The bridges that you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren’t there. — Gene Brown
Have you ever spent more than a minute worrying about something? Does your worrying consume you?
If it does, then you don’t know how to worry. Not to worry, in this blog I’ll show you how.
I’m going to show you how to wriggle free from the stranglehold of your ugly thoughts. And how to be aware of what’s going on as you think about the past, think about the future, or think about yourself.
You simply realise these are just thoughts, like clouds moving across a clear sky.
I remember years ago hearing about a man that spent most of his time worrying. He worried and worried and worried and eventually the thing he worried about didn’t happen.
Then there was another time when the same man spent days worrying and worrying than the thing he worried about did happen.
What did the worrying do for him?
It’s important that you grasp what I’m saying because your thoughts are not reality. Think about the times in the past when you worried about something that never happened. You totally wasted your time worrying.
Is there a right and wrong way to worry?
If you’re one of these people that will really enjoys worrying and know that you just can’t help yourself – here is the best way to worry. First, promise yourself every time you worry you will be standing up.
So, rule number one is, never sit down when you worry always stand up. Next you might decide for the sake of time management to do all your worrying in a two-hour block of time. This frees you up for the rest of the week to be worry free.
Now you need to set the time to worry. Let’s go for Thursday evening and set your worrying time to go from 6 to 8 PM.
Can you see how ridiculous this is?
Now let’s address thoughts about self. Sometimes you tend to think that you are good. Other times you tend to think you are bad.
Which one is right?
The truth is the reality of your experience is always changing, always evolving and cannot be neatly tied up and captured through thought.
The problem when thinking about self is that you’re taking your thoughts too seriously.
When you practice mindfulness, you don’t judge what you’re thinking you just stay away of the present moment., Normally when we think we’re trying to push away bad thoughts that is because biologically you are programmed to avoid pain.
The problem is that when you’re engaged in this type of thinking you’re paying is only the pain of thought or the pain of emotions.
When you try to ignore them, or resist them, make them go away is makes things worse. It amplifies the pain of your thoughts and emotions.
So, the equation for this is, suffering = pain x resistance.
The more you try to make your pain go away the greater that pain becomes.
When you stop and think about it you’re only happy when reality goes exactly the way you want it to go. You try to manage every situation so that it goes your way. And you get very angry and frustrated when reality isn’t the way you imagined it would be.
For example, you go out for the evening your favourite restaurant only to find that they forgotten you booked a table. It’s no big deal that have one ready for you in fifteen minutes.
Are you going to spoil the evening by getting angry? After all, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just a slight delay. But what happens when you resist this reality?
What does your anger or frustration do for you?
When you bang your head against the wall of reality like this you’re the only one that gets hurt.
Let’s say you have a thought that you are lonely. Okay that might be painful in the moment but that thought will soon pass.
But if you resist the thought by thinking you don’t want to be lonely, or you deserve to be with somebody right now. And then your thoughts escalate and your feelings magnify because your mind is wandering trying to solve a problem that you can’t solve just by thinking about it.
Mindfulness teaches you to learn to face towards your painful thoughts and not resist them. To sit with them and let them be what they are.
There was once a man running his boat down the river when he suddenly noticed that it was getting quite foggy. And that’s when he saw a few feet away from him a boat heading straight towards him.
He yelled out, “you need to steer your boat away from me otherwise you going to crash into me.”
But the boat kept coming towards him and within a few minutes in it crashed into him, he almost fell out of his boat. He was enraged and just as he turned around to yell at the person he realised he was staring at empty boat.
When you have these negative thoughts, negative emotions realise that the just empty boats. And it’s the same when anyone says unkind things to you, it’s just an empty boat.
When you learn to like yourself, you can give yourself compassion for any negative thoughts or emotions you experience.
Sometimes when you are practising awareness of your thoughts and being kind toward yourself more negative thoughts can gang up on you.
This is called “back-draft.” This may well happen to you when you begin a mindfulness practice.
You will need to keep going through this back-draft period. You need to settle those thoughts down fast.
It’s vitally important that you learn to do this as you begin becoming aware of your thoughts otherwise you will be overwhelmed by them.
Stop your worrying
Over on my home page you can get my quick start guide on how to do this. It’s called, “Calm Body – Clear Mind.”
It has five fast ways to calm your thoughts. You choose which one you like best and you use that.
Each concept will take a minute to learn and a minute or so to do.
By the way, it’s free.
It’s my way of helping as many people as I can.
You can get it by going here.
Calm Body – Clear Mind
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