The Gift of Flying

If you could fly high above all that’s going on around you this holiday season, how would it change your perspective?

There’s many highs and lows with the holidays. We get pulled one way and then another.

It’s also a time when you see more of life in your interactions with all kinds of people.

It’s beautiful being and talking with people we haven’t seen in a while.  But it can feel like overload. Sometimes what you’re feeling isn’t even your own stuff.

We can listen with empathy but it doesn’t mean we have to get pulled in or take it on.

When your mind is overloaded, it sucks out not only your mental capacity, it can be physically draining.

This is when, in your minds-eye, see and feel yourself flying high above a situation.

Even if you’re still physically there, when you’re able to mentally remove yourself, you don’t take on so much of what’s going on.

Creating this distance allows you space to think more clearly. Providing a different perspective to what’s really going on.

When I was a child, I had many dreams of flying. I would crouch down and push up with all of my might, soaring up into the air. I would fly above the landscape.

Flying high above gave me cognitive distance from what I was experiencing in daily life. It provided a separation from what was, and being removed gave me a sense of safety because mentally, for those moments, I wasn’t in it.

Feeling yourself high above, you create mental distance and the landscape looks very different, perhaps even miniscule. It’s a quick shift that can free you from taking on what isn’t yours in the first place, or remove you from a situation that’s swirling in your mind.

So, when someone literally or figuratively says, “go fly a kite,” be the kite.

Imagine the colors of yourself high up in the sky. How long is your tail trailing behind you? The length of your wingspan? How high up are you soaring? The air gently floating around you. Take notice of all of your senses.

Feel the peace of soaring through the air.

Because this feeling is always within you, and one that you can come back to anytime you want.