I hope you had a great week.
Today I will talk about how can we stop worrying and let go of our need for certainty, so we can start actually living and enjoying life.
Why do we worry about everything?
We worry about everything because we believe that worrying will make us more certain of what can happen in the future as if we could predict it…
Guess what.
It doesn’t work.
Worrying doesn’t make a desirable outcome more likely, or an undesirable outcome less unpleasant. It can even do the opposite.
When we constantly worry about what could happen wrong, we get so overwhelmed that we don’t see reality for what it is, and ultimately we are unable to make good decisions that often lead us to the undesirable outcome we are trying to avoid.
“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”
How to stop worrying?
Now that we know that worrying doesn’t help us, let’s see how can we start embracing uncertainty so we don’t worry all the time.
It’s normal to worry
It’s normal to worry occasionally, that means we care. But we have to remind ourselves to have the awareness if aren’t our worries blocking the way of enjoying life.
That being said, often just telling ourselves to stop worrying doesn’t help, so we will check some practical ways to get over excessive worry when we need to.
Embrace uncertainty
All of us have an internal need for certainty, this need for certainty is the root of our worrying, often blocking our development and learning, and often blocking the outcomes and experiences we are striving towards.
If we embrace uncertainty, as a natural condition of life and the human experience, we embrace the fact that worrying doesn’t serve any utility to us, we might experience the freedom of not being limited by our bubble that is the comfort zone, and we might see the world and our worries from others lens.
“Worry time”
If you are a person who lives in constant worry and “what if”, this might be helpful to you.
Set a fixed time in your day to worry as much as you need. Just knowing that you don’t “need” to worry right now because you have a fixed time to worry about it in your fixed time can be really liberating.
Writing Down
Another great way is to write down all our worries on a piece of paper.
Sometimes, just writing and transferring our worries from our mind to a piece of paper, and when we express it on paper and we look at it, we may realize that there is no point in worrying about that, it doesn’t make any sense to us. But if that doesn’t happen, that’s ok. The point of this exercise is to dump our worries so we don’t ruminate over them over the day, the point is not to judge them.
4 Powerful questions
Black-and-white thinking, (for example: If everything is not perfect, I am a failure), our need for everything to be perfect, and our lack of trust can often intensify our worries even more.
So here are some questions that can help you in this situation:
If you had a friend with this worry? What would you tell him?
Is there any evidence that this thought and worry is real? and that it is not real?
Is there a way to look at the situation in a more realistic, positive way?
Is worrying about this gonna help me? and hurt me?
Stoicism
The stoics said 2 millenials ago, to focus on what is within our control, and to not worry about external events as those are not within our control.
This practical philosophy can be of good help to a person to tends to worry too much, or really anyone, If you want to learn more you can read my article on my website: 4 Key Principles of Stoicism and How to Apply Them Today.
Conclusion
A quick review.
We talked about how worrying doesn’t serve any purpose to us, how it’s normal to worry, and how embracing uncertainty can help us have more freedom.
Also talked about techniques on how we can worry less, the “Worry time”, Writing down, and 4 Powerful questions.
And remember that we don’t want guilt over feeling worried, that will most likely just make it worse. Accept that you are worrying and let go of it, don’t resist or feel guilty about it.
I hope you got something valuable in this edition of Curiosity Fuel, and thank you for reading, it means the world.
It’s always an honor to be in your inbox, until next Sunday. 👋
— Idris Moura
