3 habits to stop worrying

How are you doing this beautiful day?

Today I want to talk about worrying.

I don’t like to worry and yet I do. A lot. Too often to my liking, even though I know I don’t need to worry.

And that’s the thing with worrying. It’s useless. Worrying doesn’t give us the answers to questions we have. It doesn’t give us solutions to problems we have. It doesn’t give us the comfort we desire.

Worrying doesn’t do anything but keep our body in a high tense state, our mind occupied with recurring thoughts and our mood spiraling down.

So, why worry?

Well, worrying is a way to keep us safe. If we feel we’re about to be in a situation that isn’t safe, we start to worry. This makes us think, reassess the situation and adapt.
Worry in this scenario is a means to keep us safe and secure. It’s a self-protecting mechanism in reaction to a circumstance.

But we’ve taken worry to the next level.

Instead of reacting to a situation, changing that situation or accepting it, we keep worrying. We often have the false belief that worry will give us the solution to a problem or the answer to a question, while that’s absolutely not the case.

When we worry about a situation that isn’t occurring at this present time (we worry about the past or the future), we tend to find ourselves in a thought loop. A thought loop consists of the same types of thoughts that keeps repeating itself. This way we don’t come up with new ideas. This though loop with these worrying thoughts keeps our body tensed, our mood spiraling down and our mind occupied with these same thoughts.

Worry, in the original sense, is meant to give us a heads up that the situation that we’re currently in, isn’t safe for us. It isn’t meant to be used for a past or future (possible) event.

And even if you worry about a future event, then there’s no need to keep worrying as you won’t come up with any new insights. In this case, the worry is also there to warn you that that future situation might be unsafe for you. But there’s no need to KEEP worrying.

Insights and answers don’t come from your mind. They come from that place “behind” your mind. From that intuitive, feeling state before thoughts enter your mind. Insights and answers come when you find yourself focused on something else, or doing something else, or it comes when you relax.

Your mind, your thoughts can never give you the answers. The void, the space, the love, the infinity can.

But how do we stop worrying when it gives us a false sense of safety? A false sense of control? Because when we worry about a (past or future) situation excessively, it means we don’t feel safe. This worrying gives us the idea that we’re taking care of the situation. That we’re in control while we feel powerless.

And this brings us to the three new habits you can take up to stop worrying.

The reason we KEEP worrying is that we don’t feel safe. This makes us uncomfortable so we keep worrying.
Habit No 1 – Befriend our emotions. 
Like I said, we take up worrying because we don’t feel safe. We don’t feel comfortable. We don’t feel good. And we don’t want to keep feeling like that, so we start worrying. This takes our mind (literally) of those emotions and gives us the false sense of control.

But our emotions are there for a reason. They are telling us we’re believing something not true for who we truly are. Our emotions are signaling to us that we’re deviating from our aligned path. So instead of distracting ourselves from these emotions, it’s best to see them for what they are. Our personal messengers. Our personal advisors signaling us we’re not aligned with our true self.

Distracting ourselves from our emotions seems easier. But in the long run, it isn’t helping us. Sitting with our emotions will give us clues to what we’re believing that isn’t true for who we are.

Sitting with our emotions and being willing to sit through and with the uncomfortability paves the way for the insights these emotions bring with them.
Habit No 2 – Give space to our feelings of unsafety and fear. 
When we’re able to sit with our emotions, the next habit is giving space to those emotions.

It’s one thing to feel our emotions but it’s another to see them and give them space. Being aware of our emotions is a different experience and sensation than feeling our emotions. Being aware, giving space to our emotions means we step away from identification with our emotions. It means we become the spectator of what’s happening in our emotional body.

Being aware and being the spectator of our emotions lessens the emotional charge of the emotions.
Habit No 3 – Keep our attention on that space
Instead of focusing on our emotions, we keep our focus on that space, that love, that infinity that is space and in which everything arises. By doing so we’ll experience the openness and depth that comes with Being (instead of being identified with sensations like emotions).

We will experience a different kind of being. We are not our bodies nor our emotions. We are that space that holds our bodies and our emotions. And by focusing on that space we will experience that vastness and openness.

Not only will this lessen the emotional charge of what we experience, it will keep us away from our thought loops, we will feel so much better because being in that space, that openness is more in alignment with who we are than being identified with our worries.

End note

There’s nothing wrong with worrying! This might seem contradictory to what I’ve written above but it’s true.

We’re not broken when we worry and we don’t need fixing. Worrying is another expression of that space, love, and infinity. It’s something that comes and goes like anything and everything else.

Until we focus our thoughts on it and we attach ourselves to that worry, it stays with us. When we learn to let it come and go, we will learn that worry isn’t something that needs fixing. We will learn to let it be and say goodbye to it when it’s time to let it go.

If you could pick one habit to start with, which one would you pick and why?

Please, tell me in the comments below. I always love to hear from you.

Have an amazing week.

Love,

Carmen

ps.

Carmen Smallegange is a coach specialized in shadow work and uncovering and transforming limiting beliefs. Using her own life lessons she shines a new and fresh light on negative experiences to empower others to do the same and to acknowledge and step into their own amazing potential.
You can subscribe to her e-mail list or follow her on Facebook.

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