Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?

How many of you have ever woken up in the morning with the feeling of anxiety in your chest, overcome with a sense of dread for the day ahead, or filled with that general bleh mindset? How do you work with those feelings?

Is your first desire to fight back, imagining that you’re facing off against your feelings personified as a champion boxer who’s ready to counter every punch you throw?

Is your desire to let that feeling in through negative self-statements and shame-based thinking such as “I should be able to deal with this” or “I’m a failure”?

What if, instead of reacting, you let that feeling wash through you like a cleansing, fresh-pressed juice, allowing it to enter your body but not giving it weight?

That is what I propose today: a state of radical acceptance for our feelings and thoughts as they are, without judgment of any kind. I like to ascribe by the bus metaphor, popularized within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, that says each of our feelings have a place on our internal bus, but they aren’t driving the bus - we are.

I invite you to take a look inward today - what do you imagine the feelings occupying your bus look like and how can you go about giving them space to be on the bus without letting them take the wheel.

~ Josh