Are You Sleepwalking Through Summer

Inside Nat's Notebook - Real Reflections for Real Change

Have you noticed how often we're told to "make the most of it"?

Make the most of the sunshine. Make the most of the weekend. Make the most of the holidays.

It's lovely advice. I mean that, so go and have the barbecue, wander round the garden centre, say yes to the beach. Have fun, it is summer after all, so go and enjoy every bit of it.

But here is what I would ask you to consider. Are you sleepwalking?

Not the get up in the night and wander downstairs for a cuppa while deep, deep asleep. No, no, this is a different kind of sleepwalking. I mean, literally sleepwalking through life.

It's the difference between walking through your day steady, calm and organised, choosing what you're doing as you do it, and walking through it on autopilot, letting your choices make themselves without you.

So you're right there, sun on your face, people you love beside you, and some part of you is already three steps ahead, mentally packing up the picnic before you've even unpacked it.

You're not absent. You're just not steering. That's sleepwalking.

I think it happens because so many of us have spent years being the person who holds everything together. Recovering Superheroes, I call you. You remember the sun cream. You know who'll forget their hat, because they always do, so you're already prepared. You're already thinking about when to leave, so the traffic isn't a nightmare. You do all of this so naturally, you don't even notice you're doing it anymore. See autopilot. See sleepwalking.

Now, it could be said that's a wonderful skill. Genuinely. It's also, quietly, a habit that doesn't know how to clock off. Even on the days when there's truly nothing left to organise, no hats to find, no timings to manage, it carries on anyway. You'll find yourself tidying up before anyone's even finished eating, or already thinking about tomorrow while today is still perfectly good and still happening.

That's not you doing summer wrong. That's just what happens when autopilot has been running so long it doesn't know how to switch off, even for the good stuff.

Here's the bit I actually want you to hear.

Waking yourself up isn't about trying harder. Trying harder is just another job, and you've already got enough of those. What wakes you up is much smaller than that. It's noticing. Just noticing, without judging it, when you've drifted off three steps ahead of yourself. That's it. That's the whole practice.

Noticing your shoulders are up around your ears. Noticing you've read the same paragraph of your book four times and still haven't taken it in. Noticing you're already planning dinner before lunch has even been eaten.

You don't have to fix it in that moment. You just have to see it. Seeing it is the whole thing. The moment you see it, you're not sleepwalking anymore. You're back, steady, calm, choosing again. Something in you settles on its own, usually before you've even decided to let it.

Because here's what I know for certain, after years of watching this in other people and plenty of years of catching it in myself. You can't stay awake to your own life by force of will alone, not when the habit of autopilot runs this deep.

Something underneath has to settle first, so waking up stops being an effort and starts being where you naturally live.

That settling is the whole of what happens inside Soul Sessions. Calm your mind, get the stress out of your system, sleep properly, and the autopilot loosens its grip on its own. Not because you tried harder to be present. Because there was finally room for you to be.

If any of this sounds familiar, and I suspect for quite a few of you it will, come and join us.

Join Soul Sessions → https://www.littlesoulshack.com/soul-sessions

LoveLove

Nat x

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