Saturday, December 4, 2021
Stress is a story in your mind about what you should do, about what you should have done, or about what you shouldn’t have done. Stress is always about what’s “the matter,” and it’s never truly about what’s happening in the present moment. Your mind produces a scary story of past and future, and your body reacts with a stress response. As you follow the words of your internal stress narrative, your attention is swept away into the future, or into the past, and you are living in a perpetual nightmare. Stress is a kind of fear that is induced by the scenarios that are crafted by the unchecked mind.
Fragmented attention also causes stress. Moving quickly from one distraction to another is stressful. Texts, emails, phone, internet, TV – all going at once, your attention never on the present moment for more than a nanosecond. Paying close attention to one thing at a time is the escape route to the running stress story in your head. Focus is your way “home.”
If you are stressed, the present moment is calling you back. It awaits for you, quietly. It waits for your undivided attention. You can continue to focus on the story of all that you have to do; all of the busyness; all of the distractions; or you can start focusing on one thing at a time. Nothing happens in the future, and nothing happens in the past. When the future arrives, it’s always the present moment. Each thing that you’ll do today will happen in the present moment, so calmly devote your attention to present-moment things as they arise. Don’t perpetually “deal” with past and future by bouncing around a story in your head, all day long. Rerunning the stress story is getting old, and it’s just making you cranky. Try working on a new plot, one where your attention is devoted to something worth paying attention to!