Working With Worry

In today’s economic times a lot of us are worrying about jobs, finances, health, the future, etc. Problems and changes are a sign of life, and everyone is going to have problems and changes in their lives. But the good news is that you don’t have to make things worse by worrying about them!

Dr. Alan Zimmerman, in his book Pivot, talks about worrying and how it wastes your life in four important ways:

1. Worry wastes your time.
2. Worry wastes your energy.
3. Worry wastes your health.
4. Worry wastes your spirituality.

I know the more I worry the more I feel out of control of my life. Yes, there are some things that I need to pay attention to, but there are a lot of things I worry about that I have no control over. Here are some suggestions that Dr. Zimmerman has that I found very helpful:

1. Put worry in perspective. You’ll find that your worries may seem rather trifling, or they may even go away.
2. Realize that you can cope. Regardless of what you might tell yourself, you’re not weak and you’re not incompetent. You probably have a great deal more power than you realize.
3. Do it anyway. Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain." It takes action of some sort to get rid of worry.
4. Forget yourself. Worry is self-absorption. It puts extreme emphasis on self. If you can stop thinking about yourself and think about others and how you can help them, your worries will go away.
5. Practice the presence of God (spirituality). Worry and faith are incompatible. As your faith goes up, worry goes down.
6. Stay in the present. If you live your life in the future or in the past, you are going to have problems with worry, because that’s where worry lives. Worry has a difficult time living in the present.
7. Use your IRA account: Inspect, Respect, and Accept. First, inspect the worry. Give reasonable worry your respect. Then, take the appropriate action step to do something about that particular worry.