A friend and I were recently discussing a book and she read that phrase aloud. I immediately laughed out loud and smiled. No, this isn’t a dyslexic remembrance of that feel good Bobby McFerrin song and it’s surely not a prescription for living your “best life” (as Oprah would put it). It is however an unfortunate and rather sad diagnosis for many. But don’t fret, we can fix it!
[Photo Credit]
An anonymous human being once said: “If you cannot help worrying, remember that worrying cannot help you either.”
Ya Gotta Love Logic
We humans seem to excel at worrying. We worry about money, family issues, health, relationships, death, other people’s perceptions & problems, status, politics, world news, climate change, aging, crime, the economy, calories, yadda, yadda, yadda.
We even worry about worrying and as time goes on we get better at it. Like the saying goes, practice makes permanent. If worry is something you’re not particularly fond of, try this little deworryfying 
exercise:
- Take out a clean sheet of paper and create three columns with the following labels (visual aid below).
Column 1: “Worry”
Column 2: “Can’t”
Column 3: “Can” - Now think about all of the things you regularly worry about and list them in the “Worry” column. Take your time with this step to make sure you list as many as you can think of.
- Place a check mark in the “Can’t” column if the “Worry” is something you cannot control.
- Place a check mark in the “Can” column if the “Worry” is something you can control.
Once you’ve completed your list, look over the worries you checked as “Can’t” and ask yourself the following:
- Am I absolutely sure that I cannot control this?
- For real for real?
If, after answering those two questions, you are still confident that the particular worry is one that you cannot control, then leave the check mark where it is. Otherwise, check the “Can” column instead. Repeat this process for the other worries you’ve checked as “Can’t”.
Once you’re done, consider this . . . It makes absolutely no sense to worry about these items because you cannot control them. You even double checked to make sure! You do not have the ability to change these things and worrying about them places an emotional burden on you that weakens you & obstructs true happiness. So look at those items again, take a deep breath and let them go. They’re not your problem so stop convincing yourself that they are.
Phew!
Now that you’ve freed yourself of the burden of that heavy “Can’t” column, let’s take a crack at the “Can” column.
Look over the worries you checked as “Can” and ask yourself the following:
- Am I absolutely sure that I can control this?
- For real for real?
If, after answering those two questions, you are still confident that the particular worry is one that you can control, then leave the check mark where it is. Otherwise, check the “Can’t” column instead. Repeat this process for the other worries you’ve checked as “Can”.
It may seem like déjà vu, but again it makes no sense to worry about these items either, because you CAN control them. You have the ability to change these things instead of choosing to use worry as a substitute for action.
So look at this list and think about how you might lend some action to each of these “Can” items. Whether they are local to your household, global in nature or somewhere in between, I’m confident that there’s an action you can conceive that will move each of these issues (even if only a little) in a direction you feel good about.
If you’ve stuck with me thus far, you’ve completely reduced your regular list of worries to a pile of ruble! I hope you feel really good about that!
Future Proof
Now let’s examine some strategies to limit worry’s reach as you move forward.
1. Stop watching the frickin news! (Especially local)
There are tons of wonderful and inspiring things that occur everyday on this planet and they won’t likely be brought to you live at 6! Being inundated with that much consistent negativity shapes your view of the world and ultimately your existence in it. Most news stories rarely contain content worthy of your dreams and end up being fuel for your nightmares. Let it go.
2. Trust Your Instincts
Your gut is one of your best friends. It’s not swayed by propaganda, suckered in by sales pitches or influenced by hype. It just knows. It’s knowing may sometimes send you down a path that you could characterize as difficult or unpleasant, but you’d be hard pressed to find an instance where it led you down the wrong path. There have been times when I know without a doubt that I ignored my gut. It’s “thoughts” were there for me to leverage at that critical moment and I went another way. It knows what it knows and you should trust that.
3. Leverage Your Strengths
Have you ever taken stock of your strengths and weaknesses or embarked on a quest to be more “well rounded”? I’m sure you have in one form or another. Maybe it was when you were planning out how you want to improve over the coming year, or when you took a personality test or even when you were answering that classic strengths/weaknesses interview question. Either way, you’ve done it. My suggestion for you is to forget about your weaknesses and focus on your strengths. Think about the way a good basketball coach approaches winning. He or she determines who the strongest players are and leans on them to deliver the bulk of the results. Sure the other 7 guys or gals contribute and have a role to play, but that coach is going to depend on the star players when the game is on the line. You can approach your strengths & weaknesses in this way too. It doesn’t mean that you stop learning new things & becoming a new you, you just heavily leverage your strengths on the journey. Give that some thought and find out what your strengths currently are, because they may be quite different than they were 5 or 10 years ago. A great tool for discovering your true strengths is the StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.
So there you have it . . . worry debunked. Now you can take Bobby McFerrin’s advice and have a smile as big as his!
“In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy”- Bobby McFerrin
Vocalist, conductor & music education spokesperson
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Love it! practice makes permanent – first time I heard it said that way!
That one is courtesy of my 8th grade shop teacher. His words went a little something like this (spoken with a strong Cajun draw): “I’m sure you’ve heard the saying Practice Makes Perfect. Well I’m here to tell ya that that doesn’t make much sense. If you practice something over & over and you’re doing it dead wrong, it sure as hell ain’t ever gonna be perfect. Practice makes permanent, and that’s all there is to it!”
Enjoyed the article Geuka! Keep the positive vibes coming…….we all need this reminder.
Will do Mary! Thanks for the feedback. :-)