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One of the needless things that I’ve been doing too much of lately, is worrying. I could easily be accused of being a chronic worrier. This morning I was especially filled with worry about a variety of “somethings”. I won’t go into those “somethings” in this article — rather I want to talk about the subject of “worry” itself.

Worry can put a person through a time of complete frustration. It is nothing more than fear — our fear that something bad is going to happen — or something that we need to happen, won’t be happening — or that something that someone is going to do for us, won’t get done. The list of things to worry about can go on for pages and pages. Worry is always about something that hasn’t happened yet — so — by definition — worry is a fantasy. Deep down, we all know this is true — yet we continue to worry.

Most of the time when we worry it’s about something over which we have little or no control. One of the prime examples of the futility of worry is when you find yourself fretting about the safety of someone close to you — perhaps they are traveling by air and you’ve heard that the weather is not good where they will be flying — or you may have heard a recent news broadcast about some terrorist activity in an airport. You sit on “pins and needles” until you finally hear that they have arrived at their destination safe and sound.

What did your worry accomplish? Did it ensure that the plane would arrive safely? Of course not. You had no control over that situation. What it did was create an unpleasant stressful effect on your own body, mind and spirit.

What can be done to avoid this useless exercise? One thing comes to mind — when you catch yourself beginning to worry about something, consciously turn those negative thoughts into positive ones. Instead of imagining the worst case scenario, imagine the opposite. In our example above, visualize the plane having a smooth flight and see it landing safely at its destination. Imagine angels or guiding hands watching over the flight and all those on board. You still won’t have control over the situation, however, you’ll feel better and your body will welcome the less stressful mindset.

There are times when we worry about something that we could have control over. This could be a task that we’re procrastinating over starting — or maybe you have a test that you need to study for. In these cases, the best way to alleviate that worry is to take the action needed to solve the problem. Do the task — study for the test — and soon you’ll have no reason to continue worrying.

~~~ DBL-R