This is a little tale, short and sweet, which encapsulates how mindsets and emotional moods can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

“There is a story they tell of two dogs…

Both at separate times walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors.

The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog found a thousand dogs growling back at him.

What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are.”

What is meant by that is that when your mind and body have been set on ‘upset’ dial, for example, they will become upset and frustrate more easily, simply because your senses have been heightened by the chemical reaction triggered by the feeling. So you will for that day experience people, things and events as upsetting, when one another day the same set of people, thngs and events wouldn’t upset you.

It is a loop that feeds into itself. Sounds like you might be stuck then, right? Well, no, there is a way to deal with this.

What you can do is become aware of the “baseline” feeling  that colours your day and therefore your perception. The lense you woke up to, if you will. Almost like the dominant instrument in an orchestra. When you know what it is you can start to understand why you feel what you feel or the intensity of how you feel it. And you can start to choose to shift how you perceive, think and react.

Meditating in the morning is a great way of doing that. And here what is meant by meditating is simply spending time in a quiet place, with as little disturbances as possible, focusing on your breath in and out of your nose and into the belly, and just observing what kind of thoughts and emotions come up. That will enable you to notie the patterns in them, and through that to see what lense you adopted that morning.

So take time in the morning to realise the overall tone of your mood, thoughts and emotions for that moment and day. Then keep it in mind so that it doesn’t tinge your day without you being aware of it and able to change this if you choose to. You can be the growling dog or the happy dog.

Thank you to Illumina for sharing this story www.illuminamusic.co.uk