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Years ago when I was seeing a therapist for help with my anxiety and depression, he gave me a rather odd exercise to try at home. Presenting me with a sheet of blue round sticky dots, he told me to place them around my house in the areas I trafficked most. Because my anxiety and depression often had my mind reeling in every other direction but the present, this therapist proposed that the blue sticky dots be my “here and now” – a visual reminder to assert myself back in to the present, back to what was right in front of me. The idea was that I should try to see the reality – or things as they really were – and not allow my mind to wander into dark corridors and either fret over the past or worry over the future.
The blue sticky dots stayed up for a while, but time passed. Whichever dots didn’t fall off eventually were taken down when we moved (which was frequently in those early days of marriage). I forgot about the blue dots, and went about dealing with my anxiety and depression in a variety of other ways.
I’ve recently been struggling again with keeping my mind on the matters at hand. I don’t think you need to be dealing with anxiety and depression like I do to have this same dilemma. Many of us find ourselves in our busy lives worrying about what comes next, or questioning what it is we’ve already done. Our minds follow spiderwebs of thought and it can become overwhelming, leading us farther away from the core of things.
Whenever I feel most mentally and emotionally overwhelmed, I’ve started asking myself this one question: What is my here and now? When I’m in the grocery store, walking through the aisles, and my thoughts begin to race ahead to dinner time, soccer practice, tomorrow’s band concert, and so on and on and on, I stop myself and ask: what is my here and now? I am here, in the store, grocery shopping. That’s all. That’s all I need to worry about at this precise moment.
While it’s appropriate to plan ahead and prepare and be ready for what comes next, when you feel yourself caught in an avalanche of unproductive thought, I challenge you to ask yourself: what is your here and now? You might be surprised – and liberated – by the answer.
You can connect with Stacey on her personal blog, Tree, Root, and Twig, or on Twitter and Google+
