Part 13 of the 20-part Between Mind and Body series

In my late twenties, I found myself coming up short financially, borrowing money from my parents just to catch up on bills. What stood out most was not the lack of money itself, but how much time and attention I spent worrying about it.

Whenever I needed to borrow money, my mom would listen as I explained the situation. While I don’t remember exactly what was said, I do remember her taking out her little notebook and writing down my name, the date, and the amount I borrowed. There was never any criticism or judgment. She would simply make a note, close the notebook, and put it away.

After this happened a few times, my mom said to me:

“If you worry about money, you’ll have money problems.”

My mom would often say things like this. She had a way of making an observation and then leaving it alone, as if it were something for me to sit with rather than something she needed to explain.

At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The bills were real. The financial pressure was real. The problem wasn’t imaginary.

What I didn’t notice at the time was that the worry had slowly become part of the problem.

I wasn’t just dealing with a financial problem anymore. I was carrying it around with me everywhere I went. It was occupying my attention. And wherever my attention went, my energy seemed to follow.

Looking back, I think that was what my mom was pointing to.

When I ran into difficulty, my tendency was to think harder, worry harder, and keep returning to the same thoughts over and over, as though enough thinking might somehow force an answer to appear.

I was looking at the problem while she was looking at my relationship to the problem.

Her approach seemed different. She seemed to understand that there comes a point where thinking about a problem no longer helps us see it more clearly. The mind keeps returning to the same thoughts, but the situation itself remains unchanged. The problem is still there, but now it occupies our thoughts as well.

This is not about ignoring a problem or pretending it doesn’t exist. The bills still need to be paid. The decisions still need to be made. The situation still requires attention. The difference is that one approach helps us work with the problem, while the other can leave us trapped inside it.

One of the reasons this lesson has stayed with me is that I still find it relevant today. The circumstances are different than they were in my twenties, but life still presents situations that are uncertain, frustrating, or beyond my control. When those situations arise, I still catch myself wanting to pull the problem closer and think about it more. What begins as an attempt to solve a problem can gradually become an attachment to the problem itself.

What my mom offered was not a solution to uncertainty.

She offered a different way of relating to it.

Over time, I’ve come to see that this applies to much more than money. The same thing can happen with our health, our relationships, our work, our families, or our fears about the future. The details change, but the pattern is often the same. Something enters our lives and gradually begins occupying more and more of our attention.

For a long time, I thought control meant having the ability to make things go my way, solving the problem, predicting what was coming next, eliminating uncertainty altogether. But life has a way of challenging that idea. People make their own decisions. Plans change. Unexpected things happen. The future rarely asks for our permission.

Perhaps control is not found in controlling circumstances at all. Perhaps it is found in noticing where our attention goes once those circumstances arrive. And once we notice, deciding whether we want to leave it there.

The money problem was real. The bills were real. But so was the amount of attention I was giving them. A problem will naturally require some of our attention. We have to think about it, respond to it, and work with it. But if we’re not careful, the problem can begin to occupy far more of our attention than it deserves. It follows us through the day, shows up in our conversations, and sits beside us when we’re trying to rest.

Maybe that was what my mom was trying to show me all those years ago: How to be a little more careful about what I allow to occupy my mind.

Control is not about controlling the situation. Control is about noticing where your attention has gone and deciding where to place it next.