I was recently prepping to go to my 25th college reunion and a European vacation with my husband and I found myself hung up on my choice of white nail polish. This is super low on my list of priorities, but I found myself, for a brief time, obsessing about how I had selected the wrong color.
And can I tell you how awful it felt to do so? I was feeling powerless and uncomfortable thinking about going away and then I decided to focus on the one thing I knew I would not change, my white nail polish.
The truth of the matter is that I had been incredibly anxious about leaving the kids, my dog, and all of the other facets of my life I like to think I can control to a certain degree (which I realize is a huge lie. )
Instead of allowing the uncomfortable feelings I was experiencing, I heaped another one on top, a red herring if you will. And can I tell you that each one of us will do this without realizing it and create more suffering if we aren’t aware of this tendency.
The fix to this situation would have been to get some curiosity and some compassion. The kind that you’d use with a 5-year-old.
Of course, I was uncomfortable leaving my kids. And of course, I came up with an uncomfortable distraction to avoid dealing with the uneasiness I felt about leaving my kids and surrendering my illusion of control for 2 weeks. Once I realized what my mind had done I was able to embrace the white nail polish selection and be there for myself when the anxiety came up about the situation.
So next time you start obsessing about some trivial thing in your life that doesn’t matter like white nail polish, ask yourself what feeling you are avoiding. Use the curiosity and compassion you would if you were asking a 5-year-old. And that, my friends, is the way out of the extra suffering we so often create.
Jenniferoney.com 