Breaking the Worry Habit

In life, we may find reasons to worry. Worrying about things that could happen but haven't happened yet. Worrying about what other people think about us. Worrying about things that already happened that we wish we could change. Worrying about others rejecting us. Worrying about not being perfect or right. Worrying about injustice and wrongdoing in the world.

But when has worrying ever improved anything?

When has worrying actually made you feel more in control?

When has worrying reduced stress and helped you relax?

When has worrying ever resulted in peace?

That's right - it hasn't. There is no magical threshold where more worrying results in less worrying. Where feeling more anxious and frustrated leads you to feeling less anxious and less frustrated. Where spinning out of control makes you more centered and present. This is the habit, and even addiction, of worry.

So breaking that habit and pattern requires us to defy it and withdraw our focus, and our energy, from the habit.

To no longer make worry your 1st and only choice. To stop feeding the worry with your attention. To create a boundary where enough is enough and you put the brakes on. To increase your awareness of where you give worry permission to take up residence in your mind and drain your vitality.

And to stop affirming the worry's place in your life by declaring "I'm a worrier." "I'm a worrywart." "I always worry too much." or accepting the admonishment from other when they accuse you of not worrying enough. Words are powerful, and saying disempowering words like this as a knee-jerk habit creates shackles that box you into a self-limiting and narrow mindset.

We can all worry, but that doesn't define who we are.

So when you feel the urge to feed the worry, to identify as a worrier, to criticize someone for not worrying enough, or to allow worrying to be your undoing, take a deep breath. Take a moment. Take a few. And press pause.

There's enough worrying in the world right now, and it never has, and it never will, make anything better. So to be the change amidst a worry-filled world, and to be effective in your impact to shift not only your individual, but this collective habit, you must be the antidote to what's causing the problem.

And you must choose to not worry.

To swim upstream and follow that pause with a new, defiant choice. And with every temptation and distraction that draws you towards the worry, to give yourself permission to keep choosing otherwise. To open your mind and uplift the choices of peace, positivity, faith, and trust every day. And to follow the fruits that lead to your freedom.

And knowing that this won’t be easy or feel natural, and that it may actually get harder the closer you get to evicting worry from your mind, remembering that you can ask for help when you get tired and feel like giving into the status quo and falling back into the comfort of worrying.

We each have our piece of the puzzle to breaking the worry habit - I do, you do, we all do - but none of us can do it alone. And that may be perfectly by design, to remedy the isolation, the shutting down, the divisiveness, and inertia that worry is so good at bringing into our lives. To remind each of us that we are not alone and that united, we can be a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

And as we shine our combined light upon the worry, being able to see it for what it truly is. Not a huge, ferocious monster looming over us. But actually a small, meek one that thrives in our blind spots.

So while our work is cut out for us, it’s work that each of us can do. Weeding out the beliefs that justify worry’s place in your life, weeding out the patterns that make worry normal and okay, and embarking upon the journey to breaking the worry habit and reclaiming your power to create more peace, freedom, and faith in your world. For just as worrying never makes things better, not worrying always make things better. And we deserve that.