The Cleansing Power of Yoga by Swami Saradananda

Author:Swami Saradananda
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Watkins Media

WORRY JOURNAL

If you find yourself often overwhelmed with worry, start to keep a worry journal. This is a notebook where you can just write lists upon lists of all the things you’re worried about or are terrified will happen. Writing them down gets them out of your head and you can put them on the shelf until you have time to deal with them.

When you keep your journal, designate a time of day (not before you go to bed or first thing in the morning) to make a list of everything that is worrying you. Allow yourself to vomit up all these worries onto the page. If you’re a chronic worrier, you may need to do this at the same time each day so your mind is less anxious about when it gets to vent. Postpone worrying until the time you have set aside for the worry journal. If you absolutely can’t stop fixating on something you’re worrying about, write it down in the journal and put it aside for later until the appointed journaling time.

Postponing worrying in this way is effective because it breaks the habit of dwelling on worries in the present moment. There’s no struggle to suppress the thought or judge it, you simply save it for later. As you develop this ability to postpone your anxious thoughts, you’ll start to realize that you have more control over your worrying than you think.

When you have time, analyse your lists and sort out things you are worried about that you can do something about right now. We can call these productive worry items. If this is hard to do, then just pick one item each day to focus on, just one productive worry item. For example, you may have written down: “I am going on a trip, so I am worried about making plane and hotel reservations.” This is a productive worry because you can take action now by going online to do the research and make the reservations.

As you get better at this, try to deal with as many of the productive worry items as you can. With each one, evaluate it, come up with concrete steps for dealing with it and then put the plan into action.

This switches your thoughts from the problem to the solution. Once you have a plan and start doing something about the problem, you’ll feel much less worried.

It’s also important to ask yourself, “Is the problem something I’m currently facing or is it an imaginary what-if?” If the problem is an imaginary what-if, can you do something about the problem that would make you feel better? This is a kind of vibrational game you’re playing, to come up with ways that will help you to release resistance to what you’re worried about and do what comes to mind to make yourself feel better.

Once all the productive worry items on your list are dealt with, you will be left with unproductive and unsolvable worries for which you can’t identify a corresponding action.

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