Calming Anxiety About the Future — A Guided Meditation for Uncertainty

The future feels uncertain right now and your mind doing exactly what minds do is trying to solve it running through every possible outcome, rehearsing every difficult conversation, bracing the things that haven't happened yet. Today we stop rehearsing. Today we come back to right now where you are safe, where you are home and where everything you need already lives within you. Welcome to calming anxiety with me Martin Hewlett. I'm a clinical hypnotist, a former frontline paramedic and every single day I create these 10 minute guided meditations to help you find your calm no matter what the world looks like. If this is your first time here welcome come back every day this is your 10 minutes. Before we go anywhere let's settle the body first because the mind cannot find peace whilst the nervous system is still scanning for danger. So wherever you are right now, sitting, lying down in a quiet moment that you've carved out if it's safe, allow your eyes to close gently. Now breathe in through your nose slowly for a count of four, one, two, three, four. Now hold at the top for four, three, four and exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of six.

Let it go all the way out releasing. Again in through the nose, one, two, three, four, hold two, three, four and out through the mouth long and slow, three, four, five, six, releasing every thought about tomorrow, every worry about next week, every imagined version of a difficult future. Let them leave with every breath.

One more time with me ready in two, three, four, hold two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four, five, six. Your vagus nerve is responding right now.

Your heart rate is already slowing. Your nervous system is beginning to understand there is no emergency here. There is only this moment and in this moment you are safe. Now within the beauty of your imagination, I wonder if you could picture yourself standing at the edge of a vast open landscape. It may be a hillside, a cliff top overlooking the sea, a wide open field beneath the sky that stretches forever further than the eye can follow. Choose whatever feels the most like peace to you. And notice the ground beneath your feet, solid, certain, completely dependable. The future in this moment is not a place that you are being pulled towards. It is simply the horizon, distant, open, full of possibility, not a threat, not a warm, a horizon, and you are here rooted grounded with everything you need already inside you. Now I want you to imagine this. You are watching the clouds move slowly across the vast sky and each cloud it carries within it or worry. Something your mind has been rehearsing, a version of the future it has been afraid of.

Watch the clouds. You don't need to climb into them, you don't need to solve them. Simply observe them moving because that is what the future does. It moves, it shifts, it changes shape the moment you arrive in it. As a paramedic I learnt something important. The body and the mind are extraordinary handling what is actually happening. What they struggle with is what might happen.

The imagination left unchecked creates emergencies before they ever exist and the body it responds to imagined danger just as powerfully as it responds to real danger.

So today, gently we bring you back to what is real, the ground beneath you, the breath within you, the steady quiet voice that says, "I have handled everything life has brought me so far and I will handle what comes next too." Stay here on that hillside. Breathe the fresh air, the stillness. Be aware of a mind that has chosen to stop rehearsing the future and rest in the present.

You are not behind, you are not failing, you are not running out of time, you are here and here is exactly where you need to be. And within the beauty of your mind's eye, see these words, notice their shape and color, notice the weight each one carries as it settles within your subconscious. I release my need to control what I cannot yet see. The future is not a threat, it is simply a place I haven't arrived at yet.

I am calm, I am capable and I trust myself to handle what comes. I am safe in this moment and this moment is all that is real.

Everything I need is already within me. And deeper now, allow yourself to drift a little further from the noise of tomorrow and a little deeper into the quiet of right now. Four weeks close. Here are your three daily caring tips. One, name the rehearsal. When you notice your mind running a difficult scene about the future, say quietly to yourself, this is a rehearsal, not a reality.

Name thoughts lose their grip. Two, shrink the time window. Future anxiety grows when we project too far ahead. If tomorrow feels overwhelming, ask only what do I need today, just today, one window, one step and three return to the body.

Anxiety about the future lives in the head. Your body is always in the present. Suppress your feet flat to the floor. The only or wait. Take one conscious breath and remind yourself. Right now, I am okay. Now gently begin to return. Wiggle your fingers and toes, bringing your awareness back into the room, back into the day, back into the life that is waiting for you, not the imagined version.

The real one. The one where you are more capable than your anxiety gives you credit for. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale, stretch out the muscles in your arms and legs. And now open your eyes. You've done something important today. You chose to stop rehearsing and start resting. That takes real courage.

If today's session helps you, there are over 2,300 more waiting for you here. Your daily coffee break for the song. And if you're ready to go deeper, my anxiety circuit break-it-course is at calminganxiety.fm. 5. Focus Clinical Hypnotherapy sessions for only $67.

I'm Martin. This is calming anxiety. And in everything you do today, my friend, be kind.