01 My Journey – Step 5
I have enough time for everything
I worry. I’m afraid of the future. I try to control everything. I drive myself on. I feel responsible for everything. I’m stressed.
What if I lose my money? My job? What if something happens to the children?
And yet there is hardly anything I can really control. Life is living me – not the other way round. I can’t even control my own thoughts. They come without my having invited them.
What I can learn: where I direct my attention. And which thoughts I believe.
“There are two days in the year on which I can do absolutely nothing: yesterday and tomorrow.”
Renate and Maria are sitting next to each other on a plane. Suddenly, turbulence. Renate thinks: we’re going to crash. She believes it. Pulse up. Sweat. Muscles clenched. Panic.
Maria has the same thought. But she doesn’t believe it. She lets it go. No alarm. No panic. Both land safely.
It’s not things that are bad. Only the thoughts I have about them.
Fear and worry always arise when I allow my thoughts to wander into the future. I picture everything that could happen. But how is it today? Isn’t everything actually fine today?
I can still make plans. What matters is the inner attitude I do it with. Relaxed and from a place of clarity – or in permanent panic about whether everything will go well. In the first case I am free. In the second I get thrown like a pinball from one loop of worry into the next.
Language gives us a hint: I make myself worry. Nobody but me produces my fears. I am the one feeding them – with attention and belief.
Thoughts come and go. If I give them attention – if I believe them – they grow. Why is my attention so drawn to certain thoughts?
It can be experiences. Childhood conditioning. Habits I inherited from my ancestors. The way I handle thoughts becomes routine.
What if I could change that? If I can learn to direct my attention?
Yes. That is the road I want to take.
Our brain doesn’t distinguish between real and imagined. Whether it’s real danger or only the idea of it – the alarm system is fired up.
Body on standby. Fight or flight. Once the danger is over, the body needs hours to settle again.
If in the meantime I generate new worries – my body bathes permanently in the alarm cocktail. Tense. Sleepless. Too little laughter. I suffer. And I burden the people around me.
I want out of this. I want out of my control room.
The magic word is: surrender. Life is already living me. I might as well relax into the here and now.
Sounds simple. It isn’t. Luckily I’m doing well – very well, in fact. I’m learning this. Step by step. At my own pace.
“If I compare myself with anyone, then only with myself.”
What happens when I worry? I take a closer look.
An uneasy feeling creeps over me. I direct my attention to it. My head analyses: is there danger? Result: yes. I believe it. My alarm system kicks in. From now on I perceive the world only through this looming danger. Stressed. Anxious. Panicky.
Renate is sitting at home working. Her ten-year-old daughter is out on her bike with her friends. Suddenly: an uneasy feeling. Something could happen to her. Her head immediately produces images. Accident scenes. Dangerous junctions. At one of them something did happen once.
She believes it. She becomes restless. Keeps looking out of the window. Wonders whether she should go and look for her.
Her daughter? Completely in the here and now. Carefree. Cheerful. At six o’clock she comes home unharmed.
I’m now learning to direct my thoughts. What I need for that: mindfulness.
In four steps:
1. I come into the here and now.
2. I notice with love what is happening inside me right now.
3. I accept what I can’t change – and change what can be changed.
4. I move in a new direction.
1. I come into the here and now
I breathe deeply in and out again. I follow the air into my lungs and out again. I tense my pelvic floor – as if I were stopping the flow of urine – and let go again. My shoulders drop. My arms hang heavy.
I relax my face. I yawn. I release the tension on my forehead.
I tell myself who I am right now: I am a woman on a chair, breathing. What is not all right here and now? What can I do right now?
I notice my thoughts wandering into the future. I let them go. I don’t need them right now. There is nothing I can do right now. I am only a woman on a chair, breathing.
Fear and worry always arise when I allow my thoughts to wander into the future. And yet only the here and now is real. Everything else is an illusion in my head.
This is the most important moment of my life. I have no other.
I have arrived. I am home.
Home is not a place. It is a state. It sets in when I return from my world of thoughts into the here and now. I follow my senses. What do I hear? What do I smell? What is touching my skin? What do I see? What do I taste?
I have left the control room. I surrender to life. It is already living me. My heart pumps. I breathe. I don’t have to do anything at all. I trust life.
I work that into my everyday life. Notes around me: “Here and now.”
It becomes routine. I come back faster and faster. The entries in my DoD about fears and worries become rarer. I am patient. I have enough time to practise. I’m doing really well.
2. I notice with love what is happening right now
Often I don’t even notice that something isn’t right. I’ve made myself so comfortable in my control room. So many tasks every day. Monitor everything. Organise everything. Function like clockwork.
I need this pressure. This stress. It drives me on. Sometimes I wake up at night – have I overlooked something? Am I making a mistake?
Does it really have to be that way?
My body has known for a long time. Tense neck. Back pain. Headaches. Bad sleep. Stomach ache. It sends me signals. I’m learning to hear them – as what they are. My body would like to be treated better.
The soul says to the body: “You tell her, she doesn’t listen to me.”
In the evening I write in my DoD. Another stressful day. My head is pounding. My neck is tight. I close my eyes. I breathe deeply into my belly. I notice what I feel. I don’t judge myself. I don’t tell myself off.
I am kind to myself. I am on my way.
Simply through noticing, something begins to dissolve. My body is grateful that I notice it. That I take its signals seriously.
The diagnosis is already the medicine.
Simply through noticing, breathing, feeling and becoming aware of what I can control – and what I can’t – the change begins.
I gain distance from my merry-go-round of thoughts. As if my true self could watch from a certain distance. I am not my thoughts.
I worry about my daughter. I notice that with love. “Yes. I love her. I don’t want anything to happen to her. It is completely fine that I have these thoughts. I am a good mother.”
