The Serenity Prayer:

Martin Rossman, M.D. Author of “The Worry Solution”, explains how to assess and direct your mental thoughts about worry so as to reduce unnecessary anxiety and stress.  He explains that imagination is a powerful, creative force.  Worry is that imaginative force gone awry or without properly guided direction.  Worry usually looks to the past or future to fuel it.  It can take over and direct our feelings cascading the body with chemical directives into fear, anxiety, and immobility.  When we understand how the brain learns and processes, then we can use that information to harness our own imaginative self and direct the feelings and the chemical responses that reduce anxiety and stress rather than encourage it.  This takes education of how the system works, practice of directed thinking and acknowledging new experiences of peace and calmness. 

Part of Dr. Rossman’s process is to separate “good” productive worry from “bad” futile worry.  He uses the “Serenity Prayer” in his speech, “How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety into Calmness” as a guide to show a simple way to do this.  You make three buckets for your worry: 

• Bucket 1:  “Things I Can Change” 
• Bucket 2:  “Things I Cannot Change” 
• Bucket 3:  “Things I’m Not Sure About My Power To Change Or Effect” 

To access the serenity or peace, you have to also access courage and wisdom.  These things do not come when fear and anxiousness are in the mind.  Taking some rest time and using the imagination can clear your thinking.  Your imagination used with laser, focused direction can change the chemicals that are producing anxiousness into chemicals that are producing peaceful, calm feelings. 

Dr. Rossman gives the example that if you have a friend who is sick with cancer and you are worried about her possible death, you don’t know the outcome and there doesn’t seem to be any way for you to help.  So, your worry goes around and around.  He suggests that you might not help her, but you can help yourself reduce your anxious, futile worrying by using your imagination.  Think about what you want to happen with your friend and focus on your desired outcome.  Having a focus on a desired outcome will reduce anxiety in the mind.  The mind-body tends to go where you focus.  This is a disciplined approach to thinking especially if you have lived with or worked with a “worry wart.”  You know who they are, and you don’t want to be one!  If you are one, then have the courage to change your brain! 

EPTworks is an indispensable system used by trained practitioners to quickly clear the mind of unconscious or conscious clutter getting in the way of focused thinking.  It works on multiple levels of the emotional body at the same time, creating an efficient, effective, and multidimensional approach that causes chemical changes and emotional shifts.  That’s why people feel the good effects of EPTworks often in the very first session!  The book of James 1:5 in the New Testament states:  “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” Also in James 5: 16  “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

 

 Guest blogger Sherry Hamilton

Speech link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYJdekjiAog&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Worry Solution link:  http://worrysolution.com/

Serenity Prayer link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer