When we are caught up in difficulty, our world becomes small and contracted as we focus totally on our problems. Our thinking also contracts, and suffering chronic stress has a negative impact on the brain, preventing new neurons growing and actually causing areas of the brain to atrophy and die. When we are stressed, we are unlikely to be creative or open to new ideas or ways of thinking, and we may feel overwhelmed. Connecting to a sense of a wider world can help counteract this feeling and create a small shift that is enough to set a new tangent, a change of direction.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, find a place outside where you can connect with some space. If you are in an urban environment, perhaps try to go somewhere high so you can rise above the crowded streets, or find a patch of green in a park. Or perhaps just look out of a window. If you are in the country or by the sea, you may be able to find a wide-open space with a vista over land or sea.
Whether you are contemplating the water, the land, or the sky, just sit quietly, and “open” to that sense of spaciousness.
Connecting to a sense of timelessness: This mountain that has survived millennia… or this vista that has witnessed the small sorrows and joys of generations of people before me… or these waves that have rolled on shore after shore, connecting families from one side of the world to the another… or even this sky that is eternally blue despite being obscured by clouds or rain from time to time.