Practice mindfulness meditation
My 14-year-old son thinks the world is his. He is a real alpha-male and feels invincible. When he announced he was going out on a Friday night, I asked him where he was going, with whom, what time. All those annoying questions that mums ask.
I didn’t get any answers. When I asked him to be home by 10pm he shrug his shoulders and went. Walked out into the evening, no bike and no phone.
I wasn’t too happy about it all. But what could I do?
When it was 11pm, there was still no sign of Ollie. I went to bed, hoping he would be home soon. Closed my eyes and fell asleep.
Can I hear you ask: why didn’t you worry?
I could have easily got myself into a state of frenzy, imagining horrific situations where my boy was being kicked, hurt, robbed…..
But would it have made sense?
There could have been ten, twenty potential nasty or dangerous situations, but there could have been the same number of safe and fun situations.
The best thing for me to do was to surrender and wait. And to start worrying when a policeman knocked on the door at 3am.
It didn’t come to that as just before 12 Ollie knocked on the door. He got a lift home and he had a fabulous evening.
Worry is fantasising
Often when we worry, we worry about a fantasy. A situation that hasn’t occurred yet, and most likely won’t occur either. Worry takes up a lot of energy and the worst thing is that it leaves you powerless. As IT, whatever it is, is not a reality, you can’t take any action.
The best action to take is to practice mindfulness MEDITATION
Research has shown that meditation affects the brain and neuropathways. Negative reactions as stress, fear, disgust, avoidance and worry are getting less to the point of disappearing as the result of regular meditations.
Quoting Professor Elaine Fox: ‘The problem is that when you think negatively all the time, that message gets reinforced and embedded in your brain. If you start thinking more positively, new pathways are laid down. The more positive you are the more reinforced these new pathways will become. What I call our “rainy brain” pathways are hard to shift especially if you have been very negative for a long time. The problem is that once established these negativity pathways prepare you to respond pessimistically to most situations. The “sunny brain” pathways on the other hand underlie a more optimistic frame of mind. The more reinforced these positivity pathways become the easier it will be to respond positively in the future’
If you want to have a good night sleep and not worry about your children all the time, meditation might be just the thing for you. Call me to check out how I can help you with this: 07967 717 131. It’s not difficult and it doesn’t cost a lot of time with my award winning Mariette’s One Minute Meditation.
