Dead Calm

Even longer ago than you realize, a death squad boarded a helicopter fleet under cover of darkness.

The team of 79 commandos (and a very good boy) had a simple task: assassinate the leader of a covert Pakistan Army unit. You probably knew him as Osama bin-Laden.

The flight would take over an hour and a half, and there was little the soldiers could be certain of except that death was waiting for them at the end, likely in the form of a hail of rusty nails.

Yet, many of these battle-hardened marines did what any good soldier does when given a moment to sit; they fell asleep.

For those of us who struggle to sleep on a transatlantic flight, catching forty-winks in a tank hurtling 2,000 ft over the desert towards certain death sounds impossible.

But the US Marines have a secret weapon that allows them to relax in the middle of a suicide mission.

It’s called Yoga Nidra.

And every marine learns it right after they learn how to meditate because control of our mind and body is the single greatest weapon we can arm ourselves with.

It’s just a thought

It’s easy to get caught up in our thoughts, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay in them. 

Thoughts are just random brain cells talking to each other.

There’s rarely meaning there; it’s just a biochemical process that happens automatically to stop us from getting bored.

And we get to choose what we think about, just like we can choose what channel to watch or book to read.

If we’re not paying attention, our thoughts will whisk us away to some fantasy realm where we said something different, or how we imagine something later will be.

But we don’t have to listen to that crap if we don’t want to.

Thoughts might happen in our heads, but they don’t define us.

You are not your thoughts.

The next time you catch yourself thinking something nasty or frustrating or just plain unhelpful, remind yourself, “It’s just a thought.”