Many of us, myself included, tend to slip into worry, doubt, and fear. Why that happens is a subject for another post (spoiler alert: I heard yesterday that many people only really create when we have a problem to solve, so, methinks, maybe we create problems in order to have an excuse to create).
I hang out in rooms where the prevalent solution offered to the worry groove in our minds is “stay in today.”
How do we do that, and what does it mean?
First, “stay in today” means just that. If I’m worried (whether I’m preoccupied with the rising temperature of the earth’s atmosphere, who might be elected president of the United States, or a relative’s life choices) by definition, I’m thinking about something that has not happened yet. So I’m standing in tomorrow (or at least not this moment), not today.
How I stay in today is to focus on what’s true at this very moment: I still have breathable air and drinkable water. I am free to write, think, and speak what I want to write, think, and speak. And the people around me are currently alive and living their own lives, regardless of their choices.
Sometimes I even physically grip something in the room, a table or a chair, and say, “This is real, not that.”
I’ve learned that worry is a form of negative fantasy. No matter how real it seems to me or how likely the scenario is, by worrying, I’m putting my own creative power into creating something that I don’t want rather than putting my creative power into creating something I do want.
When I focus on what is real today, there is no room for worry. In this worry-free space, I can actually let my powerful creative mind wonder, “What else is possible?” or “How does it get even better than this?” rather than “How does it get worse?” (which is the creative question asked in a state of worry).
Questions create the future, let’s be careful where we put them.
