When something troubling occupies your mind, do you view those thoughts with curiosity or do you get caught up in them? Both responses are manifestations of the innate principles of psychological functioning operative within everyone. One however is the result of a lack of awareness of how thought operates whilst the other is an expression of awareness.

As we go through our days, thoughts flow through our minds. And we follow them, most of the time experiencing them neutrally, with ease and grace. But every now and then, a train of thought emerges which is accompanied by feelings of unease. Variation in feeling is the natural expression of the Mind/Body connection. What we think, we feel.

Being aware of our feelings and knowing what they are telling us is crucial to consciously supporting healthy psychological functioning. Feelings tell us whether we are in the everyday flow of life, or whether we are experiencing an insight (a deeper, fresh thought) or whether something destabilizing is on our mind. When we are aware of the fact that we are only ever experiencing the thoughts on our mind, having a uneasy thought on our mind and feeling anxious is no big deal. Thoughts are like everything else – something separate from us to notice, to make a decision about, and sometimes to act on. The uneasy feelings some thoughts create is our body’s ‘siren’ – to notice and avoid going down the proverbial rabbit hole.

A ‘siren’ tells us to stop and pay attention. It doesn’t tell us to get involved with the accident. If we heed the ‘siren’, pause and get curious as to what we have on our minds, we work in harmony with our psychological system – instead of getting in the way.

Everyone experiences moments when we have something on our mind. My most recent experience was a feeling of unease, which when I noticed and got curious (instead of caught up), I could identify. ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Concern for someone on that day was one of the matters on my mind. Looking at it with curiosity, common sense told me that there was nothing I could do except be available to support emotionally should something occur.

The second matter however was in regards to work I had put myself up for. At the time, I thought it would be useful, but clearly something about it was niggling me. Later that day, clarity hit me – at this point of my life the work wasn’t for me. From that clarity, I emailed my decision to those who needed to know. No doubts, no second thoughts. That clarity felt absolutely true and right.

What did I do in between accessing curiosity about my feelings of unease and the arrival of clarity? I listened to what I needed to do to feel better, to feel at ease, to feel calm, and I followed through. I got back into the flow of life and the flow of thought. And from within that flow a moment of clarity, out of the blue, surfaced. I didn’t give the troubling thoughts on my mind a second thought. I engaged with activities that felt right, my troubling thoughts moved on and in the flow of thought coming toward me, the real substance arrived.