Do you suffer with earworms? They aren’t little creatures that live in your ear and cause irritation. They can be a bigger nuisance than that.

An earworm [‘leitmotif’ in German] is a haunting melody that ‘rides’ behind a musical piece or re-appears periodically. Years ago, a song in the UK, had the refrain, ‘I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves;….’. Yes, it got on my nerves.

Essentially, it is a recurring theme, often masked in some way, used in music, but it can be applied to life events. Take politics, for instance. I’m not fond of political sound-bites; life is more complex than that, but politicians use them because, unbeknownst to the individual, they have influence, and are thus a bigger nuisance, until detected. Is there an earworm in your life, family life, spiritual life, that is distracting you, holding you back?

How to deal with them? Anything that, when they occur in our minds, jars us out of complacency and encourages us to focus on one thing: different routine, work, meditation, ritual (for me, this is the caim), anything that means we objectively analyse our thoughts and are aware.