A Quick, Effective Practice to Break the Worry Habit
I worry a lot. About a lot of things. There’s this underlying anxiety that lives in me, constantly feeling I’m not doing enough. I should do this, I should do that, I’m even worried there are things I’m forgetting that I ought to be worrying about, or else… something bad could happen.
I’d become accustomed to this way of living, almost seeing it as necessary to stay on course. Until, I started reading the extraordinary book The Big Leap. Gay Hendricks helped me realize that my worrying is an addiction and also an“upper limit” symptom. That is, a way of bringing myself back to a more familiar state — my comfort zone — and keeping me away from feeling great, experiencing abundance and unfolding my potential.
Do you worry a lot? Do you worry about things that most likely won’t happen and for which there’s nothing you can do about at the time? If so, I’d love to share with you Hendrick’s simple yet wonderful tool which has been really helping me let go of this unserving habit:
Notice when you are worrying about something unuseful
Drop it like you would a tennis ball you have a strong grip on. Just drop it. Don’t engage it. Shift your focus immediately to step #3:
Wonder what new positive thing is trying to come into being
Get a body feeling for where that positive sensation is trying to come through (i.e. your throat, your stomach, your heart)
Open your focus to feel that body sensation deeply
Allow yourself to feel it deeply for as long as you can
Later, you may get an idea of the positive thing that was trying to come through, and it may lead to great outcomes — actions based on truth, not fear
This simple practice works because instead of staying stuck in the worrying loop, which only makes you feel miserable without arriving at any useful solution, you disengage it in the act and shift your focus right away to the positive which is always behind the worry.
This is important: when we worry, there is always something good behind it that is trying to emerge. Yet our fear tries to keep us safe and hence brings up the worries. Our worrying is often just a distraction of something that seems harder to acknowledge and deal with — just like an argument about money which is never really about money but about something deeper. Worrying thus, not only keeps us trapped in a more familiar zone, feeling dismal; it also blinds us to the light that could be.
I’m excited for you to try out this practice, which only takes a minute or two, and for us, together, to break the worrying habit. Let’s liberate all that energy we waste worrying and instead, cultivate feeling great, living from a place of abundance and allowing our light to shine through.