“Here we go again…”
You feel frustrated.
Anxious.
Restless.
You notice yourself thinking,
“I’m doing it again.”
“Why can’t I just get over this?”
So you start trying to fix it.
To think more positively.
To stop overreacting.
To become a better version of yourself.
But before you do any of that, pause for a moment.
What happened first?
Before you judged the emotion,
something else happened.
You noticed.
Something in you recognised,
“Something isn’t quite right.”
The frustration.
The restlessness.
The feeling that something needs to change.
They all began with the same thing:
You received the signal.
And that matters.
Don’t erase the signal before you’ve read it.
Many of us treat uncomfortable emotions as problems to solve.
“I’m being negative again.”
“I’m too hard on myself.”
“I shouldn’t feel this way.”
But what if the emotion isn’t the problem?
What if it’s simply telling you,
“Take a look at where you are.”
The goal isn’t to silence the signal.
The goal is to understand what it is pointing toward.
To continue the voyage
Feeling discomfort doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong with you.
It may simply mean that something within you has noticed
it’s time to check your course.
So if today brings frustration, anxiety,
or self-criticism, perhaps you don’t need to change yourself first.
Perhaps the first step is simply recognising:
The signal has been received.
Direction can come afterwards.
If this perspective resonates with you,
The Compass — 16 Coordinates for Observing Your Current Position
is a book for beginning the voyage again,
from where you are.
