Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground beneath your feet,
your own way of starting
the conversation.
Start with your own question,
give up on other people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something simple.
To find another’s voice,
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes a private ear
listening to another.
Start right now, take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in, don’t mistake
that other
for your own.
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing
close in, the step
you don’t want to take.
David Whyte, Start Close in
![[Penguin]](https://i0.wp.com/www.ngsprints.co.uk/images/M/1006843.jpg "[Penguin]")
Normally, as a negative mood arises, it catches hold and infects the whole mind – we become that mood – with its characteristic form. This is the big weakness of the undeveloped mind – it makes how I feel into who I am. There’s a grasp, a contraction, and we get pushed into the story, get mesmerized by it and rehash it time and time again. 
Unless we train it the mind does the minimum necessary to fulfill a function. In that way it is like the body. For example, our muscles and bones are strong enough for us to walk – but not to run, unless we condition them…..The difference between the mind and the body is that no one is surprised to get winded while running to catch the bus. Nobody get’s mad at themselves, saying “I can’t believe I can’t run 26.2 miles!” However, when we get overwhelmed by longer hours at work, more emails or more parenting duties, we become irritable, moody and unhappy. It does not occur to us that our mind is out of shape. We put more stress on ourselves because we assume we should be able to handle it all. 
