Do you constantly worry? Are you feeling drained of your precious energy? Depressed? Perhaps something about your relationships, finances, career, health, or maybe even the world at large grips you with worry. Maybe you are an athlete who worries. Don’t fret. Here’s an exercise you might consider whenever your worries invade you.
There are only fundamentally two human emotions – Love and Fear. Everyone would pretty much agree that “Worry” is a first-cousin of Fear. By the nature of these two diametrically opposed emotions, one cannot possess them both at the same time. Therefore, when you are worrying, you cannot be in a state of love. Yes, you can shift back and forth between them, but when you blanket yourself with Fear or Worry, you push Love and its many powers aside.
Do you doubt me? Try this following exercise.
Step One: Invoke the Power of Love
Sit comfortably and begin thinking about something that is easy to love. For this exercise pick something that you are not currently involved in worrying about. It might be playing with your parents, or children, dancing, or how about cooking with Grandma? Let’s take the Grandma example. Take the time to remember how everything felt, the smiles, the laughter, the smells. Really get into the exercise until such time that you feel the opening in your heart, the smile on your face. Note how you feel, the energy, the power that is accessible to you in this moment.
Step 2: Worry
Now put Step One’s memory aside and pick from your list of worries. For most of us, this part of the exercise is easier. Allow yourself to remember why you worried and recount to yourself all the reasons to worry. When you got a good worry going, pause and check in with your body. How do you feel? Do you feel powerful, capable of handing whatever comes your way? Compare this feeling to the one you had during Step One. Which do you prefer? Which would you prefer to send out into the world?
Step 3: Go back to the love memory
I don’t want to leave you with that worry feeling. Take a minute now and bring back that memory that filled you with so much love and power. Allow it to fill you again, and again take the time to notice how it feels.
Many of us have been taught that worry is what you do when you love someone. In fact, what worry does is engorge the situation with more fear, which circulates more thoughts of worry, which in turn invests the whole situation in more fear, an avalanche of fear. This worry energy weighs the situation down, it clouds your reasoning mind, and greatly decreases your power to resolve any situation.
So what should you do when worry strikes? Well, you can always use love. This doesn’t only apply to our personal life, but it works great in the workplace and sports for example – anywhere.
And if you enjoyed the exercise above then you will really love this suggestion. You can take your worry and place it right in the middle of your love memory. For example, suppose you take the cooking with Grandma example and your mortgage payment is overdue. You can take that mortgage due notice and bring it into Grandma’s kitchen. See it there, right next to that delicious dish you and Grandma are cooking. And if the worry energy tries to invade the love memory, let Grandma’s smile shine down on you, reminding you that Grandma’s love solves every problem. Use your imagination and have fun with this; it’s an exercise worth practicing daily.
One Final Note: We are actually all very inefficient worriers. Research has proven that only 8% of what we worry about actually comes true. Besides, do you remember what you worried about last year, two years ago, or three? Charles Spurgeon said it best. “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.”
So if you must worry, why not procrastinate. What’s the hurry? Until you know differently and it’s right upon you, don’t worry. Waiting to worry helps develop the habit of not worrying and that helps not be tempted to worry.”
