When Fear Takes Over | How To Come Back

In this short talk, we look at how fear can quickly push us over the edge. I share an experience where fear got the better of me and what I learned. This simple practice will help you manage fear more effectively and be more present.

Transcript

We evolved to focus on what could go wrong and so 80% of our thoughts are fear-based and even though we were at the top of the food chain and you know every time we walk out our front door there is no fear of being attacked by anything and we live in the simulation of just constantly imagining all of the things that could go wrong because of this carryover of how of the world that our ancestors lived in for tens of thousands of years and so we spend a lot of time in fear and it is fear about the future what's going to happen to me in the future how am I going to handle it in the future not how can I handle it now how will I handle this in the future that's always what pushes us over the edge and so I'll actually I'll share a little I'll share this talk I've told this story before and it's in a talk somewhere on Insight Timer but there's a good little teaching in it that can really help us and it's one of those teachings that people come back to me a lot and say that it has really helped them so there was so this was happened to me I was in um it was in 2016 I was in Nepal doing a one-month retreat at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and this was um you know these were tougher private retreats so I wasn't with the group of people where we were going to the hall and meditating together we were hearing talks it was a private retreat we were kind of those of us doing a private retreat were kind of towards the back of the monastery and and you had to apply to do these kinds of retreats they had to they wanted to make sure you had you knew what you were doing you weren't going to go crazy and literally you were just in your room all day meditating and you could go to the dining hall for your meals and I would go to the dining hall for meals just to get outside but you were in silence you weren't supposed to be engaging with anyone there that was on kind of the bigger group type retreats and um I can't remember exactly now it's like the sixth or the seventh day and I had just finished my first sitting of the day and I was doing a little yoga and um I remember my mind started wandering this is why we have to be so careful even when it's wandering in a good way so it starts wandering and I'm starting to think about wow like okay it's been let's say it's six days I you know I'm on the sixth day of the retreat and I'm doing pretty well and I mean I was realistic that this was going to be a tough retreat but I was really thinking about it like yeah you know you're doing all right you've got your routine you you kind of know when you're you know doing all the different you know what time am I meditation, When am I doing some yoga, When am I doing some study and uh it's like you know you're not doing too bad and I thought okay so you know I got 24 days left to go like you know I got this in the bag like no problem and then because my mind's already wandering and and kind of thinking you know it starts scanning and I thought oh hang on um you know there's 31 days this was in August I'm like there's 31 days in August so actually the retreat's 31 days not 30 days so okay there's there's 25 days left of the retreat and then my next thought was but hang on you're not leaving August 31st you're leaving September 2nd so I'm like oh what oh my god so actually now there's like 27 days left of the retreat and then I'm realizing it's the morning like you can't really count today so you've got 28 days left of the retreat and this all happened probably within a 30 second span that my mind's just all of a sudden spinning and I'm and and it started right started with oh man you're doing great like you got this and then all of a sudden it was like oh my god this retreat's getting longer and longer and then it was the fear how am I going to do this and literally I crumbled in that moment and this happens anyone who's done long retreats will tell you always have a moment where you crumble and I mean I was literally like I'm not going to be able to do this oh my god I there's no way I can be in this room for another 28 days like when it was 24 days a few minutes ago I could handle it but now it's too much and I mean I was really literally panicking and I was really going through all these scenarios I'm going to go back to Nepal I'll go back to Dubai I've got to just get out of here no one will know that I didn't finish the retreat but there's just no way I can do this because all of a sudden what I had done is I had imagined the enormity of the retreat now and all happening right now I'd brought it all in and the fear of the whole retreat the entirety of it was so overwhelming it literally just had me in the fetal position on the floor and then after a few minutes of just panic fear absolute fear I just had this thought just arose to arose somewhere and it just said is this moment okay and I don't know why I paid attention to it Michael is this moment okay I kind of looked around my room I could hear the birds chirping outside and I was like okay well yeah this moment is okay this moment's okay and I started to calm down I started to feel less less afraid and then a few more minutes went by and I just checked in again is this moment okay I'm like yeah this this moment's okay this moment's okay and I just kept doing that and I went up to the dining hall then and you know once it became time for breakfast and and I would just keep checking in is this moment okay and and then after breakfast I actually went to the stupa gardens and I thought maybe I do need a little you know I should sit outside for a little bit and I just sat on a bench and then it was like maybe every 20 minutes just is this moment okay I wasn't meditating I wasn't journaling I wasn't reading I wasn't doing anything I was just realizing I had to stay in this moment I couldn't go beyond this moment because the fear of how I would handle the retreat would become too much and and after a day and a half of sitting on the bench I mean I went to the dining hall for meals and I need to go sleep in my room and then I was like okay I'm all right again I'm okay and of course it was a good lesson it was a big breakthrough was it was a deep insight into seeing just how quickly your mind can spiral out of control about something that's not even happening you know I mean the entirety of the retreat was not happening it was just this moment and so you know just those four simple words is this moment okay as a good way to to bring us back and and when you ask the question is this moment okay like really answering it by like looking around your environment hearing the sounds feeling where your body is you know if you're sitting against a chair you know any smells any tastes of just grounding yourself back here because this moment is always okay it's the fear of how will I handle in the next moment that's what throws us over the edge and that's what we do so much in fear in relation back to your comment there about sue sue about facing fears we're usually not facing the fear in this moment we're just imagining how we're going to feel about it in the future and that's what throws us over the edge and so the more that we can come back to this moment trusting the breath the peace in this moment asking ourselves is this moment okay it is almost always okay even if you are in the midst of maybe some grief or sadness you've just lost someone because again it's like the fear of how will I handle this in the future how will I handle this grief in the future don't worry about that just I can handle it now I can be with the grief and the sadness in this moment and this moment may not be you know okay okay but I can handle it in this moment right it's the it's the fear of how will I handle it in the next moment that's what throws us over the edge and that's when the fear just becomes so big and so overwhelming to us and so wildly distorted and then it topples us over and we panic and we let the fear rule us in that moment you know we become limited small helpless little beings and what we're trying to do is is to live more in the present moment to trust this more more than our thoughts I mean on that retreat it took it took two minutes for me to go from wow you got this to on the floor how can I get out of here right because of the fear of the future but we have to be careful because it is the wandering mind even when the mind starts wandering out in a good way when we start giving ourselves a little pat on the back good job you got this oh just wait like that's how quickly it will go so it's really you know this is again why we're trying to be here in this moment even good thoughts you know imagining we're going to win the lottery doesn't take long before we start thinking about all the people that are going to ask us for money and how irritating that's going to be and what am I going to do when they're all asking me for money it's like you haven't even won the lottery yet and it just it doesn't take long whatever wherever our mind is wandering eventually it's going to wander into a bad neighborhood usually doesn't take very long even a good thought will take us in there and we believe it that thought is so so so very compelling right so believable that I'm not going to handle it in the future that we crumble in this moment

Reviews

That story made it so relatable. What a great talk! Thank you so much for sharing!

Thank you very much. So helpful and empowering. You capture how thoughts can change in a flash so well. I’ll try to keep ‘is this moment ok?’ firmly in mind!

Really great and very timely for me. Thank you so much! 😊

Exactly what I needed to hear in this moment. Thank you so much for your teachings. 🩷🙏

This is so much needed as lately I’ve been developing a habit of small panic in the morning, due to fear of losing work opportunities, fear of the unknown, fear of what if. Thank you so much for this, glad I’ve found you this morning to anchor my day.