Why Worrying Gets Me Nowhere

Worrying Stems from Fear

It’s simple definition, worry is the act of thinking about the unknown in a way that we fear. Regardless of what the situation, if you think about that event in a way that makes you fear the outcome, that thought will stay with you, generate more similar thoughts and create constant worry.

If you hold onto these thoughts, they can quickly become overestimated and exaggerated to the point that what started out as a simple concern, becomes a painful fear. The fear itself can cascade itself by generating worse and worse thoughts that just reinforce the worry and stress associated with it.

Now, its quite natural to have fears about the unknown. There is nothing wrong with fear, in fact, it has a lot of advantages which I’ll outline below. What’s dangerous about these fears though is if you allow yourself to focus on only the results you fear, even when there is no basis or reason to believe that that is the likely outcome.

This is the kind of fear and worry that gets you nowhere! Ignoring every other possible outcome (and generally the most likely and often positive outcomes) to think constantly about the one outcome we fear is a major cause of stress. This often is the worst outcome or the thing we fear the most. The problems this can cause are:

• Detracts your focus on useful activities.
• Worry from fear is hard to forget or unlearn, so it re-occurs easily and becomes habitual.
• Affects your other activities in a negative way (often pessimistically)
  
  
  Avoiding Worry
  So, even once you’ve learned to control and limit your worry, this can be taken even further by avoiding the process of worrying all together. I’m no expert here but I have found and read about several things that can help to free your mind of worry.
• Avoid the source or situation that generates the worry in the first place (after all, its not that easy to eliminate the fear behind a worry)
• Encourage new outcomes and be excited for new experiences. The fear of change usually turns this into worrying about the unknown so developing a sense of adventure for new experiences and outcomes will embrace them without needing to worry about them.
• Keep your results and records and remind yourself of how often things really do go as expected for you and that you have nothing to worry about!
• Don’t reinforce others to worry (make good outcomes welcome, encourage them)
• Whatever happens happens. You probably had no control over it anyway, so just let it go.
• Learn to just be, instead of wanting to control. This takes practice and faith, whether that is in you, others around you or something spiritual, faith is really the opposite of worry.

So, what can you really gain from worrying? Is there anything you can do about it anyway? What can you do next time to avoid worrying about it again? Ask yourself some of these questions next time you find yourself worrying. Use some of these techniques to kill that unnecessary worry time in your life and live a more positive and carefree life!