Dealing with worry

Contrary to the common belief, worry is a natural part of our human condition.

Historically worrying has played an important role in our survival. This feeling helped us cope with many challenges, some of them we still face today. Worrying is a powerful feeling… it can keep us alive, but if it is too intense, too frequent and too unrelated to something external, it will hurt us.

Everybody in their lives experienced this feeling, multiple times. It is something hard to avoid since it was hard-wired into humans to help us survive. We worry about something because we perceive that thing or situation as a threat to our lives. It gives us the energy, strength and resilience to protect ourselves from that threat.

Back in historical times, cave people were killed by other hostile tribes or have been eaten by wild animals because they did not worry about potential threats. On the other hand, those cave people who worried, survived more threats and passed their genes to future generations. Contrary to common literature, nature doesn’t care about courageous people facing danger. To nature, those who find a way to live longer, to pass their genes more, are the most successful ones. Worrying kept these genes going and we are today here, partially because of it.

Dealing with such a powerful and ancient emotion these days can be a real challenge. Even if, most of the time, we are not facing deadly threats, we perceive some situations as dangerous. When that happens we start to worry. In time, focusing too much on this, we end up being hurt by it. We get heart related problems, stomach ulcers and the list can go on, because we don’t know how to deal with this feeling.

In his book, How to stop worrying and start living, Dale Carnegie gives a three simple steps process to keep worry under control.

Step 1 — Analyze the situation at hand, fearlessly and honestly and figure out what is the worst thing that can possible happen. When we do this, we need to make sure that we are brutally honest with ourselves.

Step 2 — Once we discovered what is the worst possible thing that can happen, we should reconcile ourselves to accept it, if necessary, or simply ignore it if it is not necessary. Once we analyze the situation, determine the worst case scenario and accepting it, an important thing happens. We relax and feel less tense and stressed.

Step 3 — From this point forward, being calmed and relaxed, we invest all our waking time and energy to try to improve upon the worst thing, we already accepted.

Following these steps, we end up in trying to do our best. It gives us a solid ground to build upon, trying to improve on the worst case scenario, that we already accepted and determined we can live with.

Through this article series called “Minutes Mindset,” I’m helping you build a solid mindset, writing my point of view on different subjects that we meet in our day by day life. I am a strong believer that once we can understand a subject, we can engage with the idea or refuse it altogether. Both ways are helping us grow and develop our own way of seeing the world.

If you like my work, clap on it, share it with your friends and follow me.

In the end, everything starts with us, with our mind, our self, and even our stories. We can choose to act or Not.

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