But I don’t allow the fear to get me in a stranglehold. She is out with her friends. She’s careful. I’m happy for her. I relax into this moment. I trust my daughter.
3. I accept what I can’t change – and change what can be changed
I want better weather. More guests at my event. Fewer crowds at the sights. More orders. More calls from friends. A different partner. Or at least a different version of him.
I don’t accept reality as it is. That costs an enormous amount of energy. And I won’t win this fight.
I picture this: I am blind and I’m in a room I don’t know. I feel my way forward. I bump into a chair. I move around it. I reach a wall. I feel my way along it until I find the door.
No annoyance. No fight. I couldn’t have known the chair was there.
And yet every day I stand in front of a wall – and hammer against it. Those people should get off this platform. My daughter should finally come home. I’m fighting a losing battle.
It is not what happens to me that is the problem. It is what I think about it.
The viewing platform is full. Children shouting. Crowds. I can’t change that right now – so I take a deep breath. I accept reality as it is. Without judging it as bad. I relax into the moment. I make the best of it.
I have choices. I can leave earlier. I can give the sight a miss.
But – what happens to the people I’m with then? Maybe they don’t find the situation unpleasant at all. They want to go in. Can that be arranged if I don’t come along?
A no to you is a yes to me. But what happens to the we then? Am I really prepared to give up this experience – or do I secretly wish I could simply let go?
Life keeps offering me the chance to practise. In the DoD I describe these moments. What would have happened if I had put my displeasure aside?
What if I had got on the chairoplane with the others – through the air on my little seat – and given up control completely for a few minutes?
And if that still frightens me too much – completely fine. I accept that with love. Simply by becoming aware of it, I have already set something in motion.
Next time I’m no longer only a passenger. I notice that my thoughts are resisting reality. I ask myself: can I change something – or is the only option to relax into it?
And if I don’t manage it yet – I accept that with love too. I accept that I can’t accept yet. I am on my way. I stay centred. I’m doing really well. I have enough time for everything.
I choose a sentence – and write it on notes that I place everywhere:
I say yes to what is. I surrender to life. I relax into the moment. I let go of my ideas of how things should be. I make peace with myself, with the moment and with the people around me. I change my physical state from solid to liquid or gaseous.
4. I move in a new direction
When I manage to distance myself from my thoughts – when I recognise that they are a product of my imagination – I come to rest. And then I can ask myself: what do I actually want? What is my reality?
But that only works once I am really free. Free of fear and worry. Of annoyance and anger. Of neediness and greed. Then I have access to myself again. I sense intuitively which way I want to go.
I train that in everyday life.
I let go of the thought that a large crowd stresses me. I swim along with the crowd. I surrender to the moment. No alarm. Yes, there are a lot of people here. Many of them tense too. But there’s no reason. Everyone just wants to get from A to B.
Maybe I catch somebody’s eye. I let him go first. I smile. I ask for directions. Suddenly I’m no longer in an anonymous crowd – I’m dealing with a person. One like me.
We are like two dots of colour in a grey mass. And our colours rub off on the people around us.
I also let go of the thought that there is always too little. That other people always get more. That I am overlooked.
When I free myself from my scarcity thinking – I suddenly see the abundance. Air in abundance. Light and warmth. Nature, which thrives everywhere we let it. Abundance is everywhere.
What is not all right here and now? I am enough. I embrace my little one and take her under my protection at every step. It was me I was waiting for.
Coffee or tea? What feels good? Not: what thinks good?
Whenever I make a decision, I trust my feeling. The mind may check the facts. But my heart and my gut follow a higher intelligence.
Everywhere in my life there is abundance, joy, clarity, gratitude and stillness. I give my life a chance to enjoy me.
What I pass on
I remember Renate and her daughter.
If Renate doesn’t learn to direct her attention, she passes on her fear. The little one senses it as she leaves – her mother’s restlessness. She learns: when loved ones leave the house, you have to worry.
When she comes back, Renate tells her how glad she is that she is home safe. How much she worried. The daughter doesn’t want to cause her worry.
The next time she suggests to her friends that they play in the garden instead. But the friends want to go cycling. She stays at home alone.
Maybe as an adult she will still ask herself: could somebody worry? Should I just not go?
I write in my DoD that I showed somebody how much I worry about them. I thought that was a good thing. It’s my way of saying they matter to me.
True. But at the same time I’m exerting pressure. I’m trying to control. I’m getting the other person to avoid things that I consider dangerous.
What if I brought my needs and my daughter’s together? I can show her that I’m happy for her. That I want her to have this adventure. That I want her to enjoy it to the full.
When she comes back – I greet her warmly. I’m glad to see her safe. And because I have learned to direct my attention – I can show her: your adventures don’t burden me. They enrich me.
What I take in
My merry-go-round of thoughts is fuelled from outside. Permanently. Screens. Radio. Social media. News.
What am I taking in there? Which media do I allow to feed me? What does me good – and what frightens me?
“Tell me what keeps you awake – and I’ll tell you who you are.”
I take a critical look at my media consumption. I deliberately leave things out. I keep away from sensational news.
I know how search algorithms work – they serve me more and more of what I consume. I create my own bubble. And I can only free myself by switching it off.
I get in touch with a friend. I go into nature. I ask myself: who or what do I want to give my attention to? And who do I want to give my belief to?
I stay centred. It was me I was waiting for. I am right as I am.
I get off the merry-go-round.
I direct my attention. I let go of what I can’t control. I relax into the here and now. I notice what is – and accept it. I move in a new direction.
My DoD accompanies me. I write into it where the merry-go-round started up again. What pulled me in. And how I’ll recognise it earlier next time.
I am patient. I have enough time. I’m doing really well.