“A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.” ~John Lubbock
We all know worry is wasted energy: it’s tiring, fruitless, and becomes myopic—like blinders on a horse—blocking other potential incoming solutions.
But we all do it. So ‘knowing’ better, apparently, is not the answer.
Choosing better is.
Before I give you my thoughts, though, let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever your worries, I’m sure they’re justified. You get to be right about whatever they are. Okay?
Now. My response: So what? Really. So what if you’re “worried sick about it?”
Does being right about your worry change anything? Is your teenage child changing in proportion to your concern? Is your team lead working any better for you based on your increasing worry that maybe you made a bad hire?
Grant me this much: you can be right about your worries; I get to be right that worrying about a situation doesn’t improve it and worrying about a person doesn’t change their behavior.
And it doesn’t improve your ability to communicate, connect, or lead.
So, (bottom-line now) here’s WHY you worry. (You’re not gonna’ like this.)
- Worrying is easier than being proactive. You’re lazy. Yeah, I said it.
- You think big worries make you a big person. You like the attention. Ouch!
- You think it’s natural, just the way you operate. It’s not. It’s a pattern, a habit, and it’s destructive.
- You think worrying equates to caring deeply. Um, nope. Too passive—we’re back to lazy.
And I’ll grant you that sometimes worry is appropriate, absolutely (and certainly there’s a lot in the news that’s worrisome), but when it’s chronic, what you’re really looking for is attention, approval, connection, and/or control.
Nobody sticks with anything without an emotional R-O-I.
Howda’ya’ like them apples?
And worrying feels good to you; you’ve grown accustomed to it. Like an old pair of jeans that still fit, but have rips in places you really don’t want to display out in public.
I don’t know about you, but breaking in a new pair of jeans is often a pain in the ass: breaking patterned behavior takes some serious effort and awareness.
But if you want to harness and redirect the energy worry is sucking out of your emotional bank account, you need to tell yourself the truth: you worry for reasons way beyond the surface situational data set.
Make deposits. Take the blinders off. Unhook. Rest. Relax. Read a book. Eat chocolate.
We need to get off our butts, break in a new pair of possibilities, and start strutting our stuff, instead of slinking down the alleyway in our worn out worries.
“We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
