We all have fears and worries: fear of failure, fear of rejection and embarrassment, worries about disease, getting old, not being safe, suffering, fear of death and the list goes on.
The fact is, with all these types of fear, it’s always about what you think may happen in the future and not about what is happening now. You are here in the present moment and your mind is wandering in the future, making statements and forecasts, creating scenarios and predictions. That is what is causing the fear. Your fear is just a projection of the mind.
The problem is that you identify with your mind and your thoughts (you think you are your thoughts), while you are actually not your mind and thoughts (you are the one observing your thoughts). And because thoughts are inherently unstable, you feel fear when you identify with them.
The more you think about the future, the more you give power to those thoughts and they start to control you. The trouble is that you can not compete with that mental projection into the future, because it’s not real, it’s imaginary and it’s always ahead. Your mind can’t distinguish real from imaginary and that causes you to feel anxious.
The only thing you can really compete with, and the only thing that is real is now, here, the present moment. And the more you live in the present moment, the more powerful and robust that present will be.
And then there is the past. When it comes to wandering into memory, all your mind does is playing movies of the past. While that time is already gone and behind you, you are still playing those same old movies over and over and over and it can drain you.
Be aware when your mind starts drifting off and clinging to those past movies. They are stored movies. It’s not your reality anymore. Stop the identification with your mind and it cannot have power over you.
Only the present moment is real, vivid and fresh. And you’re missing out of all this beauty if you’re not here in the present moment, but locked up in your mind playing old stuff or creating worrisome thoughts about a future that can not be foreseen. Your sick mind loves to do that or it can’t control you.
So exercise your present moment muscle to release yourself and you will feel light and free. Look around you this very moment. This is all there is. Enjoy it, relish it.
For the times you need to make use of your mind for work or practical purposes, maintain your mind with healthy, positive, attractive and productive thoughts and keep out unhealthy, negative, judgemental and pessimistic input. Don’t pollute your mind. It works with everything you put in there. You might as well use it wisely.
When the work is done allow yourself to take pleasure in the present moment and all your unhappiness, fears and worries will vanish.
I will leave you with some great quotes:
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind” ~ Napoleon Hill
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it” ~ Eckhart Tolle
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Always do what you are afraid to do” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time” ~ Mark Twain
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear” ~ Oprah Winfrey
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free” ~ Jim Morrison
“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you” ~ Eckhart Tolle
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live” ~ Marcus Aurelius
“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free” ~ Oprah Winfrey
“Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
“Do what you fear and fear disappears” ~ David Joseph Schwartz
This article about overcoming fear and worry is something I can seriously relate to and it has helped me. I have been listening to Eckhart Tolle a lot lately too and he seems to agree with what Klaus is saying. We can not predict what will happen to us in the future. So why even try? The only thing that is real is the present moment. Thank you so much for this article! It has been a big help to me!