What Worrying Accomplishes

This would be an extremely brief blog if I gave you the short answer, because the short answer is, worrying never accomplishes anything.

Then why in God’s name do we do so much of it? Because it gives the illusion of really getting something done. It can feel that way because worrying quickly become a single point of focus. 

If I’ve got a good worry going, it blots out everything else, and can make me feel like I’m really accomplishing something! What really gets accomplished? Exactly one thing. The instant I start worrying, I’ve left the present moment in favor of an imaginary (often catastrophic) version of the future.

Put another way, when I start to worry in a way that flies under my awareness of what I’m doing, I’m choosing to live in a parallel universe; one that I can inhabit only in worrisome fantasies about what the future might or might not hold.

Would I really abandon the peace and contentment of the moment in favor of some disturbing fantasy that will probably never come to pass in the form I’ve imagined it? Sure I would! But only when I don’t realize what I’m doing.

As my worried state of mind becomes apparent

It’s not a conscious choice I’d ever make. As soon as my worried state of mind becomes apparent to me, I choose to return to the only life I really have, the one that it always taking place right now. That’s the place where I have peace, contentment, and fulfillment.

I had a relative who was the most accomplished worrier I’ve ever seen. She was the only person I’ve ever met who didn’t confine her worrying to what might happen in the future. She could spend time worrying about something that had already happened. She took worrying to a new level, which was captured in a phrase I sometimes heard her use: “I feel bad that I don’t feel worse.”

If what you really want is to feel worse than you do right now, then I encourage you to worry your dear heart out. But who really wants to feel worse than they do now?

The delusion of accomplishment that worrying brings has to be looked at in the bright light of day. Worrying comes with huge costs to our senses of well-being, of peace, and of satisfaction. 

Unfortunately, there’s no upside to worrying; it gives us nothing back but busy, frazzled thinking. That doesn’t sound like much of a trade-off, does it?

Worrying is often justified as a way of preparing for the future. This seems to make sense until we remember that worrying isn’t a planning tool that actually prepares you for the future that will come. 

Instead, it “prepares” you for a fantasized version of the future. One that won’t happen as you’ve imagined it. There will always be variables and variations you hadn’t foreseen or worked into your planning.

You don’t have anything to worry about

You’ve waited long enough for the good news; the reason you don’t have anything to worry about. When you get to that future, in other words, the real version of the future you were worried about, at that very moment, you are uniquely, fully equipped to know what to do. This is when your real-time responsive wisdom is ready to help you.

You have it, I have it, everyone has it. It can always be counted on, but it can be hard to hear when my thinking is revved up and my mind is going too fast. It’s not as loud or insistent as my thinking voice, but it has a certainty to it that experience has taught me to trust completely.

You know the voice I’m talking about; it’s the one you might refer to in the phrase, “I just knew what to do without needing to think about it.” I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that learning to pay attention to that softer voice changed my life. And I don’t need to worry anymore!