Worry

"'Life's too short for worrying.'
'Yes, that's what worries me.'"
- anonymous

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When it comes to your trusty LiveReal Agents looking into "the good life," somehow it seemed to us that if someone is doing a lot of "worrying," it didn't really seem like the best way to spend their time.

So, then, we started getting a little worried about it . . .

- and we decided to look into what might go into what it takes for a person to quit worrying all the time.

Many people see "worrying" as a normal and natural part of life, and have no problem with it. In fact, they even seem to enjoy doing it much of the time. Others of us, however, do not enjoy it, and would like to find some better way to spend their time and energy. These folks really don't want to go through life worrying about things and don't enjoy doing it.

So if this is the case for you, here are a few ideas.

"It will all be the same in a hundred years."
- Proverb

Worry as part of Human Nature

The Myth of Worry in the story of Prometheus

"Prometheus in Greek means 'forethought' . . . "

Prometheus (was a man who) stole fire from the gods and gave it to human beings. And for this he was severely punished. The god Zeus had him chained between two great rocks and every morning a large eagle came and gnawed on his liver. During the night, the liver would heal. But then the following day the bird would return and gnaw on his liver again.

It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to realize that forethought, the ability to look ahead into the future, had a major role to play in humans' discovery of fire. It would simply have not been possible without it. Forethought was an important evolutionary step. But certain unpleasant side effects evolved along with it, among them, worry. The ability to look ahead means that you can anticipate certain unpleasant possibilities in the future and worry about them. A bird gnawing on the liver (the seat of anxiety) is an excellent way of expressing how worry behaves. But even serious worries will heal or be resolved during the night. But then when you wake up again the next morning, you look toward the future again and there are new things to worry about. The bird returns. The truth hidden in the Prometheus stories reveals not only the nature and importance of forethought but also the relation of forethought to worry and the nature of worry itself."
- Stealing Fire From the Gods by James Bonnet

Worry as a Slice of Anxiety

Yet another perspective on worry is that it is a bite-sized portion of anxiety. Instead of confronting a perhaps unmanageable anxiety head on, our minds find ways to reduce them down to smaller pieces, which we then chew on more gradually.

The antidote to this situation, then, seems to be to address the fear or anxiety that fuels the worry.

Worry as Thinking Out of Control

One perspective on worry is that it is simply normal thinking that is out of control. Or, in other words, the absence of "mindfulness."

Psychologist Daniel Goleman describes a woman being told to worry aloud for one minute.

Her reaction to this task went as follows:

"I might not do this right. This may be so artificial that it won't be an indication of the real thing and we need to get at the real thing . . . Because if we don't get at the real thing, I won't get well. And if I don't get well I'll never be happy."

Goleman continues:

"In this virtuoso display of worrying about worrying, the very request to worry for one minute had, within a few short seconds, escalated to contemplation of a lifelong catastrophe: "I'll never be happy." Worries typically follow such lines, a narrative to oneself that jumps from concern to concern and more often than not includes catastrophizing, imagining some terrible tragedy."
- from Emotional Intelligence

Sometimes the antidote to worrying lies simply in checking and amending certain habits of incorrect thinking. Developing self-observation and learning to become more aware of one's own thinking processes, which reveals when they are inaccurate, can lead to resolutions in themselves.

How To Stop Thinking

How can a person get their thinking under control?

"Thinking that is out of control" means being identified with and lost in your mental ramblings about the past or future. Often, thinking of experiences of injustice or pleasure is an escape from one's present awareness, an escape away from the present, to hide in fantasies.

The solution to this lies in learning to get your thinking under your control. This is done through what is called "the study of attention," or learning how to keep your attention in the present, now; when you are fully and completely present, worries simply evaporate away. Worry is conquered through the ability to keep one's attention in the present moment.

So the task is to get control of one's thinking, to stop or, in a way, "kill" one's thoughts. Thinking is stopped one moment at a time, by learning to focus on the present moment. This can be done through very difficult yet simple practices which center around being still, which is the key to strengthen your ability to rise above your thinking and be present.

What a person often discovers is that thoughts cannot be stopped directly. What is often found through these exercises is that thoughts are the servants of desires, and when certain desires are there, you cannot stop thoughts. It is as if the master of the house is there, so the servants are bound to follow.

Example:
" . . . thoughts of the future - your wife may not even be pregnant and you start thinking, "When the child is born, what college do we have to send him to?" Impossible things go on pulling you, pushing you, and you know that this is nonsense. Many times you recognize and want to drop it, but you simply feel impotent . . .
You want to stop this thought. This is foolish, silly: your wife is not even pregnant, and you are thinking about the child who has become a grown-up and is going to the university. Which university to send him to, Cambridge or Oxford? And you are so puzzled - where to send him? Which will be the best? And suddenly you recognize - what nonsense! Silly it is. Then why is it arising?
It is not a question of the thought itself. You have a desire, you have ambition; many things have remained unfulfilled in you - you would like to fulfill them through your son. The son is nothing but a personification of your ambition. You wanted to go to Oxford and you could not go; you would like to go in the form of your son. That's why the idea has arisen, the thought has arisen. Thirty years have passed and something suddenly surfaces. Nothing is sudden, nothing is uncaused in the mind. If it arises, that means something is there in it; you cannot simply call it stupid and drop it. Thirty years ago somebody insulted you and it is still green; the wound still hurts. Sitting silently, the hurt comes to the surface . . .
It is not a question of the thought, it is a question of the desire. Just analyze your thoughts and you will always find that thoughts are the servants, and hidden somewhere is the master, protected by the servants. Kill the master (by simply observing) and the servants disappear. Go on killing the servants and nothing will happen - the master will go on bringing new servants; you can go on killing the old, he will supply new ones.
Thoughts never stop on their own. They stop only when the desiring mind disappears. That is the meaning of "Best be still."
- from Osho, Tao: The Pathless Path

Worry as a Lack of "Faith"

Another perspective on worry is that it is a lack of "faith."

And so, the antidote to this
is to develop faith.

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?"
- Matthew 6:26-31

"Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions.
It is time to acknowledge this,
perhaps even to learn to do it better."
- Lewis Thomas

In Conclusion

If a person is worried about something happening in the future, a way to help would be to get in the habit of asking: "Is there something I need to do about it now?" If there is, do it. If there is not - then what good does worrying about it do?

None. It's an unnecessary waste of energy and time. So relax! Have faith! Things are going to be all right! If a person can get in the habit of worrying in this way - that runs the worry into a kind of mental dead-end street - then a person can wake up out of the trance of worrying, take a deep breath, and get back to real life.

"When I look back on all these worries
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened."
- Winston Churchill

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