Are you a worrier?

Words of Wisdom / By

Words of wisdom for this week.

“Bacteria and other microorganisms find it easier to infect people who worry and fret.” – Leo Rangell

I recently came across an interesting statistic. Now, generally statistics can be very misleading, but they can give us some insight if we don’t get ourselves worked into a twit over them. Anyway, I read that 85 – 90% of the population worry about something on a consistent basis. People worry about:

  • their health
  • their career or job
  • their finances
  • their future
  • their kids/relatives
  • their life in general
  • what other people think of them
  • and anything else they can think of.

Worry was depicted in ancient hieroglyphics with a picture of a wolf sinking his teeth into the neck of a man. In other words, worry literally cuts of the flow of life from the brain to the body and from the body back to the brain. I have also read, years ago, that a large percentage of what people worry about never comes to pass. In other words, worry is a down payment on a debt you will never owe. So, why do people worry?

  1. They believe they have no control over their life and its outcomes.
  2. They tend to be pessimistic and negative.
  3. They feel they are victims and that life is picking on them and is out to get them.
  4. They don’t believe they have any positive options to events or circumstances.
  5. They tend to live either in the future or the past.

What good does worry do us? None. If this is so, why do people insist on giving so much mental energy to an activity that could be better directed to some other, more productive, objective like a hobby, a general interest, a creative endeavor, time with loved ones, time for reading or entertainment, time for activity or exercise?

Here are a few things you can do if you are a worrier:

  1. Keep a worry list. Every time you start to worry about something, write it down and see how often it comes to pass. But get it out of your mind and onto the paper.
  2. Learn to live in the present moment, rather than the future.
  3. Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t.
  4. See worry for what it is: useless mental energy that could be better used elsewhere.
  5. Learn to keep things in perspective: nothing in your life 100 years from today will really matter.