Don't worry - Trust.

This is a tricky one. During an ordinary day worries keep creeping up on me in a rather sneaky fashion, so unnoticed that I sometimes wonder where the heck they came from in the first place. Clearly I have become immensely brilliant at worrying, so much so that I don't even realise I am doing it. I worry about that Jaffa cake I picked up and its content; later I feel a little anxious about the boy I work with being poorly; at the end of the day I catch myself wondering how long I will manage to maintain this beautiful soothing energy I soaked up in Mexico.


The moment that I became alert of our habitual worrying was when I listened to my mother in law from the heart. She was sincerely worried about me going to Mexico, doing 'odd' things there with 'weird' people (her words, not mine!). Even my father, who by any standard is open minded, practising yoga and reading esoteric books ever since I was a little girl, had written an email with a slight worrying undertone. 'Stay yourself', was the message in short. As if I was not to be trusted, or those organising this trip, or maybe even the people could brainwash me. Well, this trip has changed me fundamentally but this is because in the course of my reasonably long lifespan I have plastered myself with layers of 'should do's' and 'must not's' that alienated me from who I truly am. All I want to be is me again.


I appreciate their messages though as they come from a caring place in their hearts. Yet those words have a great dose of anxious thoughts stirred into them. And I know those thoughts. These nagging little annoying thoughts that we are not even aware of most of the time, but actually influence our lives so much. Occasionally I notice them paralysing me from the inside out, especially when I worry about potential future problems. When I predict what might be happening in the future, taking off into a place of 'what if's'. At this exact point I am so far away from living in the heart that the fear of losing the connection I worked so hard for to re-establish takes completely over. Not being in the heart, the here and now is what sucks.


Most of the time I do realise I have this wee voice(s) in my head that automatically tune into this invisible bubble of anxiety that seems to hang in the air influencing us all day, every day. One way of dealing with them - when I notice - is to sweep those thoughts away (to the left if one follows imagery techniques). But thank god we got our fellow humans to act as a mirror, right? It is so much easier to pick up on those 'bad' habit of worrying in others!


For this reason I am grateful to have loving people surrounding me to show me, that I still worry too. I see it more clearly when someone else does it and I can accept the learning lesson far more readily. I step back and attempt to view the situation from the heart. All I want to say is 'trust me', but I refrain. I love them and I try to hear through their anxiety the message behind the worries. What they mean is: I love you and I want the best for you.


Yes at this point I some of you might gag, it is cheesy and it is oh so simple. However, I tend to forget that actually I have got to trust myself; trust that what is happening takes place for a reason and that I am guided in what I am doing. Rather than feeling insulted when my friends are referred to as 'weird' and commence worrying about rejection, I got to trust.

Your Urban Yogi

by Philip Clegg