Here are 7 things you need to know about worry, including a more helpful alternative.
Stop Worrying
- Worrying doesn’t make things better.
- Worrying is a hideous waste of your time. Time is your most valuable resource.
- Worrying is infectious to those who love you. Your family and friends will start to worry about you, when they sense you’re worried about something.
- Worrying is infectious to your clients and customers. You can usually tell very quickly, when a business owner is worried about business. It’s common for people to pull their accounts from vendors, who they believe may be about to go broke.
- The vast majority of things we worry about, either never happen or when they do happen, were nothing to worry about.
- Worrying causes you to feel worse (and worse and worse.) It can also make you ill.
- Worrying is the lowest possible use of your amazing imagination. Use your mind to build images of what you want and the things you are grateful for. Don’t use your mind as a movie theatre, which plays the worst case scenarios of whatever you’re worrying about, over and over again.
You get to determine what you think about. You choose what you focus on. If you want one less thing to worry about, stop worrying.
Now you have stopped worrying, use that time to get creatively inspired like Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso.
Someone once said, ‘worrying is dreaming what you don’t want to happen’. In my experience it is much more worthwhile concentrating my thoughts on what I DO want to happen, rather than what I don’t! Thanks Jim. (from an ex-worrier)!
Great to hear from you my friend – all the way from your trek around Nepal too!
Great advice Jim. I use to spend so much time worrying that it actually caused me to stop working. It took me years to gain the faith to keep moving forward and trusting that things will pan out okay. Thankfully, today I just do my best everyday and the results are there.
Thanks for sharing some of your story, Wade. Good to see you’re back in the game, sir!
Hey Jim, really great post again. I’m a strong believer in what you have written here and it does only cause more pain than good. I’ve seen this first hand with close relations and because I’m the opposite to the worrying aspect I can deal with things a lot better as I know you can always get through whatever troubles you have. Thanks again and I’ve shared this post too.
Steven
Thanks, Steven.
I love the #7 point. The cinema of our mind can work for us or against us, I guess. Never thought of it quite like that Jim.
Thank you for what you do man.
Better still, Louis, YOU get to be the person who decides which movie to watch
Thanks for the feedback, sir.
Hi Jim,
Love these things. I have been tweeting a lot and blogging a little about worry, for my own niche (artists & entrepreneurs) lately.
Worry is obviously tied very closely to fear. It is also the enemy of a healthy imagination. I myself have a history of imagining bad things happening to me (I admit it, I’m a sicko) and I didn’t realize how insidious the problem was until I really committed to ceasing this thought pattern.
Now, as soon as I sense it, I simply tell myself “You don’t know that Geoff AND that is an awful thought that will steal your life.” Sometimes I’ll even curse at the thought and send it packing (sicko).
Actually, I’m not really a sicko but the enemy of our dreams is a nasty little miscreant who will steal our lives and our futures at every opportunity.
G
Well said, Geoff.
Thanks for sharing how you overcame this habit pattern of thought (how I see it).
Worry also makes you look old. Everyone I know whose a worrier seems to look much older than people I know who are less worrysome.
Another great post Jim.
I think you may be right, Emil.
Worry certainly has a negative impact on your health.