Some years ago a friend of mine, said the following: “Pretend you are surrounded by a thousand hungry tigers. What would you do?”
I give it some thought, imagining the scary scenario and feeling more and more tense. Would I pray? probably not. Would I run? One doesn’t outrun tigers. Anxiety began to take hold as I saw in my mind’s eye the Tiger closing in. I said to my young friend, “Wow I don’t know what I would do. What would you do?”
And he replied, “I’d stop pretending.”
Sometimes our stories about our lives and problems are the equivalent of visualising being surrounded by hungry tigers. We paint pictures in imagination and then become frightened by them. We pretend there’s something wrong, and we base our unhappiness on the images that exist primarily in our minds.