There is a lot of stress in the world, in daily life. It is ubiquitous, it is commonplace, it is normal, it is accepted, it is expected. We talk about it, we hear about it, we look for it, we find it. We encourage it. We generate it. We let it build. We exaggerate it in our own minds. We dwell on it, we live in it – except we don’t, ‘live’ that is. Being in a state of stress is the very opposite of living. Being in a state of stress is just surviving, and we know it when we step back and look at it. We know that when we are stressed, we are disconnected from our true selves, our true authentic thoughts and beliefs of who we are and who we want to be. We behave in ways that are harmful to ourselves, our lives and to others, especially our loved ones. We thrive off stress – except we don’t. When we are stressed, we are not thriving, we are not living the life we would choose, and deep down we know it.

Stress comes in many forms, eg. worry, irritation, annoyance, doubt, confusion, etc., but the feeling at the heart of all stress is fear. Fear in the broadest sense of the word. In some sense we are feeling insecure, not sure of ourselves, not on firm footing, not fully in control, not feeling satisfied, not having everything we need right now to be able to relax, not feeling fully safe, not feeling fully accepted, not feeling recognised, not feeling important, not feeling respected, not feeling we belong somehow. In that moment, when we are feeling stress in some way, we are isolated, disconnected, and the subconscious is programmed to return us back to peace as quickly and simply as possible, and that’s where we get it wrong.

Peace is the natural state that all life is in all the time – until it’s not. Until there is a reason for not being at peace. In the natural world, these reasons are simple and straight-forward, for example: I feel hungry – now I need to try and find food; I feel unsafe – now I need to try and protect myself; I feel tired – now I need to try and rest; I feel horny – now I need to try and mate. In the natural world, the rules are very simple, and every feeling acts as an instinct to drive the living thing towards an action so that when that need has been fulfilled, it can return to peace. Peace is the natural state. Peace should be the natural state we are also in – until there is good reason not to be. But we don’t live in the natural world anymore. We have created civilised societies which are complex and nuanced, and for good reason.

Living in the natural world may be simple to understand, but it is harsh, it is dangerous, it can be very uncomfortable. Nature/evolution has given us a conscious brain which allows us to be objective, step back, see what our problems are, and begin to think about them to find solutions. In other words, having a conscious brain means we have choice. We have options. Using our brain well means making good decisions. Every invention and development that humanity has come up with has been in some way to try and improve our lives, to make them less harsh, less dangerous, less uncomfortable, less unpredictable. The vast majority of human beings now expect to have certain levels of comfort, security, safety, protection, justice, rights, etc., as standard. And the more that less developed areas around the world get to see how others live, the more they begin to expect a better quality of life for themselves.

All of this is good. There can’t be many people who would want to go back to days of living and surviving outdoors, especially in winter, living in tribes or communities where there is a  threat of invasion from our enemies, living in a time where the justice system did not protect the common person, living in a time when medicine was poorly understood, when travel was slow and arduous, when technology we take for granted had not yet been invented, where there little or no leisure time or entertainment. We are living in a time when the majority of us have sufficient comfort, security, access to technology, access to travel, access to work to achieve a reasonable income to support ourselves, access to leisure, etc. – that, in theory, we should be truly thriving, we should be happy, satisfied, contented. We are benefiting from the hard, painful work that previous generations have put in, eg. democracy where we have a chance to be heard, science and technology where we have more comfort in our homes as standard (water, electricity, gas, heating, insulation, entertainment), greater possibility to live longer and healthier with the advances in medicine, etc. and yet there is widespread acceptance of stress, dissatisfaction, discontentment, anxiety, irritation, anger – as if these feelings are fully righteous and justified. In fact, there’s something wrong with you if you are not feeling these things. If you are not complaining and criticising and getting annoyed with things, you are not seeing the truth, you are allowing yourself to be mistreated.

Essentially, what is going wrong, is that humanity has forgotten what feelings are for. We have forgotten what is natural. We have forgotten how to live efficiently. In nature, energy is never wasted. Animals do not waste time flexing and tensing muscles if they don’t need to. They use the minimum amount of energy required to fulfil every task. Energy is precious. When life is harsh and unpredictable, we need all the available energy we can get. We have become so comfortable, so safe, that we have allowed ourselves to forget that energy is our most precious resource. And now we squander it on stress, ultimately on fear and insecurity, that, for the most part, is completely inappropriate, irrational, exaggerated, wasted and misspent.

