It was a Sunday morning, and I was awakened by my husband’s alarm clock. I did not need to get up just then so I allowed my self to fall asleep. Immediately I drifted away to dreamland. In a very brief amount of time, maybe 5 to 10 minutes, my mind had created this very vivid scenario of me waking up to several missed calls from my mom. She was trying to tell me that my grandpa had passed away and that we needed to go to Montana ASAP.
I woke up knowing that it was a dream, but couldn’t help that my body and mind had been put into a state of anxiousness. Now, vivid dreams are pretty standard for me, which can be exhausting, but also extremely interesting.
The Creative Mind
I started to think about how imaginative the mind is, and how it is often the root of many of our problems if left to its own devices.
Who has ever created a worse case scenario in their head about something?….Anything? I imagine most people have. Where does this all come from? Why does my brain create such catastrophic scenarios that all of a sudden my mind is swirling and my body is activated by adrenaline? The truth is that it comes down to survival. Fear is a survival instinct, that protects us from harm. However, when there is no actual harm this fear turns into anxiety.
The other evening I was really struggling with anxious thoughts and I just could not fall asleep. I had about a thousand thoughts running through my mind about several of the projects I had going on. In the moment, as my mind was running in circles, I could catch myself and say, “Okay, what are you going to do about this at 11 o’clock at night?” But, at the same time, I just couldn’t stop my mind. I had created anxiety about all of the unknowns and I was trying to troubleshoot the worst case scenarios to see what I needed to do to prevent those from happening.
Eventually, I wore myself out and I fell asleep.
Lost Time
So, I missed a couple of hours of sleep…who doesn’t? But the reality is that missing time is a big deal. When we are devoting a lot of time to our worries, our regrets, our mistakes, our anxieties, etc. we are missing out on the things right at that moment. I miss subtle looks or tones or bits of information in a conversation because my mind has drifted. I lost hours of my day because I was paralyzed with anxiety that I just stared at the television. Perhaps I lost opportunities because I didn’t think I would be good enough. And perhaps I missed the opportunities to just soak in life because my mind was taking me to somewhere that doesn’t exist currently.
The truth is that life is full of pains and stressors, however, we can create more stress for ourselves and more pain for ourselves when we allow ourselves to leave the moment.
Take a couple of minutes today and just pay attention to the sights and sounds around you. See what you notice, that perhaps you hadn’t noticed before. And if you really want a challenge try not to judge any of these experiences. Just notice them. I notice new things regularly and try to allow my mind to clear as much as possible for certain moments of the day. I find myself happiest at those times.
