Anxiety, stress and exhaustion is rapidly becoming what one could term as a “modern day plague” with many of us to some degree experiencing a level of one, two or all three in our day to day lives. Holidays can support to rest and restore, meditation and yoga can give us momentary stops, but before long many of us find ourselves stuck in the same endless cycle of go, go, go or feeling low, low, low and never really knowing how to get out of it. The scenery changes, our jobs shift, partners come and go, diet fads explode, but the tension underneath it all remains the same; temporarily relieved, but never truly going away.
Consider this scenario…
There is a very large, very tall, grey wall that is inherently grey, every part of it is grey, there’s not a single speck of colour on or in it that’s not grey. No one likes this wall, yourself included, and so it’s your job, every single day, to make sure that the wall is painted anything other than its true colour. And so, every day you get your ladder, your rollers and your overhauls and you paint it something new, one day it’s black, one day it’s white, one day it’s two toned and the next it’s multicolour – once you’ve finished with the lighter colours, you go for the darker, then you get wild and mix the two, sometimes you paint it simple, sometimes overly complex, the colours and combinations are never ending. However, there is one rule – you can paint it whatever you like, as long as no one ever sees that the wall is grey – that’s the only rule.
And so, every day, you dedicate your every waking moment to maintaining the mural making sure that underneath the colourful façade, no one, including ourselves, ever gets to see what’s truly going on.
Sound familiar?
If we applied this metaphor to life, one need only simply scratch beneath the surface to see that what we have created and call ‘life’ isn’t really working, in fact, it’s rather grey. We have domestic violence rates going through the roof, rape, war, and discrimination is becoming our norm, mental illnesses such as depression, stress, anxiety and addiction are ever increasing, but more globally, people are living their lives not fully knowing their true beauty, their true power and as such, how rich, settled and fulfilling life can be.
No matter how much we deny it, we have built a very grey wall and regardless how seemingly beautiful or ugly we paint and maintain it, nothing will change the fact that underneath, it’s simply one, big grey wall. Maintaining such a lie is exhausting, stressful and ripe for anxiety.
Life need not be a grey wall that requires constant upkeep. When we stop trying to ‘colour’ life falsely and instead, begin to look inside of ourselves, we can from that place start to bring the true colour out.
Starting to get honest about our lives and about the many shades and hues we use to hide the truth can be the first step to beginning to understand and address conditions such as anxiety, stress and exhaustion. For if we don’t stop and get honest about the factors that are causing these symptoms in the first place, then how can we go about changing them?
Our online courses Understanding Anxiety in Men, Understanding Men and Life Addictions, Understanding Men Depression and Exhaustion and Stress and Productivity in the Workplace provide a great opportunity to start to put down the paint brush, if only for a moment, and begin to take a step back, look at life and consider making different choices.
Life need not be a grey wall that requires constant upkeep. When we stop trying to ‘colour’ life falsely and instead, begin to look inside of ourselves, we can from that place start to bring the true colour out.
