We sometimes lose our balance and equanimity, the situation catching us unprepared and completely off-guard. When we compose ourselves, which may even take a few days or months, and reflect on what happened and why we reacted the way we did, it will serve us well to remind ourselves of the simple principle of the wheel.

The wheel is constantly in motion, just like our life, and travels on rough surfaces as sometimes we do. However, the wheel endures the speed and terrain as long as its centre remains stable, allowing the wheel to rotate around it. Our challenge is that when the situation catches us off-guard our centre shifts and our emotions spin out of control.

When we are centred in values, we get highly disturbed and disoriented when someone behaves in a manner breaking trust and respect. When we are centred in relationships that are a source of our security, our emotions get difficult to manage when these relations get strained. If we have made success the centre of our well-being, we find it very difficult to handle setbacks and criticism.

Our challenge is not in setting the right centre for ourselves, intellectually we know what we should be rooted in, and possibly, for the most part, we live our life accordingly. Our challenge lies in the emotional storm that blows us off our centre. The answer lies in three things – acceptance, awareness and applying ourselves.

We need to accept that the world we live in is constantly changing and will not always behave the way we want it to. If we take things to heart, we will spin out of control. We need to be aware of when the emotional wind gathers momentum within. If we drop our awareness and do not create the space before responding, the wind will turn into an emotional storm and we may well find ourselves spinning out of control. The conviction around our centre needs strengthening every day. If we stop the daily discipline of consistent self-application, our emotions will spin out of control when we are caught unaware.

In an ever-changing world, we need to make our inner centre changeless. That’s what differentiates whether our wheel of life is spinning with joy, or are our emotions spinning out of control.

(Picture – Ice hockey in Vancouver)