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| Return to Mind Exercises |
designer drawers
Designer
Drawers is a powerful visual tool to help you deal with past problems
and perceived worries about the present and the future.
In your imagination, bring into being a beautiful wooden chest of drawers.
It is your secret chest where you keep your innermost thoughts. It has
three drawers.
The bottom drawer is where you can store all your past influences - it
is where all your memories, good and bad, can be kept until you are ready
to say goodbye to them forever. It is where some of your outmoded habits
reside; it is where certain emotions live on, neatly tucked away but still
accessible if you decide to show them.
The middle drawer is where you can store your present worries. Once in
the drawer you can begin to see that there is nothing to be gained by
worrying! All you do is to increase your own stress triggers, anxiety
and panic levels. There is however everything to be gained from being
realistic and constructive about your present position. Even those things
which you believe to be your biggest troubles could present you with opportunities
for change and refreshment - think laterally about these things.
The top drawer is where you can put any concerns you may have about the
future - safely and tidily shut away from your everyday experience. The
fact is that nobody has a certain future, uncertainty is the breath that
keeps life interesting. Worrying about something that does not even exist
- the future - is the biggest waste of time ever. It can also be very
depressing and is completely unnecessary. Instead turn your top drawer
storage into ideas and visions of what you need for the future. Your drawer
can store these as useful items which can be changed as often as you want!
You can use your chest of drawers as a mental store cupboard for most
aspects of your life. It allows you to take items out from time to time,
acknowledge them and then either throw them away forever or put them back
in the drawer for a future airing. When you take them out for a good think
- you may decide that before you replace them in the drawer you will change
their appearance. This could be likened to re-packaging them - making
them easier to understand next time.
For example, you may feel that part of your childhood was disturbing.
Having a designer drawer allows you to acknowledge this, but instead of
letting it ruin your day-to-day existence now, you can mentally 'put it
into a closed drawer'. When you feel ready, you can take it out and examine
it, possibly with the help of a friend or therapist. You could decide
that it is no longer part of your life today and mentally throw it away
or burn it. If you are not ready to discard it completely, because part
of you still needs the prop of your past, however unpleasant, then try
to give it a new wrapping of understanding. That means viewing it in a
different way before putting it back in the drawer. Next time you take
a look, your understanding will be truer.
Top Tip: Some people actually like
the idea of physically writing down the items they want to store
and keeping them in a three-drawer mini-chest [the type you can
buy at office supply shops]. This physically involves them in
making decisions about discarding items and is therefore a very
powerful tool. Try it and see the difference in the way you handle
personal problems, emotional outbursts and horrible habits.