How to Stop Worrying About Stuff

In order to stop worrying you first need to gain proper perspective of the situation. You are worrying about what might happen because of how you’re perceiving things. In other words, your worries are a manifestation of the stories you are telling yourself about how things will inevitably turn out. But how do you know this to be true? How do you know that your imagination isn’t playing tricks on you? Maybe it’s causing you to worry unnecessarily. Just possibly things are unlikely to turn out as you imagine. Consider that for a moment, then reflect on how else you could potentially view this situation.

To stop worrying you need to assess how you’re interpreting this situation. You obviously feel a certain way because you believe something will happen. But a belief is not a fact. That you believe something will happen doesn’t make it so. I’m sure your beliefs have let you down in the past. They let you down because beliefs are essentially nothing more but assumptions we make about things. And assumptions are nothing more but stories we tell ourselves about how things will turn out. What if you chose to make a different set of assumptions? What if you chose to tell another story? Would that change what you believe about this situation? It sure could.

It’s excruciatingly difficult to stop worrying when you feel you have no control over the situation. With no sense of control, you feel powerless and helpless to do anything that could influence the outcome. However, maybe you’re only feeling powerless because you’re viewing this situation in an unresourceful way. You may yet still be able to gain control, or at the very least some level of influence over this situation. But in order to do that you need to turn your worries into a problem. Problems are great because they come with handy solutions. When facing a problem, you therefore have a level of control that you can wield to overcome your worries.

he chances of your worries coming to fruition are probably quite small. Things will rarely turn out as you had imagined, and probably never as bad as you expect they will. But having said that, there is always a chance that the worst-case scenario you imagine, might actually come to fruition. What then? Well, the only rational thing to do is to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario in advance. This of course might not stop you from worrying, but it may make you feel a little more confident and capable. And just possibly, you could even find some value in the situation, and maybe even turn it into a positive learning experience.

Having turned your worries into a problem and mentally prepared yourself for the worst-case scenario, you should now have a good sense of the nature of your worries. There will be aspects of your worries that you will obviously have some semblance of control. There will however be other aspects of your worries where you will have little to no control over. Instead of concerning yourself with what you can’t control, make peace with it. These things are out of your hands, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just let it go, and choose instead to focus on the things you can change or influence in some way.

Having gone through the previous five steps, you should now feel much better about your predicament. However, as long as uncertainty still exists, there will always be room for some worrying. You will therefore never truly stop worrying — not when those worries involve other people. Worrying a little is of course part of the human experience, as long as your worries don’t get out of hand and affect other aspects of your life. However, the moment they start to interfere with everything else, that’s when you need to reel them in. The best way to do that is to schedule a specific time and place for doing all your worrying.