Are You a Worry Wart?

Dictionary.com defines worry as “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret”.

Are you a worry wart?

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying about 95% of the things we worry about never happen, right?

Even though we know this, it doesn’t stop us from worrying sometimes all day every day!

Our minds prepare for things that may go wrong in the future.

Guess what?

Unless we’re psychic, we probably can’t predict the future, no matter how hard we try!

Yet, we tend to needlessly worry about topics such as: money, family, love life, gaining weight, sickness, travel, etc.

Control!

Pschcentral says “People worry in an attempt to “control” their problems.

They believe that if they control their problems, they can eventually solve them.

If you share this belief, ask yourself how exercising control of your problems actually helps you solve your problems.

I think that if you give it some thought, you will probably come to the conclusion that excessive worry, in fact, makes it harder from finding good solutions while keeping you emotionally activated.

The very things you are trying to solve are intensified!.

Attempting to control the future wastes time and creates pain, frustration, and anxiety.

“Even when our fears come true, worrying in advance rarely helps us cope with them” according to Psychology Today.

Can our brains learn how to replace the worrying with something more productive?

Yes!

Tips for Worrying Less!

✍️ Write down something you can improve on and describe the steps to make it happen.
🙏 Practice being grateful, write in a gratitude journal appreciating everything and everyone around you.
🧘🏽‍♂️ Meditate for at least 5 minutes daily to quiet your brain.
🎨 Take the energy spent worrying and do something creative.
👩🏻‍💻 Clean up your thinking with a daily written thought download.
👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏼 Create new friendships and socialize often, even if it’s on Zoom!
💪 Get some daily exercise.
📺 Minimize exposure to upsetting things such as watching the news or TV shows with negative or stressful tones.
📋 Each day, create a list of things you’ve done well in the last 24 hours.

It also might be interesting to create a list of all the past worries that never came to fruition, to prove to yourself that worrying didn’t help in any way.

We can practice training our brains to stop automatically going into worry mode and yes, it can be done!