How do you deal with worry? Take only one minute and think about it.
Now. You can choose among a variety of reactions, can’t you? One possibility is to accept worry as a natural state, a human feeling that must be endured. So you keep on worrying because you don’t know what else to do.
This attitude keeps you in a rut and your life ends up remaining in a miserable state — most of the time. Your general belief is that life is unfair, that things always go wrong, that you will never be happy. Not the best way to live, is it? Another possibility is to fret, i.e. you feel you are a poor, vexed or troubled human being with overbearing responsibilities, which you are the only one able to take care of!
As a consequence, you lead your life in a state of continuous nervousness, you never relax. Besides, as the word fret also means to be worn or eaten away, maintaining such a feeling will cause dangerous upheavals in your physical body as well. Have you ever spent some time with a person who always seems to be restless, who seems incapable of actually relaxing and enjoying a get-together with friends?
They are always looking at their watch, or checking their cell phone, or sending a text message or calling home to check if the kids are okay... What a life! Enough to give you a headache!
To complain is another way to deal with worry which, beside non solving your problem — on the contrary, it makes it bigger and bigger because you keep focusing on it — it also turns you into a nag, hardly cherished by your family and friends. You could also decide to resist worry, to be the “though guy” and not allow worry to put you down. So you act as nothing happened, as if everything was fine.
But what is going on inside yourself is another story. The “act” that you put up is just a mask that hides your true feelings. This is possibly the worst reaction to worry because, being like a seed planted in the fertile soil of your inner self, it will stay there for some time and then it will “suddenly” spring up to the surface and manifest itself in dangerous ways such as a physical illness, a nervous breakdown, explosions of rage, intolerance etc.
Therefore and in conclusion.... Is there a “good” way to deal with worry? I believe there are several. Each of us should choose the most suitable to our own nature and character. The absolute “must” is to decide to release it, and then you find out the best way to do it. As far as I am concerned, my panacea, or perfect remedy, is to write down my feelings. After expressing them in detail, I read what I have written a couple of times and I sleep over it.
The next day, I am usually able to see things under a better light, I feel that worry has turned into logical, temporary acceptance and, most of all, it has brought about a wonderful readiness to deal with my problem and take action toward finding a way to actually solve it. This is my way. What is yours? Praying? Talking to a friend (but not in a nagging way)?
Expressing your feelings more “physically,” like throwing around a couple of pillows? Talking to your image in the mirror? Listening to music? Going for a walk and enjoying nature? Working out at the gym? You know yourself, so you should be able to decide what is your “style.” Just think about it and then try it. I believe you will feel much better. Releasing any negative feeling in a positive way is one of the most useful “instructions” given us by the so- called “Laws of Nature.”
— Elsa Franco Al Ghaslan, a Saudi English instructor and published author (in Italy), is a long-time scholar of positive thinking.
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