“If one’s imagination habitually makes mountains out of molehills, one may be flooded with unused energy most of one’s life.”
from The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd
Meditation is stupid
No, I don’t actually think meditation is stupid. But I totally get why someone might think it is.
Because if you suffer from anxiety or endless mental chatter and you’re looking for solutions, one of the first things you find all over the internet about how to solve those problems is meditation.
And then you try it because it’s supposed to work. And it doesn’t work…
So here’s the problem with meditation.
What most people think of as meditation isn’t actually helpful to those who suffer from anxiety and endless mental chatter. At least not at the beginning of their journey to solve those symptoms
Now, as you may have noticed. What I said there was, what most people think of as meditation.
And that’s because meditation isn’t just “clearing your mind” or “focusing on your breathing or “sitting still.” It’s actually anything you do with intentional focus.
Intentional focus
And when your intentional focus is to clear out the unused energy that you’re flooded with all the time due to the fact that you make “mountains out of molehills,” then meditation is going to be supremely useful to you.
Because anxiety and endless mental chatter are the RESULT of unused energy.
So now, about “making mountains out of molehills.”
The reason you would be making mountains out of molehills is because of how brains work. You see, brains make you “see what you believe,” and if you have a unconscious belief that the world is bad, or full danger, then that’s what you’re going to see all the time.
And then your brain will reasonably put you into “action mode” to deal with all the adversity in the world. But you don’t understand that you have too much energy; you just feel anxious and have endless mental chatter.
And those symptoms are the result of having a body full of unused energy because of “action mode” chemicals floating around in you.
How meditation can work for you even if you think it’s stupid
The thing about meditation is that if you do loud expressive versions of it for long enough, you will begin to be able to do the quieter kind. And the quieter kind will help you begin to notice when and what is causing your brain to send you into action mode when you don’t need to be there.
In other words, a progression of meditation styles and techniques will ultimately help you realize how your unconscious (imagination) is “making mountains out of molehills.”
Which will give you more control over whether you’re quite so high strung.
And also give you more control of how quickly you can eliminate the problem of unused energy in your body that comes from your negatively focused brain.
So, what was once a life of debilitating anxiety and endless mental chatter can be peaceful and pleasant.
Even if you are still a balls-to-the-wall type of person when it comes to getting things done.
