Why worrying is not a requirement
The job loss count is rising. Just about every day we hear of another new batch of people now out of work, a new batch who are facing cuts in working hours or forced furloughs, a new batch who have given up. Not surprisingly, 81 percent of Americans say they are worried about something related to their jobs, according to the 2008 Workplace Insights survey by Adecco USA. Among the top job-related worries were:
- High gas prices (25 percent)
- Stagnant pay checks (13 percent)
- Work-life balance (12 percent)
- Rising cost of health care (9 percent)
- Job market (7 percent)
- Opportunities for advancement (6 percent)
- Outsourcing of jobs (4 percent)
- Other worries (5 percent)
“It’s clear that our current economic uncertainty presents real worries to…workers,” said Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer for Adecco USA.
Will worrying help to solve the problem?
A growing number of people are now also worried about their job security. Such worry is understandable, but it doesn’t help. In fact, it can exacerbate any negative experience. Worry and anxiety take a huge toll on mental, physical and emotional energy. Anxiety leads to psycho-somatic symptoms and potentially serious health issues: stress in the form of headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia, exhaustion, fogginess and confusion, body aches and muscle tension—all major causes of time off work and disengagement from life.
In this debilitated, fear-based state, people have a serious challenge in showing up. In their day-to-day life at work, they are often seen as distracted, disengaged or distant. They put in less effort, perform less efficiently and lose focus. Then they feel even more fear and start to notice causes for greater worry.
If not worry, then what?
In these tough times (all the time, really) it’s important to ask yourself: “What am I thinking about?” Awareness is where change and transformation can begin to take place.
When your mind is filled with worry and fear-provoking thoughts, that’s an opportunity to notice that you’re choosing to think about the opposite of what you really want to experience—unless, of course, you’re one of those who live life from a position of ‘eternal victim’. They choose to spend most of their time blaming others.
Worrying is also a self-perpetuating process. Whatever you obsess about, you will gradually take on as the truth. Choose fear and more fear will surely appear.
By choosing to focus on the fear of losing your job, for example, you’re making that thought into a kind of daily ‘programming’. The result will be a life that contains less happiness, success, well being and freedom than it needs to.
How to stop worrying
To those who feel the need to worry, let me make this clear: Worry solves nothing. I repeat, worry solves nothing.
Many people believe that if they don’t worry, nothing positive will ever happen. Many think it wards off greater problems. Many think the process of worrying is doing something. It won’t and it’s not. Worrying only produces more worry. Action absorbs anxiety, worry feeds it.
The way to eliminate worry and move past fear is not to resist it. You can’t simply think your way out. To move away from worry and fear you must accept the fear, then engage brain, body and heart simultaneously to find a place often referred to as ‘the zone’ or ‘flow’. It’s a place where you can act with efficiency and confidence, focusing on each task or challenge with a sense of clarity, ease and well being.
Reaching ‘the zone’
To reach ‘the zone’, you should begin by sensing the contrast between resistance and acceptance (this alone can be an experience of awakening). All you have to do is pay attention. Notice when you’re feeling armored for battle, angry at the world, afraid of something. Notice when you’re feeling open, comfortable and at ease.
‘Positive thinking’ or willpower alone is never a solution. If you ‘think positive’ but still feel fear and anxiety, the fear and anxiety will always win. Always. The mind on its own is not enough. It requires something more: the wisdom of your body and the power of your heart.
Anxiety and fear form patterns which can be replaced with patterns of being and acting in ways that are self-supporting: patterns which exude confidence, courage and positive expectations—even in the face of overwhelming odds and challenges.
During these difficult times, make a conscious effort to engage in centering and coherence practice. Take time to breathe deeply, slowly and quietly into your heart. Focus on your feet on the floor, or on the support under you if you are sitting or lying. Focus on your belly center. With practice, you’ll begin to move into a state of coherence between your brain, your body and your heart: a state that results in harmony and balance.
Worrying and being fearful is a choice. Releasing fear and worry is also a choice. You can choose to hang on to your fear or you can choose to release it.
Here are some thoughts for self-reflection:
- Do worry and fear control much of your thinking and activity? What threatens you? What do your worry about?
- Are the stories you tell yourself about your future true? How do you know?
- What place did worry and fear have in your family as you were growing up?
- Do you often find yourself telling others you are happy when you are not?
- Do you exhibit ‘presenteeism’ at work: a state of preoccupation where you are there physically but not honestly and sincerely engaged?
- Where in your life do you feel you are losing control? What are you doing to deal with this feeling?
- What one or two approaches can you take over the next week or two to reduce perceived threats and worries?
“Instead of frittering away your vibrancy with worry or distraction, realize your mind and body are inextricably united. What calms and tones up one, soothes and improves the other.” —Marsha Sinetar
Technorati Tags: worry, coping with fear, dealing with difficult times, lowering anxiety, finding balance, dealing with anxiety, building confidence
November 21st, 2008 at 7:16 am
> Many people believe that if they don’t worry, nothing positive will ever happen.
