“Planned Worrying”

At the very basic level, the idea behind attaining higher levels of consciousness is a simple enough; staying grounded in the present moment, and experiencing both yourself and your outer world to the fullest extent possible. This means staying aware of physical, emotional, and intellectual energies both inside yourself, and outside in your environment. As simple as this sounds, it is a very hard thing to accomplish and sustain. When first starting down this path, we find our minds wandering a lot and falling back to lower levels of awareness.

The path to spiritual enlightenment is tough enough without having to remember to pay the credit card bills, or to pick up the milk. So how can we get around these obstacles that keep pulling our attention away from being fully present? By using “planned worrying.” Essentially, what you do is set aside a certain amount of time, say 15 minutes, at the beginning of your day or the night before (or really whenever works for you), and spend that time “worrying” and planning the things that need your attention for the day. Next, enter it into an online calendar (like Google calendar) that can send you text message alerts as and when action needs to be taken. It doesn’t matter what kind of reminder system you use, as long as it is something simple enough that you will stick to it.

Okay, so I realize this sounds like I am merely promoting being organized – which is true – but there are a few subtle benefits that are not quite apparent upon initial regard, that I would like to point out:

1. It frees you from having to remember and carry all your chores around in your head constantly
2. It frees you from worrying about forgetting to do these chores, and the resulting consequences
3. It allows you to bring more energy and awareness to the present moment
4. It allows you to spend less time in just your head, and more time in your entire body and environment
5. Eventually, it will hardwire your brain to completely stop worrying outside of your “worry time”

Modern life is hectic enough as it is, with a slew of concerns and things to deal with. We really don’t need to carry around extra weight in the form of things to do. Once you have gotten into this habit, you can even use this time to reflect on larger issues that you are facing – in areas such as your career, your relationships, etc – so you then won’t have to spend your energy during the rest of your day worrying about these things. Ultimately, though, the key to this tool is sticking to this practice long enough that you experience the benefits of being hardwired to worry only during “worry time.”

The more awareness you bring to what you are doing in the present, the greater the quality of the experience and the value of the outcome will be.