How to deal with challending situation

Look at this paradise and I am blessed to live here five months during COVID-19 lockdown, but believe it or not, I was very stressed, frustrated drowning in a lot of worries and anxiety. I want to share this blog with you because I’m hoping it will help you lower your stress, your anxiety and frustration.

My wife, Ania and I landed in Thailand with a plan to stay there one month, but the lockdown came into action and worries started hitting. Why? Because I had many things planned up, like workshops to deliver in Bali or courses to attend. My whole agenda got crushed. I guess I am not alone in these. Most likely many of your plans got ruined too. 

When we are surrounded by threatening or worrying thoughts, for example, ‘what’s going to happen now, we got crippled not being able to focus on a solution. 

With the thoughts spinning around my head I took a deep breath and that was when I reminded myself what a monk told me in the Himalayas. He said, “Shubho when you are bombarded with different difficult situations you would be crippled and would not be able to think right. So, simply ask yourself: what is good in this situation? and keep repeating it as a mantra. Then, take one bothering thought at a time and ask: what is good in this? “.

This is what really helped me

This is what really helped me. However, I experienced one more difficulty, when we are drowning in our disempowering thoughts it is very difficult to focus on this mantra. So, there are four simple, yet powerful steps, which I put together around the mantra, in order to shift our mindset. I have tested it and invite you to implement it.

Let’s start

Give yourself undivided attention by blocking external noise and distractions just for a few minutes. 

You can either use a guided meditation that I have prepared for you, leading you through those four steps OR follow the below instruction and apply it while listening to soothing music. 

There are four simple steps

STEP 1.

Accept the situation, the challenges. Instead of continuing to worry, welcome the mantra: ‘what is good in this?’. Start repeating it again and again. ‘What is good in this?’; what is good in this?’; what is good in this?’. Make it a part of your life! 

STEP 2.

Take seven deep breaths: deep inhale – slowly exhale. This will deceive your mind that you are not in the fight or flight mode any more. 

Note that your “monkey mind” will not let your thoughts calm down easily. Your mind will be constantly coming back to those negative, bothering thoughts. Here it’s an important part of the exercise, bring your attention to your breath and to the sensations of your breath.

BANNER TEXT: 

Download the Four-step Guided Meditation towards a Healthy Mindset.

3.

Now it’s time to go deep into your thoughts. Take one bothering though at a time and ask yourself: ‘What is good in this?’ What opportunities can I find? Don’t stop after you find one goodness in this situation, dive deeper, into the second, third, ask yourself again and again and again: ‘What is good in this?’ 

STEP 4.

Write down every goodness/ opportunity that you find. Even though some of them might look like unrealistic but write every single one of them, as today it may not be realistic, but tomorrow it might. Don’t hold yourself back with the goodness in this challenge.

 

Writing is the key, so do not skip this step

Writing is the key, so do not skip this step. It is scientifically proven that goals (in our case: opportunities/ goodness) written down go to your subconscious mind and you are more prone to stick to it.

Integrate this mantra in your life. It will become your lifelong ally to control your stress and anxiety.

Let’s face it, life will never be perfect. There will be always challenges. So, the key is to shift the focus from worrying to ‘What is good in this?’. Whenever you are stressed, find a quiet place, play soothing music and go through the STEPS 1-2-3-4 OR Download my guided meditation on your phone and follow the STEPS with me.  

It is much easier said than done, right

So now, let me show on my example how you can implement this technique, to change your mindset. 

Coming back to my story of being stressed and frustrated in ‘paradise’. … can you remember? all my plans got canceled.

The worst news was that being diabetes, I had medicine supply for only one and a half months. I have diabetes for the last seven years and it is definitely not a primary stage. I really needed my medicines. I can hear you saying: Shubho you can get it them locally. Yes and No, I bought the medicines but they did not work for some reason. In that situation you can imagine, my stress level was really going up and anxiety hitting me.

I cannot let my sugar level stay high because it really kills my immune system and, at this time of COVID-19, we all really need to boost our immune system. Also, diabetes, called ‘slow killing disease’ can lead to e.g. a heart attack or different kind of health problems. Here, it was the moment I remembered the mantra and started my meditation. I took seven deep breaths. At the beginning it was difficult, but after a while, I really could see many opportunities, the goodness covered in this challenging situation. 

1st GOODNESS.

I am terrible in disciplining myself in doing my daily morning workouts, which helps to control my diabetes. So, here a great opportunity comes to really work out every single day and support keeping my sugar level normal.

2nd GOODNESS

I love authentic food, street food, but they always spike up my sugar levels due to the poor quality ingredients they use. So, my opportunity was to go almost oil-free diet for the next five months and I decided to invest in the equipment and dedicate time to cook my own healthy meals.

3rd GOODNESS.

Usually, sugar level goes very high while exposed to prolonged stress. There is a direct correlation. So, now the opportunity came to practice longer and different types of meditation to reduce stress. Also, I decided to implement various mindful practices which I have learned up in the Himalayas. I have been putting myself together to integrate them and respond to situations and not react.

4th GOODNESS.

I have a strong reason to carry on with the yoga practices, for the internal organs, that I learned in the ashram of Sadguru in India. Those are specific yogas, called ‘kriyas’, and I put myself together to do them daily to, again, reduce my sugar level.

5th GOODNESS.

Once, after a deep meditation, I realized that I could cure my diabetes naturally, which I always wanted to do. Asking myself again: ‘What is good in this?’, I decided to give it a good try to try to reverse my disease! There is no guarantee of success, but at least if I could manage to cure it 50% still, I would be a winner. So, that was a big aha moment for me and I have grabbed all the mentioned opportunities/ the goodness, and I practice them, also today while I am writing this blog. Let’s see how it goes. I hope it turns out well.

I hope you can see, it is all about making this shift in the mindset by welcoming ‘What is good in this?’- mantra, by changing our focus, looking at the solution, not the problem. 

So many of us are in difficult situations and we face our own problems in our own ways trying to hide stress and anxiety from the outside world.

I request you to share this blog with everyone! You never know who needs to make the mindset shift. I hope this simple technique will be helpful to all of you who need it. 

Thank you. 

 …………………………………………….

 

Do you want to stop holding yourself back, too? Are you tired of being left ‘holding the sandwiches’ in your own life? Well, I’ve created an action sheet for you! You can download here. Use this action sheet to find your personal self limiting beliefs – once you’ve found them, you’ll be more empowered to let them go from your life.

Just give yourself 7 -8 minutes to write these down on the action sheet, once you start writing them down it starts the process! By writing them down, you acknowledge them and you start accepting them. Do this so that when you start working on them it’ll be much easier to break them.

I’m excited for you! Do you have friends or colleagues who you think could benefit from this challenge, too? I invite you to share this with them, perhaps you can see what you can achieve together!

Until next time my friend 🙂

 

 PS.   Want to take this one step further? Join my inner circle LinkedIn & FaceBook Group! Here I would send you a meditation session to support this challenge, it uses ancient Buddhist and Vedic techniques alongside modern NLP to really break those self limitating beliefs, making you more empowered in the process!

Friends, I’m wishing you the most beautiful holiday season.

SHUBHO

Shubho Dutta: Founder of BoostCamp.Live, a travel concept focusing on changing people’s mindset.  

Shubho is a Speaker & Certified Meditation Teacher from Yoga Alliance USA. He is passionate about helping people reduce anxiety connect with their Higher Self. 
 
He is continuing is journey of studying the Buddhist and Hindu philosophy during multiple courses under holiness Dalai Lama, the ISHA Foundation – Sadhguru. He spends a lot of time in the Himalayas with different teachers.  

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