We humans by its very nature are thinking animals. We constantly keep thinking either in the past or in the future but seldom do we concentrate on the present and thereby missing golden chance to live a satisfying and fulfilling life. Mark Twain has rightly said, “I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened”. These words amply prove that we unnecessary take the burden of future on our shoulders and become chronic worriers. Worry can defined as nothing but an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. Since we don’t have control on future we keep ourselves busy by worrying day and night. Lot of thoughts crosses our mind when we, without any reason, worry about trivial things in life. We imagine worst case scenarios and engage in continuous repetitive negative self-talk.
Some of the common thing a chronic worrier talk about will always have something like What if I was there? I made the wrong decision? I should have done that? And many more what if’s, worrying is habitual behavior and hence can be passed through family hierarchy. Have you ever realized if a family consists of parents who are simply worrying day and night unnecessarily and making their home atmosphere negative what will happen to their children? No medal for guessing the answer. The answer is obvious so is the outcome. If we diligently try to fathom the answer for the events we keep worrying we will be amazed by our discovery. So here is the some simple statistics to help you understand what fool we have been till now for this unnecessary pursuit.
40% of the times what we worry about never happens so in short we are wasting that much amount of time. 30% of what be worry about has already happened so it doesn’t make much difference and you can let it go and move on with life 12% of the worries are baseless, which include something like what others think of me. 10% consists of trivial issues like what will my boss say if I won’t be able to reach office on time for the meeting or will I miss the train to home or simply what we have to wear today for the office. The remainder 8% events do happen out of that the 4% on which we worry is out of our control like ill health or death or any natural crisis, sometimes the actual event is more bearable that the constant worry. Remember the time before the announcement of exam results, failing the class was more bearable than the endless worrying nights that we spend for it. The remaining 4% of worry has the solution in our hand and if we act promptly we can even handle that too.
Worrying habits are not easy to let go. It requires lot of practice of time-tested techniques to get over with this annoying life-consuming habit. Though it is not possible to completely wipe it out form our life but we can reduce its impact and make our life more meaningful and fulfilling. Some of the techniques you can use are as follows:
Get Busy - Doing things what you love helps you alleviate form worrying habits. Get ready with your list of must-do-things and make worrying a past habit.
