Thank you for visiting me “worry”! I promise not to fight you.

Photo by Surinder Singh Buttar on Unsplash

 

When worry comes to visit, because most of us have the habit of attaching judgemental labels to ourselves and to our worry and anxiety, the worry itself quickly becomes something that defines us and makes us feel guilty about worrying as we tell ourselves that we “shouldn’t” worry and so instead of welcoming worry and collaborating with worry to find a way to calm the worry together, we actually try to fight worry and have a full confrontation with worry and keep yelling at worry to go away. This just makes worry get bigger and bigger until it’s a monster that runs our life and bosses us around.

 

We are told by well meaning family and friends “don’t worry, be happy!”. So this implies that it’s “bad” to worry. And it implies “I am unhappy”. That we are bozos if we can’t just “stop worrying” and put up a brave smile. Actually when we are worrying, the last thing we need is advice like “don’t worry, be happy!”, “you are worrying too much, unnecessarily”, “everything will work out perfect”………..

 

Hey lovely folks, by the time we are paralysed by worry, the worry has already worked it’s way into our body and it’s wise to accept that worry has already entered the front door and it’s too late to do anything else except say:

 

“Thank you worry, for visiting me. I promise I will not try to fight you and spend all my energy trying to force you to go away because I have tried this before and it has made both of us very unhappy. I will simply pay attention to the physical energy you bring into me, I will simply let you bounce around my body and not fight you. Because fighting you will simply increase the agitation. “

 

Worrying is neither good or bad. It’s what we do with it that matters.

 

In the long run, worry is actually a great teacher that can eventually guide us in our journey of transformation. But for now, it’s enough that we welcome worry, allow it to stay, and simply accept that it’s here to stay for a while. May be we can generously and  mentally allow worry to stay as long as it likes. And by generously allowing it to stay without fighting it, it might choose not to stay for so long and let itself go sooner.

 

In the meantime, we can treat worry as a temporary visitor who is there minding it’s own business while we put all our awareness in the present moment. Be mindful of what we are doing.

 

If we are washing the dishes, we simply invite worry to just have a rest and we put 100% of our attention on the dish washing. If we are walking, we pay our full attention on the sensation of our feet touching and kissing the ground.

 

Mindfulness liberates us from our mind looking for a fight with worry. Mindfulness will help us make peace with whatever is in our mind and whatever is in front of us.

 

I am curious, if we simply accept worry without too much struggle, wouldn’t worry choose to take a relaxing backseat and shrink to the size of a sesame, whereas if we try to fight it, wouldn’t worry just expand into a full blown monster within a millisecond?