Sarah’s Health Notes: Just for today…
If you, like me and probably the majority of people, are a worrier, just ponder this:
Just for today
I will not worry
I was scrolling through Instagram recently during a particularly fret-full phase when those words leapt out at me. The post was put up by Dr. Tara Swart, a medical doctor, psychiatrist and neuroscientist, whose first book The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life is a bestseller.
As she wrote: ‘Waking up each day and pledging not to worry, just for that day, seems so much more doable than attempting to take on a lifetime of worrying, doesn’t it?’
I met Tara a few times before lockdown and found her not only knowledgeable and inspiring but also very kind. At that point, a family member had started having seizures; I mentioned it to her and, without a moment’s hesitation, she offered her help if I needed it. I have never forgotten that instant generosity.
On her Insta post Tara explained that this ‘Just for today’ mantra comes from the Five Reiki Principles. The others are: ‘I will not be angry’; ‘I will be grateful’; ‘I will do my work honestly’; ‘I will be kind to every living thing’. Which are pretty good guidelines to live by.
The concept of ‘just for today’ is also a stalwart of 12-step programmes, like Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. The thinking being that committing to lifelong abstinence may feel like trying to get a river to flow upstream. But, just as Tara says, almost all of us can contemplate not doing something, however tempting, for 24 hours. As a friend of mine, also a worrier, exclaimed when I was talking to her about it a few minutes before I started writing this: ‘Of course! It’s just a day at a time’.
We agreed that not only does it feel doable to stop worrying a day at a time but it feels comforting because it’s simple and manageable. As someone with an occasional short fuse, I’m also trying not to be angry, just for today. In fact, if I’m not worried and anxious I hardly ever overreact and lose my rag so it all works together.
So, I suggest you might want to forget about trying to keep New Year’s resolutions and swop to making New Day’s resolutions every morning. As Tara adds, ‘we can break everything down into smaller, more manageable chunks’. That goes for tasks, domestic things and how we react to life events, big and small, and the emotions they trigger.
One of the most useful tips someone ever gave me for dealing with an overwhelming To Do list was to estimate how long any task would take then fit it into the time available. So you might have five or ten minutes before you have to go into a meeting/fetch the children/feed the horses (that’s me…) and instead of faffing around, you could just get that one little thing done and dusted. And ticked off the To Do list. What we call a ‘Ta-dah!, Done!’ moment…
