Don't worry be happy. How many of you hate me now that I have this song stuck in your head for the rest of the day? Yea I figured it would be most of you. MeI'm happily humming it to myself and probably driving those around me crazy. Power is a wonderful thing.
So why can't we stop worrying and just be happy? I used to think I was someone who didn't worry, or worried VERY little. But after this pastSunday I'm starting to realize I worry a lot. Andy started a new series called "Why Worry?" in which he is going to try and convince us all not to worry anymore. Easier said then done.
The question which really got me was "what is it in your life which you are most devoted to?" Answering this question will really outline what you really worry about. Money of course is a big one. Marriage or finding a mate is probably a close second. Followed up with all kinds of other silly things.
You see those things which we are devoted to are typically the things which we also worry about. It's a direct correlation and there really is no way to avoid it. So if your priorities are out ofwhack then so is your worry. If you're main focus is your job then you will worry about your job. If your main focus is that pile of bills sitting on the kitchen counter then worry will sit there as well.
Yea but what if my main focus is my family, or my health, or the homeless. Isn't it OK to worry about those things? OK let me be a bit harsh here. NO! Seriously. Worrying about your family or about your son and what he's doing at 2 am on a Friday night is not OK.
Eric that is not a bit harsh that is seriously harsh. No it's not harsh, it's the truth. Now for those of you who say worrying about your son, or family isOK. No Worry is not OK, BUT concern for them and their well being and safety is. The difference is worry is typically something you can't control. Concern you can, and should control.
Now considering the different between worry and concern. Does worry get you anywhere? Does it make your life better? Does it enrich you?
NO!
It sucks the life out of you. Worrying takes time, because you have to process the worry. Take the bills for example. This is how I see the conversation going on in mine and your respective heads.
"mmm I need to pay those bills today"
"I wonder if I've got enough in the account to cover everything or if I need to float something closer to the next pay check"
"when is the next pay check?"
"Do I have all these accounts in bill pay?"
"I'm going to need at least 15 min to do all this"
"do I have time to do this right now?"
"Ugh I don't have enough time in the day"
"I need to plan better"
"Man I'm hungry"
"What's in the frig"
OK so maybe yours isn't exactly like that but I'm guessing if you actually wrote out your thought process you'd have to laugh at yourself. The point is all this "thinking" aka "worrying" took time. Let's be really really nice to Eric and say it took only 3 minutes for me to worry about the bills on my counter. Now let's again be nice to me and say that I only worry once a day, but I worry once every day. So 3 minutes a day for 7 days is 21 minutes a week. Now there are 52 weeks in a year so 52 weeks times 21 minutes andI'm up to 1092 minutes of worry a year. which is roughly 18 hours.
18 hours!!!! that's almost a full day of my life wasted on a pile of paper which I could easily just pickup, pay and be done with it. Now imagine if those numbers were inflated? If I worried for 5 minutes a day that would work out to about 30 hours a year. NowI'm up to a full day and a half.
Gone. Fini. Sayonara. Wasted.
Still think worrying is worth it? I bet you've never said "Boy I wish I had more time to do _____". You haven't have you? Cause you've got it all together. You actually plan for worry time don't you.
Yea didn't think so.
You're like me. At least once a day or a few times a week you think "I need more time". Here's the funny part. After you make this statement to yourself or those around you, guess what you do next? Worry about it!
Trying to stop worrying is not an easy task. But understanding what things make you worry the most, and then deflecting that worry can make it easier to manage. Go back to my original question.
what is it in your life which you are most devoted to?
Now ask yourself what would happen if you still had concern for those issues but didn't worry about them. Remember concern is something you can control because you acknowledge an issue or situation, apply rationale to it and then make a sound judgement. Think about those fathers who sit at home "worrying" about their daughters being out till 2 am.
Instead of worrying about what they are doing. Where they are at. How long they are out etc. They should be concerned their daughter is out so late and then make a determination to discuss it with her either when she gets home or the next morning. You see you've identified the worry but rather then stew on it, you turn it into concern and then devise a plan of action to deal with it. Once the worry is dealt with you can, hopefully, move on.
- Identify the worry.
- Apply rationale thoughts to it thereby making it more of a concern
- Make a sound judgement against the concern so you have something to act on later.
What happens if you can't follow these three steps? What happens if you get bogged down in #2 or can't come up with any for #3. Then there is nothing you can do about it, so WHY WORRY in the first place.
Sometimes you just have to let things go. Give them up. Give them to God! Let him do the worrying for you, he has more time, a better insight to all the puzzle pieces, and guess what He can probably DO something about it. He can watch over your daughter for you, help guide her and keep her from harms way. So if you cannot do the three steps, give it to God and pray on it. Let him deal with it.
Matthew 6:24-34 has Jesus talking about worry. You can read the whole thing and get a pretty good face smack out of it, but to me the last verse is the one which resonated:
Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Nov 18, 2008 at 4:30 PM Those 3 steps are also described as part of the formula for creating good luck in your life in a book called the Luck Factor written by one of the UK's most respected scientists, Richard Wiseman. He also talks about how worry actually is a big part of the formula for BAD luck.
One of the simplest explanations for this is to show how worry is a distraction, and that any kind or amount of distraction causes people to overlook "the obvious" even when it's in your interest. So he gave a bunch of people this newspaper and asked them to count the number of pictures in it and if they counted accurately, he'd give them like $5 or the like. And out of like 30 people virtually none of them noticed that at the top of page 2 in giant bold letters was written STOP LOOKING, THERE ARE 37 PICTURES. The reason why nobody noticed it, in spite of it's being rather glaringly obvious was because everyone was focused on the counting task they'd been given - a very simple distraction.
Now that's a very small amount of concentration, imagine all the concentration you focus on worrying about something and you can see how just by worrying you're likely to overlook the glaringly obvious like for example money laying on the ground, etc. There actually is money laying on the ground quite a lot of the time, but you usually only notice it if you're in a good mood. :) Being worried or otherwise in a foul mood makes you less observant.
Wiseman's work has also been a major contributor to this book that I've been working on called the Optimist's Wager. You can download the first chapter of the book here: http://smolderingremains.deviantart.com/art/Optimist-s-Wager-Ch-1-82212934 That cover image shows an outdated title though - there's an updated cover image linked in the description.