One fact is that many people do not take action when it’s not burning. Worries are somehow the motor to change things. Unfortunately in a world getting more and more complex (or at least feels more and more complex), decisions are hard to take and the fear in the background is then the fear of doing something wrong (in the sense of doing something that does not contribute to an increased possibility to “survive”).
I don’t think that worries can be generally switched off by getting aware that it does not change anything. A worry is somehow a signal that something important is to be changed. I rather think that people have problems setting the correct priorities and they are also often missing knowledge. So people often do not solve their worries and so they get more and more and overwhelming.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:03 am
@Martin Wildam: I agree with most of what you write, Martin. However, what I was referring to is the superstitious belief that the act of worrying somehow ‘pays for’ a good outcome: a kind of “I’m really suffering the pain, so I deserve the gain” attitude.
Worry can certainly be a wake-up call, if one is needed, though thought and reflection are better ones. It can also be an alternative to doing anything useful. Some people spend so much of their energy worrying, they have none left for taking action.
Does it help to realize that worrying changes nothing? If you believe that facing the truth is always the first step to effective change, it has too. Facing the truth won’t “switch off” the worrying, because you can‘t control any emotion that closely, but it can help you to stop wasting more time and energy on it. Having an emotion (worry, fear, anger) never means you have to indulge it.
Most of the problems in our financial system today come from banks still refusing to face the truth that a good many of their ‘assets’ are (and always were) next to worthless. That’s the trouble with imaginary money (as it is with imaginary results produced by smoke, mirrors and fancy accounting); when people stop believing in it, it disappears in an instant.
Keep reading, my friend.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:59 am
Hi, Martin,
Many folks worry believing that worry in and of itself will bring a solution, in the same vein that folks get angry thinking their anger will make a problem go away. In neither case, do these folks take any “action” towards a solution or towards problem resolution, so neither is forthcoming. Action is required.
If one can reach a level where they can become a witness, watcher and observer of themselves, “me as worrier”, they can “detach” from their worry and view it in another context where they are not immersed and caught up in it…see it as an “event” or “experience” and from that vantage point work with the worry in a more objective manner. In the same way that folks can have pain but it doesn’t have to hurt. It’s not so much about switching worry off as it is looking at it from a different context…maybe more background than foreground…and see what’s really, really beneath the worry.
So, worry can be a positive catalyst to change if one can begin to observe what’s underneath their worry, inquire deeply into it and see what it is about their relationship to themselves and to life that is causing their worry…the truly deeper fears–survival, real or perceived death or loss in some form, abandonment in some way, loss of identify, “who I am..”, etc.
We live in a fear-based culture and we know the three reactions to fear are fight, flight or freeze. It seems to me more and more folks are caught up in the freeze response…paralyzed in a way they cannot take action…so their “worry” becomes their “action” and, as you suggest, they become overwhelmed. They key is to begin to look at worry as soon as one begins (as an observer of themselves) to worry and explore what’s triggering their worry…instead of spiraling down into the pit of worry.
I appreciate your comments and thanks for stopping by.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Worry is to mind what flow of blood and adrenalin to body when facing up to threatening situations. Fear is inevitable in such situations. The normal and natural reaction of body and mind to such incidents is immobility and numbness. Both adrenalin and worry improves the agility. If you know the art to manage fear the agility may help you in your flight to safety from physical threat as you can choose the right way out of danger towards safety. It quickens the process. Likewise worry brings agility to mind and helps in the flight from threat to mental threat i.e. fear. But if you do not know the art of managing your resources you may get agitated and instead of going away from danger go deep into it. It may also happen in our response to physical threat when we collapse or move in circle out of fear. I believe worry can be used constructively as a mental resource in seeking a way out of a fearful situation as it increases the agility and focus of mind. Basically worry can raise the first question to seek a way out of fear.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Worrying is serious stuff
“A god, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite and turns the hair gray.” – Benjamin Disraeli. . . and much worse Ben!
What to do?
“If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” – Shantideva
Carrying on
“I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.” – Isak Dinesen
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
@sambit: Thanks for your comment, Sambit. Some useful ideas there. Keep reading, my friend.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
@Gramp Ken’s 7 Decades: Yep, worry is bad stuff, as well as being useless in most cases. Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. Keep reading, my friend.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Hi, Sambit,
Interesting thoughts, Sambit. Immobility and numbness are the “freeze” reactions to fear. Managing fear can be a positive step towards well being, if managing means moving through it and not just around it, in my experience. Many folks manage their emotions by “burying” them…and when we bury them we bury them alive and remain stuck. You said it well, …”worry can raise the first question to seek a way out of fear.” “Conscious” worrying can indeed provide the impetus to action. I appreciate your stopping by.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Greetings Gramps.
Your quotes are dead on. Worry is debilitating to mind, body and spirit. Shantideva and Dinesen provide two most interesting reflections…worry provides no real utility and is bascially a waste of precious time and energy. Looking back on our lives, consciously and honestly, and noting the huge amounts of time and energy we spent worrying (not moving forward), and asking “Was it really worth it?”, I would venture most would say, “No!”
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and share.
“I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.” – Isak Dinesen