Have you ever had those moments where you’re completely tense and overwhelmed, do not know where to start or end, and so you just keep running in circles? Doing, doing, doing but there’s no moving anywhere. Getting tenser, stressed, and tired. There’s a need to look for solutions immediately in the hopes of getting out of the circle running; and so we narrow our focus and try to figure a way through everything by making our view smaller.

This alone sounds counter-intuitive – making our views smaller looking for a greater solution – yet it’s what we always do. Think of how often we squint and make our eyes smaller when someone provides an answer to a question and it doesn’t fit our idea of the solution. In this simple way, we close our minds, hearts, and eyes when trying to find a solution instead of opening them up more.
With a narrow, more focused view all tense and stressed, we end up missing the real solutions; the real answers; and we solve for a quick breath of relief, rather than a deep exhale.

We make our world smaller, worried about letting anything more in, in case we get more overwhelmed but also holding on tightly to what we have because we want to find the answers and fix what we are dealing with, finish what we have started or get through all that there is to get through.

What are we meant to do in those tense moments, where solutions are not easy to find? How are we meant to open our eyes wider when receiving an answer?

We are meant to do those things that people say to us in moments of trying to offer comfort; “Breathe”, “Don’t worry”, Have faith”. We see these as simple words, gestures of comfort, and brush them off.
We wish people wouldn’t say these things, roll our eyes, and try to defend our position of stress and feelings of being overwhelmed and tense but in reality, deep within us, we know these answers are the right ones.

If we stopped for a second, stopped trying to narrow our view, stopped trying to find that one focal point to zone into, and paused; we’d be able to open our eyes, and our hearts, and in doing this find the solutions to our questions that have been there all along.

There’s so much magic in that pause; the grounding it brings, reminding us that we’re one tiny organism in a much larger galaxy; the opening of our hearts and eyes to feel and see the truth as it is, and then allowing the right solutions to come through instead of the quick fixes we would normally take just to offer a second of fake relief; fake because we know it’s not the right solution.

In that pause, we can open our eyes, let all the light in, and see things as they are meant to be seen and not through our narrowed view. In that pause, we can take a deep breath, feel our hearts open, and become grounded, knowing the solutions to our questions are not impossible to find.