What Pebbles are Thrown in Your Pond?
And What do You About the Ripples?
Have you ever dropped a pebble in to a pond?
After the rock hits the water, ripples move through the pond in ever widening circles.
Watching the pebble disrupt the calm surface of the water puts me in mind of a thought popping in my head and the ripple effect of the initial thought as it triggers a thousand more thoughts, a ripple effect of memories, fears and insecurities.
Experts tell us that we have around 60,000 thoughts a day and most of them flow through us as they’re meant to but there is often one or two that we get snagged on, the ones that cause the ripples.
What are you pebble thoughts? What triggers those thoughts?
Triggers
People are triggered by many different things. Some are triggered by a word or an image, some are triggered by events.
But the fact that we all have different triggers show us that the trigger itself isn’t the issue. If, for instance, an argument between two people in the street is a trigger for someone who has been in a domestic abuse situation, it wouldn’t be a trigger for someone who hadn’t had the same experience.
This is because triggers are always subjective. If seeing a glass of wine is a trigger for an alcoholic, it’s not going to be for a moderate or non drinker.
Some tv programmes or films lead with a warning that the events might trigger some viewers. After all, there’s nothing like putting the idea in someone’s head, is there?
Triggers are always thought in the moment. A thought in this moment about the past or what might happen in the future and we know that the ripple effect of this type of thought is powerful.
Actions
An action might be your pebble? I had a client recently who hated her partner stopping for a drink on his way home from work.
As soon as he took this action she dropped a huge boulder in to her pond and the ripples were devastating. She thought this his action meant that he didn’t love her, that he didn’t respect her, that he wanted to spend time with his friends instead of her and on and on, each ripple spreading upset and insecurity across her pond.
But, of course, it wasn’t his action that caused the feeling. It was my client’s thoughts about his action. That one pebble caused her to get in to a feeling of upset as each ripple built on the last one.
And the same can be said for any situation. If someone cuts you up in traffic, the action of them cutting you up might be your pebble.
But just like my client, it’s not the action that’s the problem, it’s the thoughts that you have about the action. Thoughts about how this person is an idiot who doesn’t know how to drive. You might even shout a few choice words at the other driver who will then drop his own pebble.
Words
One word dropped in to your pond can cause ripples of feeling. In my first, very brief, marriage, my then husband had a violent temper and when he called me a certain name, I knew that this was time to get out. This word caused ripples of emotion. The first instinct to get the hell out was absolutely right but the ripples came later. Just like a trigger, I had thoughts about what had happened in the past and thoughts about what might happen in the future.
This word definitely disrupted my pond.
But although this is a particularly nasty, in my opinion, word, as ever, my feeling didn’t come from the word but what the word represented to me.
We can make meaning of words. Of course we need words to communicate but the same word can have a different meaning to different people. If you say, ’the cat sat on the mat’ to a group of friends, they would all have a different type of cat and a different mat.
The word “love” is a great example. When we hear this word, it can bring up all sorts of different emotions because of our past experiences.
It’s the meaning that we’ve given to the word that has causes these ripples. The word itself is just the label we attach to this particular feeling.
The Ripple Effect of Paying it Forward
You know that if you walk along the road and smile at people, they’re likely to smile back. Yes, some might look confused and others might think you’re part of a cult but, mostly, people react to a smile with a smile.
But, if your pebble is a bit fat worry as you leave your house, strangely enough you’re not likely to have many people smile at you.
We know that having kind and loving thoughts emanate from us like ripples in a pond. And the same can be said for the opposite.
Have you ever worked in an open plan office where one of your colleagues is generally happy? This colleague enjoys the working day because the people are nice.
Whereas I had a client come to me because she was going to be ‘landed’, in her words, with someone that no one wanted to work with. This person had been shunted from department to department because she was so difficult. I asked my client what would happen if my client didn’t have any preconceptions about this woman and, if the woman appeared to be a bit mean or difficult, my client just behaved as she normally did rather than reacting to her thoughts about this woman.
I don’t need to tell you what happened. Oh well, I will anyway. Short story, they ended up great friends. The ripple effect of my client’s attitude washed over the other woman’s negativity.
And to push the pond analogy for a little while longer, you know how to get mud out of a pond?
If you rake it or try to dig it up, the pond will get murkier. Whereas if you leave the pond to settle, the water will clear and the mud will stay at the bottom of the pond.
If you react to your pebble, you are likely to create more and more ripples until you have a tsunami of ‘what-if’ thoughts but when you see that this is your pebble, your thought, you can allow the pebble to sink to the bottom of the pond.
Ok, enough with the pond.
What I’m saying here is that when you know that you’re reacting to your own thoughts, you can let thoughts flow through you and not react to them, and then the pebble will disappear and the ripples will eventually melt away like mist in the sunshine.
