What could you possibly be nervous about on a Friday at 2:23 AM? Your heart pounds once, twice, three times in your well fed, nicely comforted body. Anxiety works like that, because why not?
I start talking to myself, politely at first but with an undertone of suspicion. What am I anxious about now? And without further ado, my mind takes the bait, and there I am cuddled in a nice bed, with a roof over my head, making a list of why I should be nervous. With every negative thought, I hear my heart pound in approval. I had been experiencing such cycles for a while now, except I no longer get sucked into them so easily. All of a sudden, my eyes are wide open, and I find my body ready for a fight and unfortunately not for sleep.
That is where I stop myself. I have done something good by recognizing the pattern, but I have also done something much better: I found myself a meditation getaway wagon. Hear this:
I have panic wagon parked in my mind, one that I have made a routine of jumping into when negative thoughts take over. The panic wagon obviously drives in a panic, has a manic route and clearly goes nowhere but down. However, due to incessant practice, I have built a meditation wagon, one that I park right next to my panic wagon. That way, I have a choice when I feel stuck in a negative process.
So I lay in bed, at 3 AM on a Friday, wanting to panic but not allowing myself to get on that ride. So I chose my meditation wagon over my beat up panic mobile. Why? Well, the presence of a choice predisposed me to choose what was good for me.
What happens on the meditation wagon?
I jumped on and I felt disoriented at first, but as soon as I focused on my breathing, it started to move, and I recognized what I was doing. Imagine your mind is a book, and your thoughts are words. I was cramming all of the contents of my book into a single page, better yet, a single paragraph. The mess was blinding.
So as I rolled in my smooth meditation wagon, I visualized that book, and I started removing thoughts from the page I was on right then. One by one, most of the thoughts were cleared out, and many had been quite repetitive. My page became cleaner, and my mind got clearer.
The wagon came to a slow stop, I got off and I lay back down unto myself. The tactic goes as such:
Bury the dead thoughts, conserve the ones that produce good energies, and recognize the negative patterns in time, and always, ALWAYS have your getaway wagon ready.
Uplifting Letters 