By Leo Babauta
Lately my life has felt pretty chaotic: lots of projects, calls, and creation, along with helping loved ones with things, and preparing to move once again to a new home.
Chaos can be beautiful! And I’m embracing it.
But it can be hard to embrace chaos when we’re feeling scattered, lost, confused, stressed.
And so I practice helping myself to feel grounded.
When we ground ourselves, we can feel a sense of calmness & relaxation with whatever is happening. It’s a “relaxing with what is” from a place of “I’m OK, I got this.
It takes some practice. Let’s talk about how I practice.
Recognizing When We’re Feeling Ungrounded
The first thing we have to do is notice when we’re feeling chaotic, lost at sea, unanchored, groundless, scattered, or thrown around by the stormy weather of our lives.
We don’t usually notice — instead, we run around like a chicken without a head. We try to do a bunch of things, jump from one thing to the next in a rushed state, or let ourselves get lost in distractions and busywork. We comfort ourselves with Internet, social media, TV, food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and so on.
So the first practice is just noticing: I’m feeling chaotic and scattered. I’m feeling groundless and unmoored.
You can start to notice by how frenetic your activity is. How distracted are you? Are you picking up your phone every 2 minutes?
You can then notice how it feels to be scattered, as sensation in the body. What sensations can you notice of groundlessness?