Worry can make it impossible to enjoy life. Whether it is fears about our financial situation, our health, our relationships, or our future, it can all appear so scary and threatening. We yearn for reassurance that everything is going to be OK. We therefore look to thinking to provide the solution. We don’t realize that security and strength is a way of being in the world rather than a way of thinking about the world.

Growing up, I had an inner certainty that I would always land on my feet. Things happened though, and I became increasingly hypnotized by my thoughts about how the world worked. I stopped trusting the inner certainty because it didn’t make any rational sense.

I kept on landing on my feet but would increasingly struggle with worry in-between each landing. I desperately sought some way of thinking about things, some belief that would reassure me that everything was going to work out. I tried approaches like positive thinking, but this turned out to be incredibly brittle and easily overwhelmed by a storm of fears and negative thoughts.

I eventually remembered security as a way of being rather than a way of thinking about things. Amazingly, this inner strength was not dependent on what was happening in my life. I became like a tsunami. Things that once scared me could now be easily pushed aside – I no longer needed them to disappear. The obstacles no longer mattered, I became the strength that pushed through them. Not because of what I believed but because of how I was.

There is a poem by Dylan Thomas that captures this inner strength well:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage, rage against the dying light.

For me, the rage he is talking about here has nothing to do with getting angry at the situation. It is about the inner strength to run towards even the most difficult obstacles with the glorious irrational certainty that you are going to win. Not because you believe it to be so, but, like Hercules, it is how you are in the world.