The Snow Globe of the Mind

A Meditative Mental Tool for Anxious People Like You

First, think of your mind as a snow globe.

The anxious moments are when it’s been shaken and all the little pieces of glitter are frantically swirling, and you just want them all to calm down and for the water to go clear.

How do you get the snow globe to settle?

You can’t shake it or turn it or move it around to get the particles to settle. Any action or energy you exert is only feeding the little blizzard in there.

The way to get the snow globe to settle and go clear is to just set it down and leave…it…alone.

When you’re anxious, don’t fight it; just sit back and watch, don’t do anything to interfere with the thoughts that are flying through your mind like snowflakes. Don’t try to catch them; just notice them as they flutter through your mind.

As you do, you’ll see how the blizzard of a thousand little fluttering thoughts slow their frenetic spirals and begin to fall slowly down, tumbling through the water the way falling leaves swing in slow, pendulous curves toward the ground.

Feel the calmness begin to settle in as you see your thoughts — still swirling, but more slowly now — begin to settle, just like those bits of glitter in the snow globe settle once you quit messing with it and let it be.

Your anxious mind is not an enemy you need to fight.

It’s a part of your self that’s especially sensitive to the very complex and unnatural sort of life that you — an ape who evolved to live a life of simple days in a simple community of friends — are having to live.

That anxious part of your mind is a child inside your mind, a younger sibling that doesn’t understand all the flurry of things happening around it. It’s a part of yourself that you should love, and have compassion for, and kindly, gently tend to.