Worry, my friend always says, is a useless emotion. I worry a lot – I ruminate over problems I can’t solve because they haven’t happened. I spin off into future problems like how I will respond when I miss deadlines I haven’t missed yet. I wring my hands over decisions I will have to make that I don’t have enough information to make yet. I fret over relationships that are still unfolding, and I can’t hurry them along any more than I can wave a wand and turn a turd into a chocolate cake.

I used to think I was just stuck with this ruminating. I thought the contents of my mind were beyond my ability to change, features of my existence like a pain in my knees or my ever-widening ass. If people gave me advice like, “Just don’t think about it,” that was like saying, “Just make it stop raining.” Impossible.

After a couple of years of regular but not unusually rigorous meditation, I have a totally different relationship with my thoughts. There are some things I’ve realized after moving my thoughts around like furniture in my mind. One of these, and it’s kind of a “duh” moment that seems easy once you know how it works, is that thoughts come and go. Even if I’m really stuck on my problem, there will be lots of opportunities for another thought to come along and my problem will step out of the spotlight of my attention for a bit. For a lot of people, and I am a champ at this, it’s why keeping busy during stressful times is a good approach. 

But even when I’m meditating, alone with my thoughts, I’ve gotten more practiced and able to release my problem and return to the breath. It’s an amazing thing: A thought that used to grind me down can just be dropped like a hot potato. The relief is total. The relief is instantaneous. I’ve used that phrase a bunch in my writing about meditation, because it’s an incredible change from the experience I used to have of my own mind. My mind was an enemy I couldn’t get away from. Now I’ve got hacks, and we get along much better. 

Moods come and go too. Weather is the usual analogy: Maybe it’s raining, maybe it’s sunny, but the sky is always the same, and if you don’t like the rain, the sun will come eventually. Now, I live in Portland OR, so sometimes the rain lasts for 6 months, which can be a little hard to live with. But what if you can actually learn to be okay with the rain? What if you can, as psychologists suggest, “build a wall”? Not to keep Mexicans out, that’s a different wall. A wall  contains problems so that the things that aren’t problems continue to lift my spirits. Even a really big problem is maybe only 20% of what my life consists of. That’s 80% of life that is actually working really well. I can have a big problem, and still find a lot to be joyful about. This, as they say on Facebook, is dancing in the rain. 

And what if there are even things to embrace about the rain? I don’t experience a lot of tests of my mental health these days, but even worry and grief and depression have something to offer. Going through difficult emotions is literally a universal human experience. When people say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I always think, “What doesn’t kill you might leave you mentally incapacitated and confined to a wheelchair.” But for the most part, the more common response to adversity is building resilience. This is something to embrace. Another common response to pain is building compassion for others who are suffering. This is also something to embrace. 

And now that I’ve got a lever to move my attention around, I have started to be able to just not think about my problem when such thoughts are unproductive – to basically make it stop raining. I’m not super-skilled at this yet, but I’m beginning to see the potential. I can deliberately say, “Now is not the time to think about this.” Focusing on what’s working, shifting my attention to something else, dropping into the breath – all of these are ways off the hamster wheel of worry that pretty much goes nowhere. I guess my metaphors are getting mixed up – am I a hamster in the rain, or….? 

Also, sometimes writing about how to make it work better helps it work better. I came into writing today with a bunch of worries I can’t do anything about right now. Not only have I distracted myself from my problem by busying myself with writing, I’m reminding myself about the power of coping mechanisms that can help me with my problem. Meditation can give you the ability to get out of the rain, be happy about the rain, and eventually even stop the rain. It doesn’t happen overnight, and you have to do a lot of practice before the benefits manifest themselves, but it’s transformational if you can trust it will work eventually and stick with it. 10-20 minutes a day to revolutionize your relationship to your mind – to bring control to literally the only thing you can control. It’s a superpower.