Are You Worrying About the Future? STOP IT!

byLori3030

593 followers

9 years ago

Word count: 691 Reading Time: 5 minutes

Do you ever find yourself worrying about things that may happen in the future? Who doesn’t’?? Do you ask yourself questions and wonder about how you will handle different outcomes? Well STOP IT!! Do you have any idea how much unnecessary stress you are placing on yourself. Read this and really make a conscious effort to implement this idea, you daily life will be more relaxed and you will have room in your brain to create and problem solve more easily and with more innovation. You overall quality of life will increase dramatically. I know it changed my life.

We all have a tendency to wonder “what if” and its okay to play out scenarios in your head if you want to, the problem lies when you start worrying about the outcome and stress over it before it has even happened. At one point in my life I was very ill and had just had surgery, my Mother had passed away 6 months prior and I was getting divorced after my surgery and moving out of our family home. Talk about making up “What if’s”. I had thousands of them and the permutations and combination were endless and exhausted me. The fear was crushing and I was overwhelmed. One of my dear friends taught me this lesson at that time and once you get the hang of it, you will be sorry you never learned it earlier.

This is the lesson: Worry about today’s problems today; they are the only problems that are real and need to be solved or dealt with. As for the future – do not waste your energy or time on future problems; if you have the ability to change or affect the outcome then do something about it (ie: if you are afraid to fail a test- then study harder), BUT in most cases we have no control over the outcome- and we can only imagine so many scenarios in our heads, not the million of them that could possibly happen that we have not thought about. So then, why worry about the how to solve problems when you don’t know what they are yet? The scenarios your mind can conjure up will (1) most likely will never happen or (2) a ton of other circumstances can arise and the outcome be one of ten thousand that you could not have expected or foreseen. You are also assuming most times a negative outcome, if you assume that there will be a positive outcome, without imagining what it will be, you are more likely to get one. The idea is to wait until a problem becomes a problem and then deal with it because that is the only time you will have all the information you need to make educated choices. And at that time, it will have become “Today’s problem”. Does this make sense?

It’s so liberating to be able to solve or work on the things that need to be done today and not worry about tomorrow. Wake up each day and see each day as a new start. Of course, this is not meant for illness or very serious long term situations, but even then it has its place. But-for 90% of the issues we deal with in life, this advice is a lifesaver!

I know that this is without a doubt the best piece of advice I have ever received. While it takes a little time to master, eventually you just stop doing it, and when something arises you will hear that little voice in your head say “I’ll worry about that if or when it becomes a problem” ( and I know what I have to worry about”). It is not today’s problem”. I only work on today’s problems”. You will see how much calmer you are and your brain will be much more functional at dealing with current issues as well. You will be able to become a more creative problem solver as your brain is free from worrying about unnecessary things and being overwhelmed by them. This leaves open space for the mind to be innovative and have more energy for this positive things in life.