WINNING THE WAR ON WORRY

Worry, worry, worry. Stew, fret, worry some more. Are you a worry-wart or are you related to one?

Defined, worry means to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts. Doesn’t that sound awful — who would want to do that?

Personally, I find worry a pesky waste of my time. If what I am worried about comes to pass, my worrying only caused me to be upset longer. If what I am worried about doesn’t come to pass, worry still ‘won’ because it took my precious time and energy away from something positive and proactive that I could have been doing or thinking.

So are you ready to declare war on worry? If so, here are a few simple ideas to help you start winning the worry-war:

• Give yourself a specific boundary of time to worry about said problem (i.e. daily from 12:00-12:05 or weekly on Mondays from 8:00- 8:15). If you feel the worry creeping in at other times, tell it with certainty that it will get its time, but that time is not now.

• Ask yourself if this is something that is within your circle of influence or not. If it is, determine one or two things that you can do to influence the situation to help you worry less. If it is not within your circle of influence, then the only things you can control about it are your own thoughts, actions and feelings. Talking to yourself may come in handy here!

• On a scale of 1 -10 how likely is this worry likely to transpire? If it’s a 10, which would be very, very likely, then perhaps starting to take action and prepare would be helpful for you. If it’s on the lower end, simply recognizing that and coming up with a mantra to help shift your mindset may work for you. For example, “It is very, very unlikely that (fill in the blank) will happen but even if that does happen, I will handle it with grace and dignity and come out on top.”

• Notice who you are spending your time with and who you are telling your worries to; you don’t need other people to perpetuate your worries. Be choosy about your company.

In the end, we can be consumed with all the things in our world to worry about or we can learn to put our energy into things that will enrich our lives and the lives of those around us.

What are you going to choose?