In this crazy blur of minutes, hours and days that we call life it is often too easy to find ourselves overwhelmed and lost. We get to a point in the day, week or month where we no longer know what is driving us forward or what is inspiring us to persevere. Recently, I have begun to ponder the root cause of our mindless wandering, which led me to one of the most powerful and most commonly felt emotions among people worldwide: the feeling of worry.
My attention to the danger of worry was heightened just a few months ago when I found myself a victim of this feeling, to the point that I actually underwent a panic attack. The strange thing was that I was not even aware of the fact that I was worried about anything at all, at least not to the extent that would bring me to the point of overload. This is when I realized that worry is futile because it is simply an emotion, a very real one at that, and unlike other emotions we feel, it is completely negative.
Worry depletes us of our energy, it dissipates our motivation and hinders us from pursuing our passions whole-heartedly. We are constantly worried about what other people think of us, of not meeting a specific deadline or standard, of not having enough money or being financially secure and most dangerously we are worried of failing. Because we worry about failing (well, worry in general) we deprive ourselves of our full potential and discourage ourselves from striving for what we truly desire and know we can accomplish. And because worry is an emotion, this means that there is always going to be something to worry about, whether it be something logical or something we pull completely out of thin air.
What worry really comes down to is this: worry is a form of unbelief. That’s right, worry is a form of disbelief (however you want to see that). For myself, I believe that God is taking care of my life to the fullest extent and I know that I truly have nothing to worry about. Yet, I still choose to worry about everything, which in return shows a disbelief in God as my provider. We can even take it another route by saying that worry shows a disbelief in our own abilities. If we are constantly worrying about our ability to perform and succeed, then we are actually showing disbelief in our own power. If we believe in our faith and if we believe in ourselves, we should have absolutely nothing to worry about and no excuse to feel worried at all.
Entering my first year of college I knew that there would be stress, I knew there would be many late nights spent studying and much-needed coffee runs due to a lack of sleep. But what I didn’t realize is that worry is fatal to our health. I had to learn the hard way that worry can lead to harmful effects on our bodies and minds such as panic-attacks, but we can combat worry through very natural means before it escalates to that point. Through practicing methods such as five-squared breathing (slowly breathing in for five breaths and slowly breathing out for five breaths), writing in a journal, creating a safe-place in our minds to feel comforted when we picture it and talking with others openly about this emotion, we can calm ourselves down and take a step back from the seeming chaos in order to gain a fresh new perspective.
I know that most of us will read this and maybe agree (or maybe not) but ultimately we will feel that the task of not worrying is impossible. This is an unavoidable emotion right!? Just because we are capable of feeling this emotion, it doesn’t mean we actually have to feel it; we have a choice to control what we allow ourselves to feel. Sure, being worried may seem like the easier route because it is so natural, but I always like to say “let’s take the road less traveled." Let’s make the harder choice so that in the long run we will become happier and healthier. Let’s experience the freedom that comes from not worrying.
