How long do you have left? Not on this website. I’m talking about the planet. How much time do you have left on this staggeringly beautiful, profoundly fragile, tiny blue marble called earth? It’s not a trick question. We’re reminded of our adorable vulnerabilities with the arrival of each new day. Impossible challenges seem to be appearing around every corner. How are we going to deal with this? And that? And now that? What are our choices? Admittedly, running and hiding often feels like it might provide some initial charm. But eventually, we’d all need to use a restroom or grab a snack. Here’s a sneaky method for choosing a different mindset: Ask yourself a simple question. “What are the pathways to joy hidden within this new challenge?” (Hang with me.) If you can allow such a deeply-philosophical question to be seen as nothing more than a routine item on a grocery list, maybe we can all (eventually) free ourselves from a few of our most paralyzing fears. Some people work their whole lives seeking methods to awaken powerful and magical places within themselves. A calming of the mind and spirit balanced with an extraordinarily high level of ability and performance. People refer to this as “the zone.” But it’s accessible to each and every one of us. We all get pretty darn good at imagining the bad stuff that could happen. The limbic system in our brains has evolved to reinforce self-messaging to help us avoid pain and harm. But the cool part about the brain, it also listens to us. It pays attention to the messages we choose to incorporate into our daily lives. This isn’t done without a effort. It takes time. Patience. Consistency. It needs to be turned into a routine to make it stick. Eventually, it can become part of our subconscious mind. And we won’t need much effort to access it. The same way we don’t need to write some items on a grocery list. We just automatically know we’re going to get more broccoli. And if it turns out they’re out of broccoli? We’re okay with that. What’s that you say?There’s no broccoli for the next ten years? We’re okay with that, too. Because the joy we’ve experienced with all our previous meals featuring broccoli was enough to last a lifetime. Thank you, broccoli. You were amazing. Hello, chard. (May we, you, us, never forget that joy is hiding in literally, everything.)
