The Uselessness of Worrying About Everything

When people say they can’t stop worrying they often subconsciously believe that worrying is necessary, because worrying can feel productive. That doesn’t mean that it is. Worrying is exhausting and keeps you from being present and fully engaged with what’s right in front of you. Worrying isn’t serving any purpose at all.

When you worry you are running through worst-case scenarios in your head, making them feel more likely and realistic. But there is no reason that the worst-case scenario is more realistic than the best-case scenario. Why aren’t you thinking more about that one?

Read more: Why Always Going to the Worst Case Scenario in Your Head Hurts You

Furthermore, when you’re worrying about everything it physically impacts your nervous system in a way that makes it impossible to see new solutions or new perspectives, no matter how intelligent you are. It could be keeping you from a really simple fix to whatever is stressing you out.

In the drama of daily life, chronic worryers get stuck in the details, missing out on the big picture. They talk themselves into believing that their problems outweigh the good in their life. No matter what’s really going on, they focus on the possible risks and don’t give much thought to the possible opportunities.

FACT: You don’t need to worry. You can stop worrying about everything. People are capable of dealing with a lot without wasting time worrying. 

Stop Worrying by Changing YOU First

So how do you break the habit of worrying about everything?

Not by changing your life, you can’t control the things that happen to you, you have to learn to break the worrying habit regardless of what’s going on. 

Not by changing someone else, you are 100% responsible for your thoughts, and feelings so don’t try to change someone else’s behaviour because you think it will lessen your worrying.

It starts by changing you, and once you break your worrying habit your life with change.

Intentional Personal Change Requires Experiential Learning

Personal change is not an intellectual exercise, it comes from thinking new thoughts (triggering new feelings) that get you doing new things, taking the new data from the new experiences and incorporating it into future decisions. To do it intentionally there is a lot of assessment, setting intentions and then catching a redirecting yourself when you want to go back to your old patterns. In other words you can’t just read a blog post, listen to a podcast, or have. conversation and just magically change your habits, no matter how much you want to.

Steps to Stop Worrying about Everything:

Note #1: Denial, lying to yourself, or trying to convince yourself of something you don’t believe will not work.

Note #2 If you’ve never done mindset work it might seem weird, but to be blunt, this shit works. 

1. Use your imagination and start figuring out who you want to be six months from now. What are you like as someone who doesn’t worry about everything? How is your life different? What do you do with the time you used to spend worrying, what are you thinking about instead? The clearer this image and the more strongly you can viscerally connect, the easier it will be to shift your thoughts.

2. Identify the thoughts: You have to deal with the root issue, the beliefs and assumptions that are triggering the chronic worrying. WRite them ALL down, no matter how ridiculous.

3. Find new thought paths that you currently believe that you can redirect to. The thought shifts might be tiny but don’t try to jump too far all at once. For example, if you’re worrying about an email you sent, thinking “The email was great” is probably unbelievable, but you might be able to believe “The email was probably fine” or “if the email missed something they can ask”. Eventually, you want to shift to what the person you imagined in step 1 would think.

4. Practice catching yourself when going to the old thought patterns and replacing them with the new ones. If your original thoughts made you worry, the newer ones may just be a small shift to light concern instead. It’s moving in the right direction, which means the emotional toll will be lessened.

4. Edit the new thought patterns as needed to get them where you want them.

5. Repeat until the habit has shifted.

Alignment coaching guides you through this process step by step and keeps you focused on applying the tools. And you will have more energy for the stuff you want to be present for and life gets easier.