Latest / AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation / [EP16] How to overcome worry

Transcript

[EP16] How to overcome worry · AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation

• 0:00
  I feel consumed by worry all the time. How can I trust that things will be all well?
• 0:04
  Everything feels urgent and I'm scared of time passing by me, passing me by time where I haven't been present.
• 0:16
  So this is, you know, it's a question of paying attention, right?
• 0:20
  Like so whatever it is that you're doing, it's a training of the mind.
• 0:24
  and you know if you're in a difficult situation right now where there's a lot of worry and concern
• 0:30
  firstly there's two parts to it i'd say one is paying full attention to the very thing that
• 0:37
  you're doing right now and that is a practice in and of itself akart toli and his book uh of the
• 0:43
  power of now and obviously got his work it's just that it's just that one thing as a spiritual
• 0:49
  practice. Focus on the present moment. Easier said than done. Simple doesn't mean easy. Simple
• 0:56
  a lot of times means, you know, it can be quite challenging. So that one thing that you're asking
• 1:02
  about is really a spiritual practice already. You know, paying full attention or paying any
• 1:08
  attention to the thing that you're doing right now. And we are gifted with this mind that is a
• 1:13
  problem-solving machine so therefore you know it's constantly going to be picking things out
• 1:19
  that it says oh there is a problem here there's a problem there let me solve it or before it does
• 1:26
  that it actually warns us about the so-called problems that we should be concerned about in
• 1:32
  case we need to know that information because you know our brain our nervous system is wired for
• 1:37
  survival as i've said you know many times so it's going to do that it's going to pick things out and
• 1:43
  over it so you know you call it worry I agree think about it over and over again and worry
• 1:50
  and you know worry could be like worrying about it going really bad generally worry isn't a
• 1:56
  visualization of how amazing it's going to be it's normally the worst case you know or thereabouts
• 2:03
  so it's a training and a retraining of the mind to focus on the very thing that you're doing right
• 2:10
  now whatever it is that you're doing in any moment so if you're walking you know the full experience
• 2:16
  of walking your feet touching the ground the air on your skin the temperature the sounds around you
• 2:24
  you know if there's anything around you like birds in the trees or anything like that or vehicles
• 2:29
  going past on the street or people you know like actually paying attention to the full experience
• 2:36
  of the present moment. And when we do that, what happens is the chatter in the mind doesn't
• 2:43
  disappear, but there seems to be a distance. So it's like that voice is, you know, if we practice
• 2:49
  it, I think Osho said this in one of his meditation recordings years ago, I heard that that voice,
• 2:55
  you know, seems like it's just in another room. And I think that's a good kind of depiction of
• 3:01
  meditation and the practice of getting present.
• 3:06
  So by paying attention to what is here and now and immersing ourselves completely into
• 3:11
  it, the mind and the chatter of the mind, there is a distance.
• 3:17
  And that distance can feel like space or spaciousness and that spaciousness can feel like a relief.
• 3:27
  And if it's prolonged, it can feel like a sense of freedom from this constant, you know, it's like waves crashing on a beach, just like constantly one up to the other, up to the other, up to the other.
• 3:38
  And then on a more practical level, I would say also, you know, whatever you're doing, being present.
• 3:44
  So this can also be an exercise where you're completely present.
• 3:49
  Sit down and if it helps you to list it out, then list out all the things that actually need sorting in your life.
• 3:58
  There's definitely times in my life where I've had experiences where things were not going great.
• 4:04
  And there were times where there's a part of me that was, and I don't know if this is you, I'm just saying from my experience.
• 4:11
  you know when I look back at those times I wasn't addressing those problems you know I would just
• 4:17
  kind of get into my head about it and just leave those things and when I left the problems they
• 4:25
  wouldn't go away but they got bigger and worse you know for me to deal with so and that you know it
• 4:32
  got up to a point where it got really bad and that's the point when we decide right when we
• 4:40
  now and I need to do something about it hopefully you're not there you can just decide before it
• 4:46
  gets worse you know wherever you are and go okay here are the things that I actually need to do
• 4:52
  like I need to address you know and there's a very practical side to that and there will obviously be
• 4:58
  the mind having its say about it and therefore an emotional response to what the mind is saying
• 5:05
  and or whatever experience you're having right in the moment or accumulation of moments.
• 5:11
  And it's this constant kind of you're feeling things, right?
• 5:16
