What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Arguing With Imagination
August 24 2010
Worry is your mind’s attempt to know what it doesn’t know. It’s your mind’s attempt to figure out something that can’t be figured out.
It could be about some future event, something happening far away from you, or someone else’s thought process. Whatever it may be, your mind simply has no way to learn what it badly wants to know. In its desire to know, it uses imagination to create possible explanations and dream up potential outcomes.
So if you feel an unexpected pain in your side, you might start thinking that you have appendicitis. Or if your lover doesn’t call, you could start imagining that he or she is seeing someone else.
If you’re feeling vulnerable in some way — whether you’re launching a new project into the world, going on a big job interview, or facing a confrontation with someone important to you — you might start worrying about other people’s reactions.
When your imagination creates an uncomfortable story (such as appendicities or rejection), you’ll probably start trying to talk yourself out of it. Your logical self will present reasons why what you’re imagining isn’t true. And your desire to know may lead you to create other (perhaps worse!) alternatives. The mental dialogue heats up into an argument within your mind — a disagreement between different thought processes — and before you know it, you’re deep in feelings of anxiety, fear, and worry.
Yet as real as the scenarios your mind creates may feel — they’re only thoughts, products of imagination. What you’re experiencing when you worry has nothing at all to do with reality. What you’re experiencing is your imagination, made painful and dramatic by your internal mental argument with and resistance to the story your imagination has created.
And worry doesn’t lead to constructive action, better planning, or more-successful outcomes. Quite the contrary: when you aren’t tied up in knots of worry, you’re far more able to assess what’s actually happening, make rational choices, and take sensible action.
Of course, as I’ve written many times in these articles, you can’t control how you feel through an act of willpower or a decision. So what can you do when you find yourself in an argument with your imagination? Here are some suggestions to help you see through your feelings of worry and begin allowing them to dissolve.
Experience your worry
Worrying isn’t comfortable. It’s a high-stress, anxious feeling. It may even include panicky sensations of being out of control.
So it’s natural to try to talk yourself out of worrying with rational arguments, or transcend or suppress it through meditation or other practices.
Instead, allow yourself to experience your feelings without trying to change them. Notice where worry shows up in your body. Do your shoulders tighten? Is it your stomach that knots up? Perhaps you feel the tension in your arms or hands as you literally try to grasp for understanding.
When you realize where worry lands in your body, you’ll start to become aware of how it begins creeping in, before it becomes a full-fledged emotional experience. And that means you’ll have a chance to explore what’s really happening before you’re deep in the throes of being worried.
Notice the story
As you begin to see how worry first starts showing up for you, you’ll find yourself much more able to notice the story your imagination is creating.
Just notice it. Don’t judge it, and don’t try to talk yourself out of it. Trying to address worry with logic doesn’t work — and actually tends to make things even more painful.
Instead, observe the thought process. Don’t try to suppress your feelings — they’re real and deserve to be experienced and expressed — but notice how the thoughts create the physical reaction and escalate the emotional impact.
One client said, “It’s incredibly predictable. First, I feel the tension in my shoulders. Then I hear my thoughts running wild — creating stories about how (for instance) something must be wrong because someone didn’t call when I expected or thought they ‘should.’” She quickly added, “And noticing the ‘should’ is a huge clue for me that I’m making up stories!”
Allow not knowing
As I mentioned above, the true reason for worry is your mind’s urgent desire to know at any cost.
Yet — as you may have noticed in consciously feeling your physical and emotional experience — that cost is extremely high.
What would happen if instead of making up those stories, you allowed not knowing to simply be your experience? What if, instead of struggling to find a way to know, you simply acknowledged that you don’t know — and acknowledged that those stories are just stories, stories you created from your desire to know?
At first glance, that might seem too overwhelming to be possible. The fear of not knowing runs deep in most people.
But when you truly allow yourself to not know, and if you allow yourself to notice the pain you feel when your mind struggles to know what it can’t know, you may find it’s not as scary as it seems. As one of my clients told me, “Not knowing is actually a tremendous relief. It’s amazing how I relax when I simply remind myself that I don’t know, and it’s okay to not know. Then I can start getting curious about what might happen.”
Which leads to my final suggestion...
Become curious
Instead of struggling to know and making up stories about what might be happening and what might lie in your future — simply become curious.
It’s difficult to worry or feel afraid when you allow curiosity space to grow and bloom.
Curiosity opens you to possibilities you can’t perceive when you’re contracted around a knot of worry or fear. And when you see those possibilities, and allow curious (instead of fearful) anticipation, you’ll discover far more effective ways of dealing with whatever is coming your way.
And your life will be a lot more peaceful and enjoyable!
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow — it empties today of strength.” Corrie ten Boom, 1892-1983, Dutch Christian holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis in World War II.
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