A Life Hack for Ruminating and Fear

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.”  Jim Morrison

Some people spend much of their life confined by their own fears. Fear is a mind-made “never enough” story we tell ourselves that restricts us to the narrow past.  When we are fearful we embody our smallest, least generous selves and can inflict harm on ourselves and others.  Ruminating is replaying a story from the past and fear is when we approach the future by applying those same catastrophic thoughts. Think of a dog urinating, he’s got one leg in the past, one leg in the future and he is pee-ing all over the present. Much of what we fear is the unknown future. Our streams of thinking have enormous momentum. Our thoughts can be useful but are only a small part of ourselves.   We can train ourselves to see that thoughts are only thoughts and they can be changed to create a far better emotional landscape.  Much of what we do in coaching is to get under assumptions, and this practice that can be developed by any healthy person.

A Life Hack on Fear and Rumination:

• Make Friends with the Unknown.  When the bile of fear enters, decide to approach the feeling with curiosity. Investigate.  Making friends with the unknown requires fostering an approach that “all is well”.   This is not a suggestion to whitewash, deny, ignore or stuff reality, rather it creates a change in consciousness.  There will be an immediate shift.
• Don’t Take Thoughts so Seriously.  When sleep evades us and the mind is ruminating, make a decision to not take your thoughts as truth. You need not get dragged into the vortex.  Every thought wants to compete for your attention and thinks it’s the most important. There is real emancipation in not getting trapped in a breakaway thought that consumes you.   Thoughts are not the truth.
• Un-fuse from thoughts.  Go on a diet which eliminates fear and rumination for 2 weeks.  Stop believing everything you think, so air and light can enter your consciousness.  “Wisdom is not a product of thought,” says Eckhart Tolle.  Wisdom springs from giving someone or something one’s full attention.  Make friends with the unknown future and un-fuse from thoughts to let the wisdom in.  Finding a corner of quiet in the day will allow this to happen.