Anxiety Is Not Your Enemy

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So, today we're going to explore a new way of understanding and relating to anxiety. So the reason we experience anxiety has to do with the way that our mind evolves. So for most of the last time, 200,000 years of human evolution, humans lived in Hunter-Gatherer tribes. It's only been a really short sliver of time that humans have anything like the way we live today.

So, of course our minds still operate in much the same way that they did in those caveman days. Now, in the caveman days, life was very dangerous and difficult. So to stay alive, our ancestors had to be constantly on the lookout for danger, threats, and problems to be solved. So the humans who were constantly anxious, alert and on the lookout for danger, they were the ones who survived and passed on their genes. Now, even though we live in a much more safe and comfortable world today, this mind that we've inherited is still operating in the same way.

It's always on the lookout for threats and problems. So, you might notice in your own life, right? Even if everything's okay, the mind tends to ruminate, worry and fixate on problems. But now, instead of worrying about saber tooth tigers or attacks from rival cleanse, we worry about our relationships, our health, our careers. So, this constant stress, worry and fixation on problems may have been a great survival strategy in the past. But these days it's unhelpful, painful and debilitating to be constantly stuck in that mode of being.

But I want you to really take something in here. Everything your mind is doing is in an attempt to protect and serve you Is trying to help you stay alive. So all that worry, that feels really unpleasant, actually comes from a place of care. Your mind is your friend, and anxiety is not an enemy. Anxiety is a normal, healthy emotion.

But when our minds get stuck in it, it's a bit like a product of an out of date, piece of software running in the mind. Right? So, but when we see this clearly, we can learn to befriend our experience and work with it in new ways. We don't have to try and get rid of all our anxiety. In fact, there's no way to do that. Anxiety's a natural part of being human.

What we can do is shift our relationship to it, so it's no longer debilitating for us. Now, mindfulness is a tried, tested and evidence-based path to unwind and transform that old software pattern in the mind that causes stress, anxiety, and suffering. With regular practice, you'll become a more calm, kind, and clear headed person — an island of sanity and peace in a frantic world. So in this spirit, I invite you to join us for today's meditation, where I'm going to guide you through a practice to help you befriend your experience and rewire your mind for greater happiness and inner strength.