You worry all the time. It feels like it consumes you. Everything is urgent, and underneath it there is a quiet fear that time is passing you by, that you are here but not really here, not present for your own life. I understand that feeling. And I want to say something gently at the start: the worry is not a sign that something is wrong with you. Your mind is doing exactly what it was built to do. The problem is that nobody taught you how to work with it.
Your Mind Is a Problem-Solving Machine, and That Is the Whole Issue
You are gifted with this mind that is a problem-solving machine. It is constantly scanning, picking things out, warning you before anything has even gone wrong. There is a problem here, there is a problem there, let me solve it. Your nervous system is wired for survival, so it does this all day long, and then it ruminates, turning the same thing over and over.
That is what worry is. Thinking about something again and again and again.
And notice this: worry is almost never a picture of how amazing things are going to be. It is nearly always the worst case, or somewhere near it. The mind is not malfunctioning when it does this. It is protecting you the only way it knows how. But left unchecked, that protection becomes a wave that keeps crashing on the beach, one after the other after the other, with no space between them.
Paying Attention Is Already the Practice
There are two parts to this. The first is paying full attention to the very thing you are doing right now.
That is a practice in and of itself. Eckhart Tolle built almost his whole body of work, The Power of Now and all of it, on essentially that one thing. Focus on the present moment. It sounds simple, and it is simple. But simple does not mean easy. A lot of the time, simple is the hardest thing of all.
So if you are walking, feel the full experience of walking. Your feet touching the ground. The air on your skin. The temperature. The sounds around you, birds in the trees, cars going past, people. Actually paying attention to the full experience of this moment.
When you do that, something shifts. The chatter in the mind does not disappear. But there seems to be a distance.
That voice, if you practise it, seems like it is just in another room.
Osho described it that way in one of his meditation recordings, and I have always thought that is a good picture of what getting present actually gives you. Not silence. Distance. By immersing yourself completely in what is here and now, a gap opens up between you and the noise. That distance can feel like space, and that spaciousness can feel like relief. If it lasts, it starts to feel like freedom from the constant churn.
Enjoying this? Get my latest sent straight to your inbox.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Write the List, Then Take the Smallest Possible Step
The second part is more practical, and it matters just as much.
Sit down and, if it helps, list out all the things that actually need sorting in your life. I will be honest about my own experience here. There were times when things were not going great, and instead of addressing the problems, I would just get into my head about them and leave them. And here is what I learned the hard way: when I left the problems, they did not go away. They got bigger and worse.
It got to a point where it got really bad, and that is usually the moment we finally decide, right, it is bad enough now, I need to do something. I hope you are not there yet. You can decide before it gets worse, wherever you are.
So once you have the list, look at one problem and ask what steps it actually takes to solve it. Then start with the smallest, most manageable step you can possibly take.
Sometimes that step is tiny. Pick up the phone and make a call. Send an email. Go onto a website and find out some information. Little things. But the moment I started doing one little thing, the emotional result was that I began to feel a bit better. It switched me out of the worry and fear into, oh, I feel a bit good about myself for solving this one tiny part.
The Snowball Effect: How Small Wins Rebuild You
Here is what happens next, and it is the part most people miss.
Once you have done one small thing and felt that little lift, you look for the next thing. Maybe something slightly bigger this time. You put some energy into it, you complete it, and the emotional result is even stronger. You feel even better than you did a moment ago.
It starts to build a snowball effect of feeling good. And pretty soon you realise something has shifted. You have broken the pattern of worry and fear and spiralling downward, and instead you are making progress. Even if it is just a tiny chip out of a much bigger mountain of things you have to sort, you made progress today. That is what you could manage. And that is great. You get to sleep, and you get another chance at it tomorrow.
It starts with the smallest things. Set an alarm. Turn your phone off before you sleep so you do not get bombarded with the world's demands the second you wake. And when the alarm goes, get up, get out of bed.
I learned one of these from a Navy SEAL years ago, reading or watching something, and he said: make your bed. And I thought, that sounds ridiculous. But I started doing it, and it is crazy how that one tiny practice works. Spend two minutes, straighten it out, done. The moment you wake, you have already done something. I can do this. I have done that, so what else can I do? And you keep stacking small wins through the day.
Progress Is the Point
A lot of us are carrying more than we let on. In the last four years especially, many people found themselves knocked off their trajectory and have not recovered, or are still recovering. We sugar-coat it. Everything is great, everything is great. But underneath, there is a lot going on, and a lot of it is not fun.
So we underestimate the little things. We underestimate how they accumulate through a day.
Right now, wherever you are reading this, you have probably got a few hours before bed. So here is the question I would leave you with: what is one little thing you can do, straight after this, to bring that feeling of progress?
Because sometimes I wonder whether the real definition of happiness is progress. Not just doing things for the sake of it, though doing things often does move you forward. But even the simple sense that you are making progress gives you a sense of achievement. And that, quietly, is a kind of happiness within.
Start there. One small step. Then tomorrow, another.