How to Stop Worrying in a Few Simple Steps – Part II

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“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning” ~ Winston Churchill.

Continuing yesterday’s article which listed the first three steps on How to Stop Worrying in a Few Simple Steps – Part I.

Step 4 – Evaluate your “worry-thinking”

The next step in changing your worry habit is to consider the thoughts you have while worrying and evaluate each one for accuracy. Is the thought distorted? Does it accurately reflect reality? Many of us imagine consequences to be much worse than they actually are. If you examine your everyday language you will see the evidence of this.

How often have you said “He will kill me if I don’t deliver this project on time.”? Or “I will die if I don’t get to (fill in the blank)”. It is unlikely that anyone will kill you or that you will die in either of the situations. These are examples of catastrophizing or thinking of consequences of mistakes as much worse than they will be. So let’s look at some of the thoughts from our earlier worrying example.

Thought I: I will lose my job.
Reality Check: Will you really lose your job if you flub one presentation? Chances are you might be chastised and feel uncomfortable. Worst case, you might even get a warning letter. But would you boss really fire you for one poor performance? Also look for evidence from your past to refute this belief. Haven’t you excelled at other times? Didn’t you get a good performance appraisal last year? After all, the fact that your boss gave you this project means that he or she has confidence in your ability to do it.

Thought II: I must be really stupid to be so nervous about this – its just a little thing after all.
Reality Check: It is normal to feel nervous about doing something for the first time especially when it is something important. So you are behaving quite normal. You are not stupid. You know this. If you were stupid you would not have been able to put together the presentation in the first place And there are many other things in your past which shows your intelligence. Natural nervousness is not a symptom of stupidity.

You can go through the other thoughts listed above to practice this method of realistically evaluating your thoughts for distortion and inaccuracy. It is important to try to be objective and logical and view things as realistically as possible.

If you aren’t sure that you can challenge your own “worry-thinking” then enlist the help of family or friends. They will be able to throw a different perspective on the situation for you and show you where your thoughts are not reflecting reality. You might be thinking that you are inadequate to the task but they will be able to point out numerous past experiences where you rose to the occasion and did a magnificent job.

Step 5 – Practice being worry-free

Learning to be worry-free is a process. It will not happen overnight. It takes time and practice. While it is straightforward, it is not easy. We have a way of being comfortable with familiar patterns even when those patterns are negative. Once we try to challenge the status quo there is an accompanying feeling of discomfort and we naturally recoil. We must therefore exert mental effort to correct the erroneous thinking and break the worry habit because the negative thought processes do not serve our well-being.

It is to your advantage to suffer the discomfort in the initial phases of forcing yourself to examine and challenge your “worry-thinking”. Each time you do it the process will be a little easier and a little more comfortable. It is slowly becoming your new habit of thinking replacing your “worry-thinking”. You might want to try these techniques with worrying about situations that obviously have less critical anxiety-producing consequences. For example, worrying about being late for a movie as opposed to worrying about being late for an important meeting.

But always remember that you are working on changing a lifelong habit of worrying so you will have to practice these steps several times over for several different worry situations before it really starts to become a habit. You might feel overwhelmed or frustrated if it’s not sticking after the first few tries but keep going. It will become easier and in a few months you will be well on your way to being worry-free.

Other Lifestyle adjustments

If you are a worrier chances are you feel nervous and anxious often. It is well worth your while to practice relaxation and stress-relieving techniques in conjunction with learning to be worry-free. Look out for another article on those techniques.

“If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.” ~ Dale Carnegie.

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Related Articles:

• How to Stop Worrying and Be Relaxed – An Experiment
• Slow down, stop rushing and enjoy your life
• How to become an Optimist – Part I
• How to be Happy – Training yourself to enjoy life
• The Power of Realistic Positive Thinking
• Your Capacity for Change
• Optimism vs. Pessimism
• Coping with Stress – Part I

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 2:16 pm and is filed under A New Start, Choices, Depression, Optimism and Positive Thinking, Self Discipline . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.