Ask Eve - Fear of Change

If we spend all of our time imagining a future that hasn't happened yet, that can actually take you away from making change happen in the present moment. So what we do now can impact what happens in the future. Hello, and welcome to another episode of "Ask Eve." And today, we have a question from Sandra about impermanence. "I'm often afraid of what the future may bring and how my life may change. How can I conquer this fear and be more accepting of the concept of impermanence?" Sandra, thank you so much for this question. When it comes to meditation and mindfulness, impermanence really refers to the ever-changing landscape of external situations, but also it refers to our bodily sensations, our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions. A lot of our discomfort, a lot of our pain, suffering, comes from wishing things to stay the way they are. And the more that we can learn to let go and accept things for who they are, including ourselves, the more we're able to actually enjoy the present moment. So a practice that's been really helpful to me is to actually really focus on the things that I do have in my life that I really, really appreciate. And there's actually a a quote that I'd love to read from "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I'm just gonna grab it and... (clock ticking) (bell dings) Okay, found it. It was actually a poem that was written by a woman called Nadine Stair. "Oh, I've had my moments. And if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day." That really helps me and reminds me that we only have these individual moments. It is normal and natural to worry about the future. Accepting things as they are, whilst difficult, actually does help us to release pain and discomfort and tension. But most importantly, it provides a space in which we can take some action. And this is particularly important when it comes to our mental health. When I was struggling with anxiety, and I still do, but when it was really, really playing a massive role in my life, I remember thinking to myself, "This is how I'm gonna feel forever." I still come back to the first-ever meditation session that I did where the teacher asked us to focus on our body sensations, on our breathing. They even said, "Just notice how each breath is different." And I had never, ever in my life considered it like that. And actually just a subtle shift in noticing how these small things within ourselves can change can really help us to learn to accept impermanence on more of an experiential, well, on more of an experiential level. Thank you so much for your question, Sandra. We actually have a really great animation in the Headspace...