Pat Divilly - Fit Mind

INTRODUCTION

Inner Exploration

This is a book about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world, and the impact those stories have on our health, happiness and overall experience of life.

We speak to ourselves more than anyone else in this world. Thousands of thoughts, beliefs, stories and assumptions run through our minds every day. For most of us these stories and thoughts go largely unquestioned; we take them as gospel and blindly believe them, often with little or no evidence to back them up. With so many thoughts and beliefs going through our minds all day, every day, we might assume we are thinking. In truth, we are often just remembering old internal narratives played on a loop. These old stories or beliefs are the lens through which we see the world and serve as the script or blueprint for the story of our lives.

We walk through life with this largely unconscious blueprint, a collection of ideas and expectations about how things should be in order for us to be happy. We then quickly make judgements about our experiences in life, labelling them good or bad, right or wrong, depending on how they match up to this unconscious script or blueprint of expectations in our minds. These beliefs or stories that make up our blueprint of how the world should look are shaped by our environment, our past experiences, the society and family weve been raised in, what we see in the media that we consume and what weve been told either implicitly or explicitly by others.

We have stories about how our bodies should look, how our partners should communicate, how we should or shouldnt feel given our circumstances and countless other stories about what we need to experience in life in order for us to be happy. The tighter we cling to these stories, the more conditions we set up for our happiness and the more conditional we become in our love for ourselves, for others and for life itself. Its rare that we think to question or challenge these stories that run our lives and thus we can begin to feel that life is happening tous rather than forus as we see the same difficult cycles and patterns repeatedly showing up in our lives.

If we think of this one precious life weve been given as our very own movie, are we playing the role of the scriptwriter and director, creating the film and making it our own unique masterpiece, or are we the actor with no creative control whos playing out a script written by others?

We often think that its the events or circumstances of our lives and relationships that cause our stress and problems, when in fact its the stories we tell ourselves about these events or circumstances that are so often the source of our suffering. The stress or suffering we associate with our relationships, our health, our finances or our career are really a result of the disconnect between how things are and how we think they should be. As a result, day-to-day life can feel like an emotional rollercoaster and we can spend much of our lives trying to change the outside world to match the pictures and expectations we have formed in our heads.

When we begin to become more aware of our stories we can find appreciation, gratitude and freedom from our expectations and can be with life as it is rather than life as we feel it should be. There are a great number of things outside our control in life and all too often our attention is focused on those things we cant control. Taking responsibility in life involves bringing our attention back to the controllables our thoughts and our actions.

In my younger years I had stories playing over and over in my head about not being enough, about not fitting in and about not being of value. I had stories about who I needed to be to be loved, stories about what I needed to achieve to feel successful and countless other stories and expectations for myself and others that made living with myself difficult and exhausting. It might surprise you when I tell you from the outset that all those stories that I used to live with still go through my mind frequently. The soundtrack is still there; the difference is that now I dont believe everything I think and I have a simple toolbox that helps me quickly find perspective in times of stress or suffering to help me change my internal tune.

This toolbox not only enables me to question or challenge the stories, thoughts and beliefs that surface in the present, but also to look back on past experiences and become aware of the origins of my beliefs and stories. It also helps me to see that thoughts and emotions I previously deemed negative are actually where many of my lessons and much of my potential lie. I have learnt through the consistent practice of the tools in my toolbox to go from identifying with my disempowering thoughts to instead being aware of those thoughts, recognising the impact they have on my feelings and