Today's
Meditation:
I
used to worry a lot. I believe it was a trait that I
inherited from my mother, but I have no proof of that.
It could also be that since I grew up in an extremely
unstable environment in many ways, I simply got used to
worrying because it was a way of life when I was
young. No matter what the reason, I've been able to
deal with the worrying pretty well recently, and I no longer
find myself focused so strongly on what might be or go wrong
that I'm unable to function properly in many other ways.
Worry
takes more out of us than we imagine. My worrying
helps and changes nothing about the situation I'm worried
about, but it does change my ability to focus on the present
moment and the things I have to do and the people I need to
pay attention to. My worrying makes me almost
helpless, in a sense, because I'm not able to function
nearly as effectively when my mind is wrapped up in what
might happen in the future.
The
tension that I feel when I worry also causes me to react
differently to things that happen and things that people
say. It causes me to overreact, very often, or to not
react at all at other times.
So
what do we do about it? In my case, I've learned that
I need to remind myself of two things: What's going to
happen is going to happen, no matter how much I worry about
it--my worrying neither prevents nor causes it; and two, Almost nothing that I've worried about has
turned out to be as bad as my worrying made it. I can
wait to deal with the situation when the situation arises,
and I don't need to go over it in my mind now. Letting
go of my fears of what may happen is extremely liberating,
and my today is much more enjoyable when I'm not thinking
about what may be tomorrow or this afternoon or next week.
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