What could possibly go wrong...?
As I finished up a breathwork session with a lovely client the other day, I asked them how they were feeling.
“Sooooooo peaceful!” they said. “My ADHD brain is always chasing this and that thought, always worrying, always flapping. But right now, it’s just… still.”
They paused for a moment, and I saw a line crease their otherwise tranquil face.
“What’s going on for you right now?” I asked.
“Welllllll… now I’m starting to worry about the fact that I’m not worrying!”
They laughed at themselves.
“I’m worrying about the worrying coming back!”
Ah, our anxious, overthinking, imaginative little nut-jobs of minds… how they like to keep us on our toes!
A 2010 study by Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that the average person spends almost 50% of their time watching replays of the past or fretting about the future. That’s 50% of the time where you’re not in the moment. 50% of the time you’re not really with the people you’re with. 50% of the time in which you’re not living the life in front of you.
No wonder the global mindfulness industry is worth a couple of billion dollars and rising…
I’m going to stick my neck out and say that being more present is the most impactful change you can make in your life.
You experience life in a completely different way. (In fact, you can choose how you experience your life.) Your relationships improve. Your stress reduces (a LOT), so your health improves. And who wouldn’t be up for that?
My client told me that they spend a lot of time thinking about all the ways things can go wrong, playing out future (and entirely imaginary) disaster movies in their head. This is called catastrophising, and I’m sure you can relate, because we’re all prone to it at times.
One simple way to interrupt a worry spiral is a little grounding exercise that gently brings you back into the here and now. You can try it wherever you are.
Take a moment to notice:
5 things you can see
4 things you can feel
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
There’s nothing clever about it - it just gives your nervous system something real to tune into, instead of whatever disaster movie your mind was playing a moment ago.
That’s just one of the many tools I share for working with catastrophising. There are three more in a free little PDF I’ve created, which you’re welcome to download and use in your own time.
And if you’re interested in learning how to work with your monkey mind more deeply, I also have a recorded version of my Mind Control for Beginners workshop available.
With love,
Mia
If you’d like more reflections like this, I share them in my weekly e-letter - little love letters with stories, questions to sit with, and gentle reminders to step off the hamster wheel. You can join below👇 .
