Block Out The Noise, Not Your Stampede, and Think Horses, Not Zebras
Focus on the snakes at your feet, not the distant thunder of hooves: Address your immediate challenges first, avoiding the distraction of remote concerns.
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
Mind the immediate snakes, not the distant stampedes: Prioritize dealing with present challenges over distant hypotheticals, ensuring you don't overlook crucial issues while distracted by far-off possibilities.
Block Out The Noise
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
What is noise in this case? We can think of noise as news, events, or happenings we notice that don't affect us directly or immediately. Think about the sound of pounding hooves in the distance.
We look around to try and locate where they're coming from, the rate in which they are traveling, and where they are headed. While doing this we also need to assess what is causing the noise.
The assumption of horses could be wrong and bison pose a much larger problem. Literally. But while we are paying attention to this noise we should also be cognizant of the potential and the realized problems and dangers that are already upon us.
The things in life that may have snuck up or we may have ignored for too long that are now an immediate danger. Hoof-beats sounding from a stampede of horses on the horizon certainly have the potential to pose a danger to you, eventually.
But if there is a rattlesnake coiled up in the dirt, playing the song of his people six inches away from you it may be prudent to address that problem first.
Sometimes that will require you to sacrifice the future for the now, but it is likely worth it if that means avoiding a diamondback related death in the short term.
Not Your Stampede
One of the problems of modern society, or the post-Internet age, is that there are so many things bombarding us that we could care about. I think it's more important than ever to really get clear and focus on what's worth caring about and what's just noise or distraction.
Additionally, like with everything else life makes you think about, there's plenty of noise that doesn't concern you yet sometimes you'll pay attention to it. This isn't necessarily a mistake, but unless you have everything you can under control, which is very difficult to do, you cannot afford to pay that attention they are requesting of you.
You only have so much attention you can pay before you hit zero. You need to make sure that if you do end up paying attention to a stampede heading in another direction, often at the behest of someone else (which isn't necessarily a mistake), that you have enough attention left over to address one that may be sneaking up behind you.
Remember, stampedes (in this case: events or dangers worth paying attention to) aren't eternal. They start and they stop like everything else. That means that a group of horses meandering along harming nothing but the foliage they're grazing on could turn into a danger worth paying attention to in a snap because one of them got spooked by their own shadow.
This would be difficult to detect in time if it was nearby already and would be even more difficult if you were spending all that attention on something that doesn't concern you.
Minding your own business isn't just about making sure you aren't nosy. That would be keeping your nose out of other people's business. Minding your own business is about taking care of what you can while you have the luxury to do so, not letting the noise around you keep you from it.
Think Horses, Not Zebras
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Let's continue on the hooves metaphor. When you do hear hoofbeats in the distance, what pops into your mind as the cause? Likely you'll think horses, not zebras. Remember that. Unless you are in an area that has zebras you shouldn't think zebras, so good for you. However, we forget this essential rule as we go through life.
We start to think about the oddities and the abstract as opposed to the most likely scenario. For instance, there are rising rates of anxiety and depression in our society. That's certainly an alarming thought however it is looked at. Is this clinical depression and needs to be treated by drugs?
If so, how has brain chemistry gotten warped in higher levels of people over time? That would be a crisis. If not, if people are depressed by what's going on around them, what are we doing as a society to cause this. Another crisis, naturally.
Considering we cannot control other people or the world, let's focus on you. Assume you're in a time in your life you're feeling depressed and often. Should you assume you just suffer from depression now and that's how life will be from now on? That seems unlikely if there's no history there. That sounds like a zebra, but let's try and think horse.
What changed when you started feeling this way, if you can put a time-stamp on it? What continues to come up as you start falling into depression? Perhaps you aren't depressed in a clinical sense, perhaps you're feeling exactly as you should in the situation you're in.
Anxiety and depression that remain despite everything in your life going well and everyone in your life being good for you and others is an affliction and treatment is a good idea.
But anxiety when you're about to embark on a new adventure or if you're about to fight for custody of your kids in court is normal and your body responding to the need to take action.
Listen to yourself and get moving. Get through the challenge ahead causing the anxiety. If you do that regularly that feeling becomes more akin to the feeling you get when you exercise regularly and feel that wall coming we all get when running.
The heart races, the body starts wanting to quit and shut down, but you know when that happens you just have to keep going and once that barrier has been broken down, you're free to push as far as you need. It is an exciting feeling as opposed to anything you would dread. You can get there.
What about depression? Well, take a look around. Are you in an untenable situation? Is your house being foreclosed? Are you going through a divorce or freshly on the other side of one? Has someone you relied on betrayed you or died and now it doesn't feel like there's any hope?
Sounds like that is the normal reaction to those events. What that sounds like is not a chemical imbalance in your brain, but a completely rational reaction to events. That sounds like a horse, those hoof-beats you hear.
Like anxiety, the answer is to take steps to improve your situation. Depression is not a state of action necessarily as with anxiety, so this is a bit different.
Luckily, the hardest part of the journey out of depression is the first step. Once you decide to do something about correcting your situation into something manageable, make it a point to think about each next step.
First step, stop lying down in bed. So you sit up and get that dopamine hit as your brain reacts to you starting towards a goal. Next you swing your legs over to put your feet on the floor. Another hit of happy juice from the brain willing you forward.
So you've stood up and started towards the shower because God knows you need one. More smashing of that dopamine regulator in your brain and all of a sudden you're feeling better. You're not out of the woods.
You're not the happiest person in the world because you're in a shower, but at least you aren't that poor schmuck stuck in the bed still and you have the added bonus of no longer smelling like death. Great start.
In essence, when you feel depressed think about the horse. That's the situation you're in right now in life. Does it seem difficult or hopeless? Is it reasonable? If yes, then you're feeling depressed now but you know once you move past this point you'll be fine again.
Don't think about that zebra straight away. Could there be some anomalous chemical imbalance that arbitrarily picked that point in your life to become apparent? Sure, why not? Strange things happen all the time. But is it likely?
Absolutely not. To be as rude as possible here, you aren't special. I love you and I want the best for you, but you aren't special here. Not in this situation. Why would you want to be?
You have limitless potential, but how about we don't try and harness it to create limitless mental issues because you hit a low spot in life? Think about the horse for anxiety too. Are people looking for you because you owe money to a bookie? Seems reasonable to be anxious and your primary care physician isn't a good place to hide anyway.
When you hear hoof-beats think horses, not zebras.
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