Beating the Worry Habit

12/27/2016

We’re all water from different rivers, that’s why it’s so easy to meet; we’re all water in this vast, vast ocean, someday we’ll evaporate together.
Yoko Ono, performance artist and peace activist

Ellen Galinsky, in her book Mind in the Making, shares a story from a manager who learned to beat her life-long worry habit and develop much more positive coping strategies:

"Working in a high-pressure job, I began to see that worry was sapping my energy to solve complex problems. The problems were getting bigger and bigger, and I realized that the stress of my worry habit was going to eat me alive unless I learned to cope differently. So I developed a mantra, 'Worry doesn’t work.' Every time I started to worry, I'd say it. Then I'd ask myself, 'Okay, so what can I do instead?' 'Well, you could ask so-and-so for advice... you could make one phone call today to get this started... you could research this or that item...

"Of course, as I took these baby steps I got engaged. I'd learn new things, gather information, and enroll other people in the process... Mountains of work and seemingly unsolvable problems could be mastered in this way. As I look back, I see that I was swapping action for worry, and specifically the kind of action where I felt powerful and excited."

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