Overcoming Worry

Human beings, as far as we know, are the only living being that has the ability to worry. We have uncanny potential to imagine the unimaginable, the facility to expect the worst and the ability to convert our mental fears into physical symptoms, as though they are reality.

Have you ever noticed yourself begin to get warm, start to sweat and feel really uncomfortable, all because of something in your mind that may never happen?

Have you ever begun to shake quietly, experience a cold shiver run down your neck and feel the hairs on your arms stand to attention, all because of a thought process that was only one of many potential outcomes?

These powerful experiences created by the mind are a perfect example of the downsides of human intelligence, or rather the downsides of not using our intelligence, well intelligently.

In any given situation, however common to you, worrying will only serve to either prove you right or prove you wrong, nothing more. It will not help you to reach a better outcome, if anything it will tell you to expect the worst and the worst is probably what you will get.

Worrying never served anyone, it only stood to make situations worse and give you the ability to say I told you so when things do go as badly as you expect them to.

Worrying contributes to health problems, like stress and other disorders of the nervous system and continuous worry should be stopped before you begin to experience any health problems associated with it.

If you are the worrying kind, we know how difficult it can be to get out of the mindset, but You really need to begin to believe now, you can overcome it and live a life free from worry and once we have shown you how, you can stop yourself worrying forever, its actually very straight forward.

Why do you worry?
We all worry for different reasons and about different things, and one of the common things about worry is that you never worry about anything positive. Well, do you? Have you ever found yourself worrying about winning a holiday, worrying about doing well at work, or being successful at anything. The answer is probably no, we worry about the opposite, something bad happening, like having a holiday from hell, or making mistakes at work or being a failure, this is common to all worriers.

You may worry about yourself, about other people and about situations, and if we tell that you can stop, you probably think what do they know, they are not in my situation. Well we may not be in your situation but what we do know is that whatever your situation, the second common thing about worry is that it is generated by our minds. However likely it is that something worth worrying about will happen, actually worrying about it is a symptom of the mind, and of the imagination.

You may feel that worrying helps you to prepare for a situation. Often the worry just lets you prepare for the worst. Of course you need to consider the potential worst outcome, but it is far more healthy to concentrate on the range of possible outcomes, and focus on the positive, it is far more likely to happen that way.

We can’t tell you exactly why you worry, it may be because your parents did, or you have been conditioned to expect the worst, what we do know is that you worry about things because you convince yourself that the situations in your imagination could happen, and are likely to happen. When you imagine something so vividly you begin to think it could happen, in no time you see it as being the only thing that could possibly happen, and eventually you experience the symptoms of someone who knows that it definitely will happen (whether it will or not, or however likely or not it really is)

Whatever the actual source of the worry, why don’t you give the following Worry Elimination Exercise a try and stick with it, remind yourself of it every time you notice yourself worrying, you will find that over time you have the ability to always look on the bright-side and you will only ever experience situations as they happen, not situations that may never happen., you will quickly notice the positive impact it has on your state of mind and general health.

The Worry Elimination Exercise

1. Think back to a time when you felt extremely worried about something, that in the end never happened. You may have noticed how relieved you felt when it didn’t happen, this is just the release of tension that you needlessly built up in yourself. Try to imagine yourself there now, how did the worry feel inside, what was the scenario you experienced, play it back in your mind, how does it make you feel.

2. Now think back to the time just before the event occurred and then play the actual event through your mind, notice how you feel when you experienced it, notice the relief that the situation turned out well and that you had nothing to worry about.

3. Try to compare now the differences in the images that you experiences notice the aspects of the positive actual experience, it was probably a bright scene, maybe it was calm and colourful and it would certainly have felt less tense to you.

4. Now, the trick is to notice yourself worrying when you do it, this will take a while to achieve as you may begin to slip into the worry and then notice, and this is fine. When you notice, immediately think of a positive ending, however far removed your old self would picture it from reality. Notice how the positive ending plays through your mind like the actual ending in the example we did, notice it has similar movements and colours and your outlook on the situation is the same.

5. Hold this thought for as long as you can and return to it if the niggling worry begins.

6. This process will erase the possibility of negative endings occurring in your imagination. As your imagination dreams up a problem, your analytical mind will look at it and say, no, I don’t believe that can happen and erase it before it begins.

We urge you to use this model whenever you experience worry, you won’t have to use it for long before you notice a difference. Stopping worrying will be great for your mental and ultimately physical health. Worry never served anyone, don’t let it serve you.

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