I lie awake doing the sums on everything that could go wrong — the mortgage, my health, the kids — and I can't make the worrying stop.

Look at the word in the middle of the verse: yoga-kṣema (योगक्षेम). It is a compound of two ordinary words. Yoga here means acquiring what you do not yet have. Kṣema means keeping safe what you already have.

Now look at your three-in-the-morning list. The mortgage is a keeping worry. The promotion, the deposit, the pension that is too small — getting worries. Your health is a keeping worry. The children are both at once, which is why they are the worst. Every item on the spreadsheet in your head falls into one of two columns — and the Gita names both in a single word.

The verse does not treat your worry as a character flaw. It treats it as an accurate map of what a human being is afraid of — and then it says something about the map.

Vahāmy aham — I carry. Not 'I will make sure nothing goes wrong.' Not 'I will give you everything on the list.' The Gita is too honest for either. The verse says the getting and the keeping are carried — vahāmi (वहामि), a load borne, as a river bears a boat — by someone other than you.

Read what that does to the 3 a.m. arithmetic. The worrier's unspoken belief is that the load is theirs alone: that the mortgage stays paid because they lie awake about it, that the children stay safe because somebody is keeping watch — and the somebody is them. The verse does not scold that belief. It reports that the load has a different bearer.

Be honest about the condition attached. Ananyāḥ (अनन्याः) — those with no other; nityābhiyuktāḥ — ever united, not united once in a crisis. The carrying is promised to the person whose attention has, over time, turned toward something larger than their own vigilance. Earlier in the Gita, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna to be free of this very concern for getting and keeping — niryoga-kṣema. The Gita is not offering a trick for stopping thoughts, but a different place to put your weight.

And notice what is not promised. The Gita never says the thing you fear will not happen. People who trusted entirely have still lost houses and health. What the verse claims is narrower and stranger: that what you lack and what you have are held by someone who knows what you actually need — and that you were never the one holding them. Those who live this way say the losses look different from inside it: sometimes what was withheld was a kindness. That is hard to believe at 3:14 a.m. It is not hard to test.

First, give the sums an appointment. Worry is planning that has lost its time slot and wanders the house at night. Choose one daylight hour this week, sit with the actual numbers — the rate, the buffer, the policy — and decide what needs doing. Then close the file. When the spreadsheet opens at 3 a.m., you may tell it, truthfully, that it has been seen.

Second, sort the list into the two columns. Getting on the left, keeping on the right. It is shorter than it feels, and most of the right-hand column is already as safe as your effort can make it.

Third, practise the handover. In bed, when the arithmetic starts, say one sentence — out loud if you can bear to: 'I have done what is mine today. The carrying is not mine.' Address it to whatever you understand as larger than you — God, if that is your word; the night, if you do not have one. The verse's own word for the practice is nitya, daily; it did not expect you to believe it the first time.

Fourth, make one decision irrevocable. The worrier re-decides settled things — the insurance checked twice, the savings plan reopened. Pick one and put it beyond revision for a month. That is a small act of letting someone else carry it.

Fifth, when something does go wrong — and this week something small will — watch for the second column. What was kept safe while the one thing was lost? Write it down. Over a month, the record changes what you believe about who is carrying what.