No Limits |
The Freedom Blog™
Worrier
or Warrior?
Written
by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com
“Never
bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three- all they
have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”
E.E. Hale
“If you
want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year
ago today.”
E. Joseph
Cossman
Worry.
It’s a sneaky thing. Worrying is just a symptom of fear.
It
is actually a very comfortable place for your ego personality to hide out. It
becomes consumed and distracted running through all the
negative possibilities that it can imagine might happen.
“What
if the car breaks down?” “What if I lose my job?” “What if I can’t pay the
bills?”
It
is endless. Once you have developed the habit of slipping into worry, it can become
a part of your daily script.
It
can become overwhelming and pervasive. I recently heard someone say they were
worried about going out shopping because they might get hit by a car…….. !
You
can see how far this can go, it can get crazy.
Sometimes
having a bit of worry is OK, it could be just a fleeting thought of concern
that acts like a warning signal. It’s telling you to remember something that
could come up later or reminding you to take some other proactive action. This is not really worrying.
The
worrying I’m talking about is all consuming. It becomes a filter that you see
the world through.
In
general worrying is self-indulgent and really very polluting and toxic, first to
anyone you are ‘worried” about and then especially to yourself.
By
worrying about someone, you place a huge burden on that person. You are taking
any fears or doubt they may already have and bringing their focus onto it and then
they really start to worry and it expands…..
Not
to mention how much you are trashing your own energy by focusing on negativity.
And by
worrying and thinking about negative possibilities you are actually attracting
the negative results you are worried about! You are sending out the vibration
of what you don’t want instead of what you do want as an outcome.
And that’s what you’ll
get- the exact thing you were worried about!
It’s a self-fulfilling
prophecy.
There
is a concept called “Pareto’s Principle” or the “80/20
rule”. It says that 80% of the things you worry about won’t happen and
the 20% that do happen won’t be as bad as you thought it would be.
So
try to remember that.
But how
do you shift from living in fear or worry?
You need to move up a level or two on the emotional scale. It’s
difficult to shift in one fell swoop into very high energy level, it is much easier
to move up incrementally.
Try
this. The next time you feel yourself worrying, sit down and draw a line down
the middle of a piece of paper. (This is a variation of an exercise called “Clarity
through Contrast”).
On
the left side, write down what you are worried about (what you DON’T want). You can list several things or just the
dominant worry you are having today.
On
the right side, write down what you would prefer to happen (what you DO want).
Now
go down the list of items, which thought feels best? What you DON’T want or
what you DO want?
When
looking at what you DO want, try to see how it would look and how it will feel
when it happens. It feels better, right? I’ll bet much better.
Can
you feel the shift?
By focusing your attention on the desired outcome and feeling it, you can shift towards new possibilities instead of being mired in limitation.
By focusing your attention on the desired outcome and feeling it, you can shift towards new possibilities instead of being mired in limitation.
So the next
time you feel yourself slipping back into worry, try to remember what you DO
want. Or since it is difficult to stop some thoughts, (you can try saying “cancel!”,
it works for me) tell yourself I’ll think about that later, then when you can,
take another look at your list.
Don’t
let your mind be sabotaged by fear.
Be
a warrior not a worrier.
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