Do you worry too much? Worries are essentially pessimistic thoughts, and when you harbor pessimistic thoughts for long enough, your brain will probably work hard at making them come true. What’s more, even when good things happen to you while you have pessimistic thoughts, you won’t be able to take joy in these good things because your negative thoughts are eating away at the joy.
The worst thing is when you worry about worrying. That’s like supplying an addict with a limitless supply of drugs.
Is It Difficult To Stop Worrying?
You bet it is. In fact, many people who try find that stopping cold is not so easy. Maybe you find it is too hard to completely stop worrying.
And if that’s the case, then simply do this:
don’t stop worrying. But don’t worry too much either.
You put a limit on your worries. Now you can worry as much as you like, but you do so within a certain timeframe. For example, every day, you can set aside 10 or 20 minutes just for worrying. And during these 10 or 20 minutes every day, you do nothing but worry.
But for the remaining 23 hours and 40 minutes of your day, you don’t allow yourself to worry. Whenever a worrying thought enters your consciousness, you simply say: “Stop! I’ll save that for later!”
If you’re concerned that you’ll forget about this worry, you can write it down on a piece of paper that you’ll later pull out when it’s worry time, just to be sure.
This way, you’ll teach your mind that you can control your worries, whil still getting all the benefits that worrying might have for you on some level.
Worrying will cause a constant anxiety level and chronic stress. You’re not as mentally sharp as you could be. Worries can make you lose sleep, and sleep is one of those basic building blocks of long-term health and happiness that you don’t want to compromise.
And when you try to fight your worries, what often happens is that they actually become stronger. Because of all the energy and thoughtyou invest into fighting and resisting your worries, it actually fuels them and makes them bigger, gives them more emotional power over you.
That’s why an approach like “scheduling” your worries can work.
Another way to avoid fueling your worries is by using hypnosis. Because what hypnosis does is that it directs your attention away from worries and to more positive things.
If you look at worries from a micro level, they are really a multi-phase process.
First, there is something that triggers a worrying thought.
Then you engage in that worrying thought, elaborate on it, make it bigger.
And finally at some point something happens that distracts your inds attention away from the worry, at least for a while. Maybe it’ll be another worrying thought, but in the end that initial worry isn’t there anymore, at least for now – it might lingere somewhere and show up again at some oint, but for some time it’s gone.
Now what hypnosis does is that it can rewire the triggers. So that at first, when something that used to cause you worrying thoughts, will now lead to more productive mental strategies.
And it can also help you to distract your mind faster from the worry and to more helpful mental strategies. So it’s really a two-fold approach, and you can (and probably have every good reason to) try it out yourself.
