"If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." ~Calvin Coolidge
Worry is a tough thing. We all worry, but some more than others. I am a chronic worrier. I worry for everyone around me ~ my husband, my children, my friends. Nobody assigned me this job. I gave it to myself. It is a tough job to quit. My logical head tells me it is a useless, future-tense emotion. My heart races with the thought of all the possible things that could happen rather than the probable. There is a disconnect between the real and the imagined. In truth, most of what we worry about never comes to be. Again, I know this logically, just not emotionally.
I am finding some relief in changing my thoughts in small ways. Rather than asking the worry-filled question, "What will I do?" I try and ask myself "What can I do?" See how that one little word change makes a huge difference in the question? One is a victim crying out and the other is a person taking charge and working on a solution. There is both power and comfort in being proactive in finding solutions to your worries rather than just stewing about them. Maybe the "what can we do" won't solve the entire dilemma at hand, but it can help us take baby steps to get closer to ideas and answers and further away from worry. Now that sounds like a direction I want to be going!
Worry is a tough thing. We all worry, but some more than others. I am a chronic worrier. I worry for everyone around me ~ my husband, my children, my friends. Nobody assigned me this job. I gave it to myself. It is a tough job to quit. My logical head tells me it is a useless, future-tense emotion. My heart races with the thought of all the possible things that could happen rather than the probable. There is a disconnect between the real and the imagined. In truth, most of what we worry about never comes to be. Again, I know this logically, just not emotionally.
I am finding some relief in changing my thoughts in small ways. Rather than asking the worry-filled question, "What will I do?" I try and ask myself "What can I do?" See how that one little word change makes a huge difference in the question? One is a victim crying out and the other is a person taking charge and working on a solution. There is both power and comfort in being proactive in finding solutions to your worries rather than just stewing about them. Maybe the "what can we do" won't solve the entire dilemma at hand, but it can help us take baby steps to get closer to ideas and answers and further away from worry. Now that sounds like a direction I want to be going!
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