oh sh#t - where's my phone..?!

Being forgetful really cost me one week..
 
On the Wednesday, I'd done all my grocery shopping, packed it away in my car and returned my trolley to the trolley park. I drove home, took my shopping indoors and then wondered where the hell my handbag was? A quick search in the car found nothing and then it hit me. I'd left it in the bloody trolley!!
 
Thankfully my phone was in my jacket pocket, so as I quickly scrambled to get back into the car with my one year old, I frantically called the supermarket in the desperate hope that someone had handed in my bag. Although I knew it was a (very nice) copy of a Prada bag purchased in the lovely bazaars of Istanbul, I was filled with dread at the thought of a stranger believing it was real and thinking they'd won the handbag lottery that day.
 
The lady on the phone could hear the desperation in my voice and alhamdulillah, thank God, the trolley assistant had found it shortly after I'd driven away and handed it in.

I was saved. I couldn’t believe my luck and bought him a big box of chocolates to say thank you. Phew - I will never do that again I thought...
 
I shared the story with my mum friends that Friday at school pick-up, as we joked about how forgetful we can be sometimes. As I said goodbye to them, I failed to realise that I'd left my iPhone on the roof of the car, and proceeded to drive along the open countryside roads, back towards home.

And yes, I only realised what I'd done once I'd got back home. And no, I never found it again even though I drove back up and down those country lanes desperately searching for it. It had gone forever, most probably smashed to smithereens by another vehicle. Oh and did I mention, it wasn't insured either...
 
Why was I so stupid? How could I be so forgetful to do something like this twice in a matter of days? What was wrong with me?!
 
Was it just really just general forgetfulness? It's easy to blame it on this yes. 
 
But more often than not, what’s really happening is that we're just not present enough. We're not focused on what we're doing right now, on really living whatever it is we're doing in this moment. Sure, we're physically going through the motions, but in our minds, we are far, far away, somewhere else completely. We're living in our own little wonderland, so whilst on the outside, we're going through the motions and appearing to be present in our surroundings, we're actually paying most of our attention to the constant stream of thoughts that are passing through our minds, to the point where we end up living in our thoughts and not actually being present in what’s really happening right now, in this moment, at all. We're too busy thinking ahead, or thinking about what's passed, or worrying about that niggling issue that just won’t go away. We are literally lost in thought.
 
So, it's no wonder at all that we forget our phones on the roofs of our cars, or that we put the kettle in the fridge instead of the milk, or that we leave our handbags in supermarket trollies. Because we're really not paying attention to what’s happening outside of our thinking - we're not paying attention to reality. We're too busy giving all of our attention to our thought-created reality, which often has very little to do with reality itself.
 
So how do we snap out of this before we lose something far more important than our belongings - our relationship with our partner and our own emotional health. 
 
Understanding the role that all these thoughts really have on your experience of life and seeing the direct relationship between your thoughts and your feelings, frees you of the emotional suffering that we can all too regularly find ourselves falling prey to. When we're so caught up in living in our own thinking, we fail to see the true reality of situations and therefore fail to see our way out of them.
 
But once you do start to see your thoughts for what they really are, once you start to understand how you work psychologically, everything becomes clearer and instead of that nonstop stream of worried and anxious thinking that we suffer with, we instead experience more calmness, more understanding and way less stressing. And with that comes the natural consequence of never being distracted enough by your own thinking, that it takes you away from what's really happening, right now in this moment. 
 
You're better able to work through the challenges in your relationship and to see the beauty in things, instead of giving all of your attention to your own thinking, which could be unhelpfully pointing you in a different direction. 
 
To experience this for yourself, click here to book in a free relationship breakthrough session with me, where we'll get to the bottom of what exactly it is that's keeping you living in your own little wonderland and figure out the best way to free you from it, insha'Allah.
 
Love,
Ptissem