Thursday, April 2, 2009

Kicking the Habit . . .

This is one of my favourite topics ………. Parts of it have been liberally borrowed from the writings of Bro.Mike George, one of my favourite speakers with inputs from me ofcourse JKicking The Habit :
 It is the most common daily mental activity. It is the greatest misuse of mental energy. It is a complete waste of time. And it may even kill. It’s called .
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worry . . . . . . .
It’s good to worry isn’t it? Worry shows you care doesn’t it? It means you are cleverly anticipating the future. . . . . yes?  NO, NO and NO ! Worry is anxiety based on fiction. It is a series of negative thoughts which ‘disempowers’  the natural creativity of our consciousness, and it may eventually sabotage our physical digestive system. Why does worry thinking affect our digestive processes in particular? Perhaps it’s because when the fantasy of the catastrophe is held up against the light of reality, it is revealed for what it is, complete unreality, and is therefore hard to swallow!!!!!  However, as we invest our belief in our home made stories of the worst possible outcome, we stimulate the overproduction of certain chemicals in our bodies.
Winston Churchill once said near the end of his life. “When I look back on all the words I have read, I remember the story of the main who said on his death bed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life that never happened”
So what is worry? It is the regurgitation of a negatively perceived past projected into the future. It is the dredging up of memories of hurt, rearranged into an imaginary tale of conflict or loss still to come.
And yet despite most people acknowledging worry as a waste of time and energy, it is still one of the most common lessons we learn from our parents!!!!  The prevailing myth, which is handed down from generation to generation, is ‘it’s good to worry, it shows you care’. Which of course is utter nonsense!!!! Worry is fear and care is love, and fear and love are polar opposites. If you stop for a moment and become aware of why you worry about someone else you may also find it is motivated by selfishness – you are really worried for yourself. You are worried about how you will feel if something bad happens to someone else. In fact you are already feeling it!
Worry thinking is simply a learned habit, an addiction that is fed by a toxic daily diet of bad news, unfortunate events and tales of personal traumas of others. Don’t Worry Be Happy was the title of a hit song a few years ago. For many that is not easy, as worry has become a mental/emotional drug and just saying ‘be happy’ is a threat to that drug. Besides, many people think they are quite happy… worrying!!!   Do you???
Worry is also a subtle avoidance of now. . . . . . It is an escape into a negative future so that the reality of the present does not have to be fully faced and dealt with now. And yet, we can only find peace here and now, we can only live with love here and now. We can only be fully present and available for others in the here and now. Worry is absence. To be free of the worry habit we may have to ask ourselves why we don’t want to be here now, why do we broadcast our run to the future and proudly stake our claim to be prophets of doom and clairvoyants of gloom????? There is much to be achieved in the power of now, in just being … …    But then again its something which entirely depends on us. Are we ready  and committed enough to live in ‘the now’ ??? or do we find easy escape by worrying about the future………
Some questions to ponder………………
Question     :  What percentage of your thoughts are worry thoughts and what percentage actually happen ? ? ? ?
Reflection   :  Don’t Worry Be Happy! ! !  – What is the difference between worry and happy –  make notes consciously , what are the states of Happy mind / worried  mind . . .
Action          : At the end of the day today make a simple list of all things you worried about, then next to each item write down what you will actually do to tackle that ‘worry’. . . .
 
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