Friction in life occurs when something throws us off balance. It might be changes at work, job loss, an end to a relationship, etc. We encounter a situation which causes us to feel different emotions. When friction occurs, we have mental, emotional, and physical reactions to it. We may question why it is happening to us. We may feel sick to our stomach or have a migraine. We may feel like life will never get better. Our mind takes control and has us create an entire story based off of the situation at hand. At this point, we may continue on with the story or we might decide we want to stop the story and get to the bottom of why we are feeling the way we are. An example to this would be if we left an important paper at home we needed for work. We think we are stupid, unreliable, and not capable of doing anything right. We can take a few minutes and focus on our body and our breathing. After doing this, we may realize we were up all night working on the paper, making us fatigue and forgetful. We may have had to also get kids ready for school and out the door while gathering work supplies. Grabbing kids’ papers may have felt like our own, but it wasn’t. There is usually something underneath our negative thoughts that may have added to the root cause of the friction. If we continue down the path of negative thoughts and self-hatred, it’ll make our moods go downhill. When we take the time to stop for a moment and gather ourselves, we have the ability to stop the story from spiraling and help ourselves to get back onto the right path so our day can continue on in a positive manner. We can take back control and ground ourselves and reduce the reactions to the friction.
