Every day wisdom

I call it every day wisdom because it’s not just everyday wisdom but every day wisdom. And by that I mean, it’s not just ordinary wisdom but it’s wisdom we have to practice every day. Especially if we suffer from anxiety.

   So what is every day wisdom? It’s the wisdom to know that we have to keep coming back to this now moment over and over again. It’s the wisdom to know there is no final solution, no cure that is for always, but rather a cure that is only for now. And when you think about it, you realize that it can only be now. When else could it be? When else can we feel ok? When else can we experience this moment, the goodness of this moment, except now? So this is the ordinary wisdom that we who suffer from anxiety have to learn and have to keep re-learning each and every day. Especially because we are people who have somehow (for various reasons) allowed ourselves to be drawn into catastrophic thinking and then find ourselves panicking here and now because we’re imagining something happening in a future we in reality can know absolutely nothing about. The only cure for this is to bring yourself back to now. The only cure for this is to keep understanding, over and over again, what you are doing – to become aware of what you are doing and then to stop yourself from doing it. And this is something we can do. When we see ourselves spiralling into catastrophic thinking, we can say to ourselves, “OK, I can see what I’m doing now and I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m just going to stop and shift my focus to now.” This is what we can do every day, every time it happens. Every time we find ourselves wandering away from this moment, we can bring ourselves back by noticing what we’re doing and noticing what’s happening now. And This we can keep doing, over and over again.