In this week’s episode, I’m going to talk about why worrying is a waste of time and energy. First, I’d like to clarify what I mean by worrying. 

In life, there will be challenging things that will bother you, upset you, and evoke powerful emotions. This is natural, expected, and par for the course, when living as a human being on planet earth. 

However, your mind can make things worse by irresponsibly extrapolating past events, distorting a situation by giving it unwarranted importance, coming to a conclusion based on incomplete facts or false information, and translating anxiety into troublesome thoughts. It’s these behaviors of the mind  that make things worse, that I’m referring to when I speak of worrying. 

Let’s first consider how your mind can cause trouble by irresponsibly extrapolating past events. 

Suppose as you’re leaving work late on a Friday evening, your boss tells you that she wants to speak with you first thing on Monday. 

The entire bus ride home your mind is racing like a monkey jumping from branch to branch: “Oh no, am I going to lose my job? How am I going to pay my rent? How will I pay for my tuition? I’m going to have to drop out of school and delay my degree. My parents will be so disappointed in me. I’m going to let them down”. 

Your mind races like this the entire weekend and you’re not able to enjoy yourself at all. Finally, Monday morning arrives and you walk into your boss’ office nervously. She smiles and tells you what a wonderful job you’ve been doing and that she wants to promote you.

Think about all the stress you put yourself through over the weekend and the wasted time and energy. This could have been a weekend to relax, recharge, and enjoy life, but instead you felt stressed out and frazzled. Wouldn’t that be a big waste of some potentially great weekend time?

Now let’s consider how your mind can blow things out of proportion. Suppose you’re very self-conscious about the way you speak. Maybe you fumble over words sometimes. During a staff meeting you accidentally mispronounce a coworker’s last name and she laughs.  

After the meeting you leave feeling very embarrassed and worry all night about negatively affecting her perception of you. The next day, you work up the courage to apologize to her for how you pronounced her last name yesterday. She say,s “oh I didn’t think anything of it, my last name is kind of tricky to pronounce anyways”. 

In this case your mind blew the situation out of proportion giving it much more energy and attention that it deserved, because the situation was rooted in a fear you have about yourself.

For some situations, it simply doesn’t make sense to worry because you don’t have enough information. It would be foolish to invest a lot of time and energy in a view of the future that is based mostly on speculation and conjecture. 

Even when you think you understand what’s going on in a given situation, you may not, especially if there are complex factors involved. There’s also the possibility that you’ve been fed incorrect information by others, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Imagine if a news organization intentionally broadcasted some false information that was disturbing to you, to serve the agenda of one of its corporate sponsors. What if you spent days, weeks, or longer worrying about what you heard, only to learn later that they were misleading you. 

Think about how much time and energy you would have wasted, not to mention the suffering that accompanied any feelings of anger or frustration that the news evoked in you. Maybe the news prompted you to start arguments with others, effectively spreading negativity.

For some lack of information causes concern and worry, but it’s important to also consider that there may be favorable factors that you’re unaware of, that will positively affect an outcome.

When reflecting on these various situations that were discussed so far, we can see that fear fuels worrying in the mechanism of the mind. Worrying is the mind taking fear and running with it. Fear of some undesirable change or event. Fear that we may not be good enough or live up to expectations. Fear of whatever. 

We can learn a lot about ourselves by examining what we fear. In this way, examining the subject matter of our worrying could potentially inform us about deep seated psychological issues that we need to address. 

But instead of allowing your mind to hijack your consciousness through worrying, consciously remind yourself that it is the nature of the mind to irresponsibly extrapolate, inappropriately blow things out of proportion, and run with incomplete information into wild speculation.

Even in the case where the fears that are the subject of your worrying do come true, would all that worrying have served any constructive purpose? Even if it prompted you to plan effectively for the outcome, could that planning have been conducted in a means that didn’t involve the same amount of psychological distress?

Also, understand that the mind has a tendency to get stuck, like a broken record. If you find your mind continuously revisiting a worry in a given moment, you need to change the pattern, or frequency if you will, of your thoughts. Activities like prayer, meditation, yoga, and exercise may help you to get out of that mental rut. 

Of course this is not to say to disregard the emotional aspect of the worrying. You should take a look at the subject matter of the worrying, and possibly seek the help and guidance of a counsel or. 

Worrying can also be a habit. In the past I’ve observed that my mind has fixated on certain upcoming events in the future, generating stress leading up to those events. The events seemed to take center stage in my mind, and I would think: “Oh I’ll be so relieved after this passes”. Time and time again, what I noticed is that the event would pass, and there would be some temporary relief, but my mind would have a tendency to latch onto something else to worry about. 

We can get used to living in a state of constant worrying. But through meditation we can quiet our mind, and by shifting our focus to positive things in our lives and things we are passionate about, we can reshape our consciousness day by day to be more joyful and positive. 

Finally, let’s look at some strategies for dealing with worrying:

Here’s a simple breath meditation that you can try when your mind is caught up in worrying. First sit down in a comfortable position and bring your attention to your breath. Breathe in through your nostrils for six seconds, and then exhale through your mouth for six seconds. Do this for about 5 to 10 minutes. 

If there’s something you’re afraid of, try looking your fear right in the eyes and saying to yourself: “So what if this happens? I’m a strong person. I can handle this”. You may also try saying to yourself: “I will live my truth to the best of my ability which is all that I can do”

Depending upon your beliefs, faith in a benevolent higher power (such as God, the universe, supreme consciousness, etc.) may offer comfort when worrying. Surrendering the situation to this higher power has the potential to release the burden that your mind is carrying. 

The Serenity Prayer embodies this idea. It goes like this: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference

If you tend to dwell on negative things, try making a concerted effort to think of the positive things in your life, and the things that you love. Engaging yourself in activities that you are passionate about can have a positive and energizing effect on your consciousness. 

Lastly, volunteering and acts of service that help others, can help create positive feelings of connection and belonging, and get your mind off of your own troubles and thoughts. 

Thank you for listening to this week’s podcast, and peace be with you.