Worry is an emotion all of us experience on a daily basis. Why? It’s like humans are programmed to feel worried about anything and everything and perhaps that’s the true secret to feeling happy. What if you could train your mind to not worry about anything at all? It’s a natural instinct for our brains to immediately picture the worst-case scenario before it has even happened.
Experts have done many studies on this and state that your brain is diligent about lingering around situations that haven’t even happened. Usually, these situations are the worst kind too, and create a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety. Think of your brain as your protector, because in essence, that’s basically what it’s trying to do for you.
The problem is that because we have a natural instinct to worry, it allows us to stress over things we shouldn’t. Sometimes, the worry becomes too strong and turns our thinking into fear which makes us act out differently because we are afraid. In addition, we start to spend far too much time thinking about terrible situations that probably won’t even happen or aren’t nearly as bad as we had imagined inside.
That’s why worry is a time-waster. It might keep you preoccupied, but it gets you nowhere.
Worry Creates Unhappy Stress
Besides, when you spend too much time worrying, you will start noticing its dangerous effects on your physical, mental and emotional health. The anxiety caused by extreme worry can start clouding your decision-making process by making you do silly things. It increases your stress levels significantly, stops peaceful sleep in its tracks, and eats away at your happiness.
According to CNN certain people experience such high levels of anxiety and worry that they have to seek the help of therapy and medication to function properly for the rest of their lives. In fact, the more you allow this emotion to consume you, the more it will be able to control you entirely. However, there is a reason why humans find it easy to keep worrying over the smallest matters. Not all worry is useless, some of it is good and protects us from potentially threatening situations. But learning to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary worries is a crucial lesson to learn in life.
Thankfully, we have top experts who have designed exercises we can do to try and separate the useless worry from the good. This experiment will help you gain further insight into what’s worth worrying over and what isn’t.
Document Your Worries
The first step, according to researchers, is to jot down every single thing that is worrying you right now.
This isn’t an easy exercise because it forces you to think about all those horrible things you’re stressing over. However, you are constantly thinking about them anyway, and even if it’s in your subconscious…You don’t want to ignore the negative effects these worries are having on you.
There are only two rules when starting this list. The first step is to try and decide if they will happen in just six months. This then removes all the irrelevant worries from your head and narrows them down to the ones you need to think about now. Experts state that it’s normal to have general anxiety thoughts like ‘I think something bad is going to happen’ or worries over the next year. Or four. Forget about those for now and keep this task simple by limiting your worries to those outcomes resolved in the next 180 days.
Develop Your Awareness
Notice how much more relaxed you’re starting to feel just by doing this simple exercise. The second rule is to not go over ten worries. Yes, you probably have a lot more than that, but it’s best to choose your biggest ones and stick with those. If you’ve got less than ten, then that’s great. However, I think if we all go deeper than that there will most likely be plenty of worries underneath that we may have pushed under the carpet.
Just so you know, there is no worry that’s stupid – no matter how big or small it is, it matters, so write it down. Moreover, there are worries that seem worse over others and ones you feel that you can control. It doesn’t matter how serious you worry, just jot down anything and everything that’s causing you anticipatory fear. Now all you need to do is put this list in a private space and make a note on your calendar in six months’ time to check up on those worries.
When you look again, decide which ones you have managed to deal with over that time period. Then, when you’ve done this, start again with another list. Researchers suggest repeating the experiment until you have a better understanding of how often things you worry about don’t happen. Eventually, as more of your worries start to dwindle away, you will realize how useless many of them are.
Most Worries Never Happen Anyway
There are people who have done this exercise for many years now and have all said that out of all their worries, the majority of them don’t happen. That’s proof that worrying every day is such a waste of time and air. There are plenty of other, more productive, and happy ways to spend your time.
This research says that the percentage of wasted worry went down as the experiment went on. This means that the things you did worry about, are worries that happened. Life means there will always be worries, but it doesn’t mean to worry about anything. It’s about choosing what’s worth worrying over and what isn’t. Ask yourself whether something is very likely going to happen or if it isn’t. Stressing about things that are definitely going to happen is a step in the right direction to having fewer worries. It’s better than stressing over things that will never happen.
More importantly, the process involves thinking about whether you can do anything about the situation. Sometimes, situations unfold, and they aren’t nearly as bad as you imagined, or they happen and there was nothing you could do about it. Learn to accept this. It’s the game of life and even though these worries happen, they’re still pointless to stress over. And guess what? Many situations that we think are tragic turn out to be incredibly good. This is like experiencing a bad breakup and then finding your true love. Notice what’s real and what isn’t and stick with worrying about things that are real.
We Are All Guilty
Over time after you’ve completed this exercise a few times, you will notice how you’ll be left with fewer matters to worry over. Some come true, others remain negative, and then there are those where you should’ve done more to change the outcome. This process makes life much easier because it clears your head and allows you to focus on what your real concerns are. On those days when you just can’t control your worries, take action. This is because it’s always better to be busy than to worry.
This is the problem. We’re all totally guilty of worrying about things that may or may never happen. Sometimes it’s about things that have no point at all.
That’s why we all have taught ourselves to track our worries and separate them into what matters and what doesn’t. Otherwise, we will all turn into little stress balls.
Convince your brain that you are worrying over stupid things and most of them are out of your control. Keep your worries smart. This exercise might not erase your worries but it will help narrow them down. When a worry starts to cause a lot of stress. Take time to evaluate it and decide whether it’s real or not. And if it is, ask yourself if you can do anything about it. If yes is your answer then you don’t need to worry because you can solve it.
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