What do you need in this moment?

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In our day-to-day routine it’s all too easy to get caught up in ‘shoulds’. These can be damaging as they often lead to increased stress and pressure on ourselves. What we instead need to tune into and listen to is ourselves. Our body is connected to our external environment and constantly feeding information up to our brain for processing. When we’re on auto-pilot we tend not to listen to the important messages our body is sending us.

If we can start to see this ‘should’ing’ as not necessarily realistic and definitely not helpful this will be a great start to getting off autopilot. Then once you are off autopilot, you can instead ask yourself “what do I need in this moment?”

What signals is your body sending you as to what it needs? Even though your internal dialogue is saying you ‘should’ get that extra bit of work done tonight, or you should attend that extracurricular activity, is your body actually sending you signs that you are tired and heading towards burnout?  If so, it would be wise to connect with this and listen. What you may need to do is cancel your evening plans, or to not do that extra bit of work. Instead it may be that your body needs some extra TLC – does it need a nice relaxing bath with your favourite bath salts? Does it need to curl up and read a good book? Does it need to do a meditation?

By becoming curious about your internal dialogue and some of the stories it is telling you, you can start to get some much needed space. From here you can see that those ‘shoulds’ are just made up rules your mind is telling you. In actual fact, the world will not end and nothing awful will happen if you don’t do that thing your mind is saying you ‘should’ be doing. What will happen instead, is that you will likely nourish your body with what it is actually needing and achieve a more healthy and sustainable outcome.