  Experiencing emotion like worry and things like that or fear.
• 5:20
  And then there is a very practical list of things to do.
• 5:23
  And each of those areas that you need to go and address, you could probably look at it
• 5:27
  on a very practical level and say, OK, for me to solve that one problem requires for me to take these steps.
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  and sometimes you know when you're wherever you are in your journey I'll speak to mine
• 5:40
  you know when I start when I was like starting to get myself back on my feet in those situations
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  I had to start with the simplest step that I could possibly take the smallest most manageable step
• 5:51
  that I could take and sometimes that smallest most manageable step might be pick up the phone
• 5:58
  and make a phone call or send an email or go onto a website and find out some information
• 6:04
  you know like little things like that start to add up and the moment i started to do one little thing
• 6:13
  the emotional result of that was that i would start to feel a bit better it switched me out of
• 6:19
  let's say the worry or fear into like oh i feel a little bit better a bit good about myself for
• 6:28
  This tiny part of this bigger problem that I know I have, you know, and it's one of the many problems I've got to solve right now in my life.
• 6:36
  Okay.
• 6:37
  And then off the back of that, I can go, okay, what's the next little thing I can do?
• 6:42
  And sometimes you feel like, oh, I can take the next task that is a little bit bigger than that last one that I just did.
• 6:48
  So let me just go and put some energy into that.
• 6:50
  And then you do that.
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  and out of doing that the emotional result of that would be like wow i feel even more good like
• 6:58
  even better than i felt a moment ago from that previous task so it starts to build this kind of
• 7:04
  snowball effect of feeling good of goodness and pretty soon you're like oh wow i've actually
• 7:14
  you know broken the pattern of worry and fear and spiraling downwards to i'm starting to make
• 7:21
  some progress and that feels good and even though it's just like a tiny little chip in the biggest
• 7:27
  scheme of all of the stuff that i have got to sort right now because you know maybe my life feels
• 7:31
  like a bit of a mess right now i've made some progress there and that's what i could manage
• 7:37
  today and that's great and you get to go to sleep and get another chance at it tomorrow
• 7:43
  and it starts with the little things like you know set an alarm turn your phone off
• 7:51
  before you go to sleep so you don't get bombarded with the world's demands on you
• 7:56
  and when you wake up when your alarm goes off wake up like get up get out of bed you know and
• 8:04
  And the first thing you can do, I learned this from, I don't know, I think it was reading
• 8:08
  or watching something from a Navy SEAL some years ago.
• 8:11
  And he was talking about make your bed.
• 8:13
  And I was like, what?
• 8:15
  That sounds ridiculous.
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  Make your bed.
• 8:17
  And so I started doing it.
• 8:19
  And it's crazy how that little thing, it starts with this tiny little practice of just making
• 8:28
  the bed.
• 8:29
  Spend two minutes, get up, rearrange the, whatever, and just make the bed.
• 8:34
  and you know it starts to build straight away the moment you wake up like oh i can do this i can do
• 8:40
  this day i can do this so i've done that what else can i do and i can make more progress through my
• 8:46
  day you know and build upon that and keep stacking things through your day that you are getting done
• 8:54
  because the part of us that you know kind of eats away is a result of over time maybe letting things
• 9:04
  slip you know or maybe something happened or you find yourself in a difficult spot right because
• 9:10
  of the trajectory that life went and i think a lot of people have had their own experience of that
• 9:15
  in the last kind of four years and still not recovered or recovering you know we've just
• 9:21
  kind of sugarcoated it's just like icing right on a kawadang pie it's just like oh everything's
• 9:26
  great everything's great but actually underneath there's a lot of stuff that people are going
• 9:30
  through and a lot of people experience a lot of things right now right like not fun things either
• 9:38
  so i think you know sometimes we underestimate the little things that we can do and the little
• 9:44
  things how they can accumulate in your day and you know right now it's about seven already
• 9:50
  um you got a few more hours before you get to bed maybe straight after this like what's one
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  little thing that you can do to bring that feeling of progress and sometimes I wonder if you know
• 10:04
  a definition for happiness is progress that we're actually making progress in our life doesn't just
• 10:10
  mean doing stuff but a lot of times when you do stuff you make progress other times just a sense
• 10:16
  of progress gives us a sense of achievement which is you could say you know can be equated to a
• 10:25
  Thank you.