When we lived in nature, we knew that our energy was precious and not to be wasted. We knew how to be at peace. We knew what our feelings were for. We knew that our feelings are a precious energy that we had to pay attention to and use wisely. They are what helped us choose an appropriate action to help us survive so we could return to peace. We knew that once the action has been fulfilled, we no longer need the feeling, it has done it’s job and we go back to peace. We even learned that we could generate more energy through generating good feelings. We learned that we can access greater levels and higher forms of energy than other animals because of our conscious brains. We learned to feel deeper love, deeper connection. Rather than just being an unconscious player in Nature’s perfectly balanced and harmonised system, we could actually start to feel an appreciation for balance and harmony. We realised that feeling good about our lives, about ourselves, feeling safe, secure, that we belong, gave us the energy to create and explore, to search for more, to seek out greater understanding and truth.

When we feel truly connected to ourselves, when we feel truly alive, that we are living the life that feels right to us, we feel our lives have meaning and purpose. In fact, the feeling is so deep and natural that we don’t even put it into words. When we are feeling truly connected, we do not question life’s purpose in that moment. We only really question the point of life when we are not feeling it, when we feel disconnected from ourselves, our role, our purpose, the point of us. And what is it that disconnects us from our true selves, our inner self, our sense of who we truly are, where we belong, what makes us feel good, feel right, feel at peace? Stress. Fear. Insecurity. Not feeling safe. Not feeling in control. Not feeling we belong. Not feeling accepted and loved for who we are.

And what is it we feel when we are connected? Love and Peace. When we love what we are doing, love who we are being, love who we are with. When we learn to accept our past and accept who we are, accept our mistakes, accept what we have done and what has been done to us, we can begin to move towards a deeper, more sustainable sense of peace. If we can learn to be at peace with our past, we can be at peace in the present. Then we can face the future with a greater sense of peace, acceptance, hope, joy, excitement and optimism. But to make peace with our past requires us to learn to love ourselves and love others. And to learn to love ourselves and others we need greater understanding. For us to genuinely make peace with ourselves, with our lives and with all others – and it can’t just be said in words, it needs to be felt – we all need true understanding of how our feelings work, how they make us think and then how they make us act. We then need the understanding of how to better manage our own feelings, thoughts and actions. This is the stuff we have never been taught – at least, not properly. We may have been lucky enough to see some good examples in our life but mostly we are surrounded by poor practice and bad role-modelling.

This is what we have forgotten and lost over thousands of years. As we have moved away from living in nature, we have lost the natural wisdom we once possessed. Generation after generation have then embedded the normality of living in fear, repression, suppression, conflict, survival, to the point where, today, even though we are blessed with more comfort and security than any other previous generation, we have no idea how to live. How to stay connected. How to love our lives. From times when life in society really was scary, dangerous and uncomfortable, when it really was about survival, the trauma of those times has been passed down, imperceptibly to the next generation, so that the new generation is unable to see the relatively better times they are living in.

Stress is separation, division, isolation, disconnection, dissatisfaction, dis-chord, unhappiness, discontentment. Love is connection, belonging, unity, acceptance, peace, harmony, happiness, contentment, satisfaction. Stress is survival. Love is living. Love is thriving. Love feels right without having to question it. And if every development, invention, discovery that humanity has put into the world has always been about creating greater security, understanding, comfort, control, then we are living in truly abundant times. We have never had it better. We should be living in appreciation and gratitude. But how many people truly are? Humanity has forgotten how precious life is, how precious energy is and we are squandering it on wasted, inappropriate fear and insecurity. We are continuing the unconscious programme of previous generations, believing we are living, when really we are spending much of our time just surviving.

We have forgotten how to love. We are not aware that we don’t know how to love. We don’t know what we don’t know – yet. We can’t see what we can’t see – yet. We only know what we have learned so far. And we don’t realise that, for the most part, we have not been taught well. So it is time to take control of our own learning. It is time to learn better lessons. It is time to look at our beliefs and decide which are helpful and beneficial and which are holding us back and disconnecting us from a life filled with greater meaning and purpose. It is time to learn some new lessons that we can pass on to future generations. There are ways in which we can change so that what we have to learn consciously, with effort, can be passed on to the next generation and learnt unconsciously. There are things we can do differently to the norm and to what everyone around us accepts as normal that can be passed on implicitly so that future generations don’t even realise that their happiness, peace and satisfaction is something we have had to consciously learn and put into practice. There are practices that, if we had been taught them, and had them role-modelled from birth, we would now be doing naturally, unconsciously, not even knowing we are doing something extraordinary.

