Re-charging well-being

Within you is an unchanging deep well of well-being. We call it your Inner

Beat a well worn path to your inner feelings of well-being

Resource. It is innate and it is natures gift to us to help us be resilient no matter what happens in life.

Just as important to our survival is our negativity bias.

This seems contradictory doesn't it? It is a paradox.

The negativity bias keeps us safe. If we hear a bump in the night the negativity bias would have us immediately think that danger lurks so we can become alert and ready to flee, freeze or defend, whatever the best option is in the moment. It is a deep instinct. It comes on stream before the logical powers of our thinking mind can kick in, deducing that it is windy outside and that darned tree branch just banged against the gutter again and to make yet another mental note to prune it before the next windy night!

The inner resource may be there all the while. The inner resource can hold us calm to allow the thinking mind to do its deducing. The inner resource can keep us calm us while we get back to sleep.

Why is it then that we have so often lost touch with the inner resource of well-being?

The detritus of life has buried it. This can especially happen if it is not regularly recharged, if there has been a string of misfortunes or challenges, or a major traumatic event. But even the constant stresses of ordinary modern life, feeling time poor, job insecurity, the bills coming in, more and more until we are in a state of overwhelm, and the inner resource can become buried.

So it is an important practice for life that we regularly recharge our inner resource. You can do this in outer ways, by taking some action that helps you feel calm and at ease. Maybe one of these is similar to your outer practices of recharging your inner resource:

• a walk on the beach
• a long deep warm bath by candlelight with soft music playing
• a holiday in cabin away from modern technology with a good book
• immersing in a novel
• losing track of time painting a picture
• going on retreat
• making music with friends.

Your favourite outer practices of recharge can also help you to find that inner place of well-being and calm. Think about that thing you do to recharge as if you are imagining it happening right now. As you do let all your senses come into play. Tastes, sounds, smells, the light, what you see, and tactile sensations. Are you alone or have you brought along a favourite person or people, or animal?

Now turn attention to the feelings of well-being that are evoked. More and more let your attention dwell in the feelings in your body of being at ease, secure, calm, the feelings of well-being. Notice as much about these feelings in the body as you can, as you allow the images to recede.

In this way you can make an inner practice of recharge. This can be done at any time and the more you do it the more clear the path to it will become. Wake up and practice it. Practice it while having lunch. On the bus. At the traffic lights. While waiting for sleep.

The more often you visit it the more clear the pathway to it becomes and the shorter the pathway to it becomes until it is simply turning attention towards it and it is there, always.