Rescheduling Worry

Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I'm going to share a technique called postponing worry. Now, before we demonize the worry mind, it's important to recognize that things like worry, anxiety and fear, all of these emotions have a place in the human experience. They're often trying to serve us in some way. And in mindfulness practice, it's always good to ask, what is this emotion trying to tell me? Is it informing me of something I need to attend to? I think we've all had experiences where these have been useful emotions and maybe have protected us.

And I think we've also had the experience of these emotions not being relevant to what's going on right now. We're maybe fabricating something in our own mind, or it does have something to do with what's happening in the future that is meaningful, but doesn't require our attention right now. And that's where the technique of postponing worry comes in. AKA rescheduling worry. So what does this look like? Well, let's say the mind says something like, ah, we need to worry about that thing next Wednesday.

You might say, ah, yes. Thank you mind. You're right. That is important. Since we're busy right now.

How about we worry about this on Monday from 5:00 to 6:00 PM. Does that work for you? And then the mind goes, okay. Yeah, that works for me. I'm really nervous, but I'm glad you care as well. Thanks for appreciating.

I'll talk to you on Monday at 5:00. We have to remember that these things anxious, thoughts are the mind trying to help us. And if we completely neglected or pretend like it's trying to ruin our life, it will only keep knocking at the door saying, Hey, there's something important. So you can do this technique in the moment when anxious thoughts arise, just reschedule when you'll do your worry block, or you can make a regular appointment on your schedule. It could be a few minutes each day or, or once a week that you dedicate to some good skillful, useful worrying.

Remember, anxious thoughts are trying to help you. So instead of getting angry at them, meet them with appreciation, then create a friendly compromise by scheduling your worry for a more convenient time. Thank you for your practice. And we'll start to settle into the meditation. Take care.