As a child, and much into my adulthood, I spent countless hours worrying about things that I could not change, things that I had no control over, and often things in the future that never even happened. This created a lot of suffering for me — often unnecessary suffering — that I had difficulty finding a way out of.
We all can get caught in this kind of mental “time traveling.” This is part of our human conditioning, and one of the places our mind defaults to when we have down time. We ruminate about the past. We worry about the future. We get caught in self-referential thoughts such as “how is this going to affect me?” and “what are they going to think about me?” These kinds of thoughts pull us away from the present moment, and often, they can spiral us into negativity, fear or overwhelm.
But what I have learned through mindfulness practice is that as I become aware that I am time traveling, these kinds of thoughts often loosen their grip. They just become thoughts — mental constructs — not absolute truth. And from this place of awareness there is more space to intentionally choose where I want to rest my attention, rather than getting pulled away automatically to places far and away.
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