How Worry Gradually Eats Away Our Lives --- contributed by @sussan

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened” – Mark Twain

His quote simply means that oftentimes we find ourselves worrying or being anxious about things that usually don’t turn out as we fear it would.

We’ve come across a lot of wise sayings that there’s no need to worry. We also know that worrying wouldn’t solve a thing, especially if we can do nothing about the situation. Even if we can actually do something about the situation, then there’s no need to worry either because there’s a solution. We know all this.

Yet we haven’t stopped worrying about the what if’s of life, about tomorrow, about yesterday. This is how worry eventually eats us up like a worm eats up a tree and might take away from our lives.

Somehow, minor worries can consume more of our days than we may realize. Minor worries like what to wear to an event, some guests that will soon be visiting, forgetting to call a friend, taking a day off, not getting along with a new environment you found yourself in, a bad first date or first impression, not getting along with your new in-laws, wearing the wrong outfit to an event, getting sick, fear of getting old, fear of losing hair, remembering groceries you need to get, a minor injury getting bigger or infected or even losing money or your gadgets. They are plenty.

The reality is, we’re not usually miserable or anxious about what is happening Right Now. Instead, we have many meaningful moments to fill each day if we decide to rest our attention in the moment.
It comes down to choice, would you rather live in the past, in the future or today?

What We Can Learn About Worrying

A minor worry like wearing the wrong outfit to an event or a small injury getting infected may be very little in the grand scheme of life, but it can be a good opportunity to take a closer look the workings of our minds.
This issue of worrying, especially about minor issues has revealed a few things about the way the human mind works in certain aspects.

We tend to worry and become anxious about the future because we don’t know how the future will turn out to be. Anticipating about the future sometimes also add to our joy. But worrying generally is not good for the health.
But if it is not what you’re presently worried about, it would be another sort of worry creeping in.

Our minds tend to wander much of the time, often to the past or future, or to self-referential thinking. Neuroscientists suggest that this mind-wandering state is the default setting of our brain. Most of the things we think about while our mind wanders do not really serve us most times. So let’s not allow worries to take us away from our lives.

A Few Things You Can Do

The next time you find yourself having mental ruminations, you can try these approaches.

• Check and see if your discomfort/upset is about something happening right now, or something that may (or may not) happen in the future.

• Try to bring back your attention to what is happening right now, and choose where you want to focus your attention.
  Actively recall something else like a good memory or find a good side to the issue at hand. In other words, count your blessings

• Each time your mind gets pulled away, gently direct it back and ask yourself if you are in this moment, then try to stay there.Even if this moment is filled with some emotional pain or challenge, it is easier to cope with right now/this moment/today rather than coping with now plus everything that might happen in the future.

• Trust that you will be able to manage future challenges as they arise. You can't cope with something that hasn't happened yet, so redirect your mind back to what is right there in front of you.

It is not easy to tame our worries, but if we can have a little insight as to how the mind works, it’s a good start.

Reference
Image source

---

---

---

If you enjoyed reading this post then you should follow @sussan

@stach.pay is a community innovative account created to promote and provide rewards for the creative commons seeking to get rewarded for their works on the Steem Blockchain. If you like this article, please do well to follow the writer above.