One Three Letter Word that Liberates You from Anxiety
How many times have you heard it or did someone say to you: Just let it go. Be here now! N O W. The one three letter word, that is supposed to liberate us from all anxiety - because fear (anxiety) is almost always about something or some things that are going to happen in the future.
Very rarely do we have real reason to be fearful of anything that is happening right now, lest we are being chased by a tiger, or boss or our angry teenager.
Jokes aside, perhaps we agree that we would experience much less anxiety, if we knew how to live in the moment - how to "be. here. now.".
How can we reclaim inner peace?
How can we re-acquire (I say re-acquire because I know this is the natural sate of our mind) a state of blissful peace in the moment? The answer is we have to re-train our mind. For most of our lives; beginning often in early childhood, we have been taught how to worry, we have been given "reasons" to worry or we may have had adverse experiences, which taught our body-minds to be in a state of fear and unrest.
From an evolutionary perspective our minds are wired to pick up all such memories of potential dangers and to refer back to them whenever the situation requires to ensure our survival. Our minds are always striving to protect us. And because of this nature of our mind to want to work for us and with us, we are able to re-train the mind. This is what Buddhists, yogis and other meditation practitioners do when they meditate.
It's not a Race
Now I see many clients who tell me that they "tried to meditate" - and it "didn't work" for them. It would fill way too many pages to go over the reasons why someone who tries meditation on their own will quickly give up on it: - seemingly more activity in the mind than before, having an ambitious or perfectionistic attitude towards meditation, not knowing how to to handle the obstacles that inevitably arise in meditation, unrealistic expectations or the growing awareness of the mind's monkey nature, and improper instructions are only some challenges a beginner faces, that I can think of straight away. Facing our self, and our own monkey mind is perhaps the most challenging journey one can embark upon.
Hence I have only one simple tip for mindfulness or meditation practice, which I offer to anyone: Start as small as possible. A r e g u l a r meditation time of 1 minute twice or three times a day will help you to train your mind and you'll see results in leaps and bounds before you know it!
It's just like training the body: you wouldn't try climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in a day without training - or would you? And to help you get started on training your mind regularly I have designed a series of guided mini-meditations allowing you to practice being "In This Moment". I have designed them to gently teach your mind to gradually go to a deeper place of peaceful, calm awareness and to disentangle from our everyday, problem focused mind. This, if practiced regularly, creates more clarity, peace and joy in your life.
