{"id":2500,"date":"2019-01-21T18:55:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T02:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2020-01-07T18:56:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T02:56:20","slug":"find-peace-in-one-difficult-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/find-peace-in-one-difficult-step\/","title":{"rendered":"Find Peace In One Difficult Step"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ol><li>Stop.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>As one of my favorite quotes goes: &#8220;Don&#8217;t just <em>do<\/em> something, stand there!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you can simply stop what you are doing and thinking, you can find peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t seem to be widely acknowledged that stopping is excruciatingly difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stopping sounds so easy. It requires so little physical effort. But of course, anyone with an addiction knows how difficult stopping can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The real surprise is the sheer scope of what we&#8217;re addicted to. It&#8217;s not just caffeine, sugar, and smartphones. We&#8217;re addicted to <em>thinking<\/em>! We&#8217;re addicted to <em>doing<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As is the case with every addiction, we don&#8217;t like to stop thinking and doing because it distracts us from our inner terror that we&#8217;re not enough, we don&#8217;t belong, and we can&#8217;t be loved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But no matter how much we think, how much we do, how many 7-step self-help guides we follow, we can&#8217;t find peace while that inner terror lurks. We lounge on a beach while worrying about sunscreen and seagulls and promotions and lovers. We rush from smoothie to salad to yoga to therapy and fall into bed exhausted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To find peace, you need to confront the inner terror directly. This usually involves feeling a lot of very unpleasant feelings. I recommend getting guidance from therapists, who have many useful tricks up their sleeves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is it even possible to stop thinking and doing? This is kind of what meditation is all about. You sit still and you do nothing. When a thought arises, you let it float away like a leaf or a cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meditation is easy. What&#8217;s excruciatingly difficult is <em>stopping what you are doing to actually meditate!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Breathe in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Breathe out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stop. As one of my favorite quotes goes: &#8220;Don&#8217;t just do something, stand there!&#8221; If you can simply stop what you are doing and thinking, you can find peace. It doesn&#8217;t seem to be widely acknowledged that stopping is excruciatingly difficult. Stopping sounds so easy. It requires so little physical effort. But of course, anyone &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/find-peace-in-one-difficult-step\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Find Peace In One Difficult Step&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2653,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions\/2653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}