I like to call the ‘catastrometer’. When I realise that I’m reacting to something with anger, sadness, despair or any other negative emotion, I ask myself “On a scale of 1-100, how bad is this situation?”
If 100 is something that really is catastrophic… like an asteroid is about to hit Earth, then what you realise is that the vast majority of things that happen, which we initially perceive to be catastrpohic actually probably sit between 1 and 20… The coffee for example was only really about a 5 and the presentation went brilliantly!
The combination of these exercises are great ways to diffuse negative emotions and remind you that you are a miracle and you need to embrace the opportunity of life!