How Not To Worry

How not to worry is a struggle I’ve had for my whole life. But recently I’ve made some observations and come to some conclusions that helped me to grow stronger in this area – that have really guided me down the path of finding the solution of how not to worry about everything under the sun.

If there is one thing I’ve been known for is that I’m a worrier. I can worry with the best of them. If you look up worry in the dictionary, there’s a picture of me. I don’t know if this is hereditary, or just learned, but my mom was always a worrier. Maybe that’s where I got it from; I don’t know. But I do know I worry a lot, and I also know something else: it never did me one ounce of good.

First of all, all the worrying in the world is not going to change the outcome of something. I used to worry about my kids being safe on their way to school. Of course, I set up rules and provisions to try to keep them safe; I told them not to talk to any strangers, and made sure they didn’t walk alone. I was a proactive parent, and I did what was considered advisable to keep them safe.

But the bottom line is, as soon as they leave the house something could happen to them. They could get hit by a car. They could slip on ice and break their arm. They could get to the corner and take a right instead of a left. And I couldn’t do anything about it, and all my worrying wouldn’t change that at all!

Fortunately, so far, none of those things have happened. In fact, nothing at all has happened while my kids have walked to school. And I have 5 of them, with the oldest being a sophomore in high school. That’s a lot of uneventful walking to school episodes. This leads me to my second point.

Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway. I’ve trying to adopt the attitude that I’ve got to “play the odds” on the issues I worry about. If something bad has a low chance of happening, I try not to worry about it. One of my kids got to go up in a small airplane as a reward for memorizing Bible verses in Sunday School. His teacher was the pilot, and his job was actually to teach people how to fly. So he knew what he was doing. It was still dangerous, but I calculated the odds in my head, and came up with the fact that the chance of them crashing was probably about 1 in a million, so I didn’t worry (too much).

Lastly, worrying can actually bring on problems. I’ve been self-employed for over 20 years. When you’re self-employed, you know that every month can be an adventure, as far as income goes. There are no guarantees. Well, one of my biggest worries is money. It can be so bad that it can immobilize me – I can spend way to much time fretting about paying the bills, and organizing my Quickbooks, and not near enough time actually working to bring in money. The worrying can overwhelm me and bring about the problem that I’m worrying about. This isn’t good or necessary.

What we’ve recently done is my wife has taken over paying the bills, so I can concentrate on income producing activities. She’s not the worrier I am, and even if she does worry about it, it doesn’t detract from the actual goal of making the needed income to pay the bills.

If you want to know how not to worry, try to readjust your thinking in the 3 ways I’ve outlined above. And remember what the Bible says: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Learn how not to worry - find out how to control anxiety today, including panic attacks, job-related stress, or just a general feeling of anxiety. Do it now – you don’t have to continue to live this way!