A safe place for your mind.

Emotions tend to dominate our actions and reactions, even though we like to claim otherwise. Society often sees emotions as a sign of weakness, so we got used to putting them aside and try to focus on the rational aspects more and more. But no matter how strict and logical you want to be, you will always be a human being, not a robot, and so you will always feel.

Positive emotions are a life long goal for many of us. What is more important, in the end: how much money you made during your life or how many times you laughed? However, people tend to put their positive emotions in the dark shadow of their negative feelings. This is one of the biggest problems we come across during our lives. There is no obvious way to ignore a negative experience and try to replace it with positive ones. It just doesn’t work that way.

As a child, if your goldfish dies, you would be extremely sad. Your parents will certainly buy you another goldfish, but the sorrow still takes a long time to go away. Things get even more serious with adults. A fight with your spouse the night before will affect your entire day. You will go to work angry, tired, with your mind wandering. Then you will go home with an even worse mood. On the way from work towards home you won’t be able to notice the sun shining and you won’t be tempted to stop at the supermarket and buy your favorite ice cream. All these because that one negative thought is contaminating the way you perceive the reality around you.

In this moment you will feel that finding a safe place to relax your mind would do wonders. And that place is relatively easy to find. It can be an actual location or an imaginary place. The best idea is to totally emerge yourself in it. Let’s say you have a problem on your mind and it just won’t go away. Go bowling! You don’t know how to bowl, you say? No problem, go out and try it! Get caught up in the game, think about those funny shoes, choose a favorite ball, invent new strategies to throw and so on. Your mind will suddenly jump from the negative thoughts that dominated your last hours or days and start processing a whole new kind of information.

A safe place can get many forms. It can be a song, a movie, even a person. The main thing is to allow yourself to get completely involved with this new activity. You might still get flashes of the problem every now and then – ignore them and get even more involved in what you are doing.

When the bowling game, the song, the movie or the conversation ends you will have a rather abrupt return to your problems. You will probably feel sad and want to go back to the safe place. Don’t do that. The safe place exists only as a helping hand, not as a solution to your problems. It is there to help you relax your mind, for a few minutes or hours. This is a vital stage in your solution to what is bothering you. You will return from your safe place with an increased energy level. You will feel better about yourself and gain more confidence that any issue can be resolved. This is how a small escape from a harsh reality can increase your fighting energy and allow you to solve even the most difficult problems.