And why should it be extraordinary to love our lives? But what does that even mean? What does that look like? I think that just about everybody, if pressed could find what is good about their lives, remember what they appreciate. Realise how much worse things could be. And it’s in that moment, when we are feeling appreciation, gratitude, realising how we are fortunate, that we are focusing on what we have. In that moment, we are being an optimist. In contrast, when we are stressed in some way, we are focusing on a problem, what we don’t have, what we need to fix, what’s missing, what we are lacking. In the moment, we are being a pessimist. So all of us can change from being optimists to pessimists depending on what we are feeling in a given moment.

Now, of course, there are times, often, where we do have real problems, issues that need resolving. There will naturally be times where we are feeling stressed because life is presenting challenges that we have to find a way through. I am not prescribing that we pretend everything is fine when it is not, that we suppress or deny what we are really feeling. We, in ourselves, need to be aware and acknowledge what we are feeling. That is the whole point of feelings. Every feeling is there to be noticed. The subconscious is aware of everything that is going on within us and outside of us. It is in charge of our survival. It only draws our attention to issues that it believes may be important. Every feeling comes from the subconscious to try and get the attention of the conscious brain. The conscious brain is the boss. And it should be the boss who makes the final decisions. The problem is that strong feelings override and overwhelm the boss, rendering the boss incapable of making a decision.

When there are strong feelings in our system, the conscious brain becomes incapacitated, so the boss is not available. So we are literally incapable of rational, objective thought. We are incapable of solving complicated problems. This is how our system is designed to work, so that, when we are in a life-threatening emergency, our conscious brain – which is slow, methodical, thoughtful, considerate, objective, wanting to look at the problem in its full context, from every angle – is shut down, and our subconscious – which is rapid, able to find the simplest most effective solution in milliseconds, incapable of context, only does black or white, on or off, all or nothing, is only concerned with immediate, short-term survival – takes over. In an emergency, this system is the most effective way to ensure our survival. In a complicated, non-emergency situation however, only the conscious brain has the ability to get us through. So, all the stress we are seeing around us, day-to-day, is people trying to live and solve complicated problems whilst under strong emotion – and it’s never going to work.

The amount of stress we are witnessing in society means that most people are just surviving, they are living unconsciously most of the time – which is not really living at all. They are not in tune with their true selves, they are constantly going from short-term fix to short-term fix. They are not living in peace, in harmony. They are not loving their lives. They are feeling disconnected, isolated, insecure. We all become monstrous versions of ourselves under stress. The subconscious which is being allowed to take over and solve our complicated problems can’t do it. That isn’t what it is designed to do. It is utterly amazing at what it does but it can’t solve complicated problems and consider lots of difficult options. It will keep us alive, but it won’t help us truly live.

So, I am proposing that the main thing that none of us have truly learnt, is how to properly use our brains in the way they are designed to be used. We haven’t learnt it because we haven’t been taught it. We haven’t been taught at home, at school, at work or from society in general. And actually, what we have learnt is the opposite of good practice. We have learnt how to stay annoyed, stay irritated, stay worried, stay anxious, stay indignant, stay pessimistic, stay focused on what is wrong with our lives, what we are lacking, what we rightfully deserve. All feelings are normal and valid, the feelings are not the problem, the problem is that we are practising ‘staying’ with the feeling rather than noticing it, calming ourselves, returning back to consciousness, deciding how appropriate the feeling is, and what decision and action we need to take to return to peace, our natural state.

I think that, if asked, most people would say they had good emotional intelligence. Some would admit they don’t really know what that means, and for most people, that should be the most appropriate response. Emotional intelligence is the subject we have not been taught. Emotional intelligence means knowing what to do with our feelings in any given situation. To be able to do that we need to understand how our brains and bodies work in terms of feelings and thoughts. There is so much bad practice that is ubiquitous that has seemingly good rationale behind it. But because so much of what we understand, and so much of what we do is going on everywhere, we can’t imagine how things would be if we did things differently. And we don’t even know what we should be doing differently. We don’t know that what we are doing is wrong. So we keep repeating it, and we keep ending up in the same unsatisfactory situations, whether that’s on a personal level or on the macro level of society. I would like to put forward some new teachings, some new ground rules that can help us all live more peaceful, harmonious, effective, meaningful lives.