“Worry is a bully that just won’t let me be, trying to keep me busy, tussling and struggling,” “Going Gets Tough” lyrics, by The Growlers
What is worry?
The word that’s plagued most of my life to date, filling it with nonsensical fears and irrational beliefs and leading me towards compulsive behaviors – like overworking – to help settle it down. Yet nothing I ever did seemed to work. It still remained there, lingering in the shadows, and even when I had moments of complete joy and celebration it hung over my head like a dark cloud, just waiting to pour down on me and literally rain on my parade.
Until one day when I decided to ask it what it was doing there.
It’s funny how we carry these little defensive linemen around with us – like anxiety, or worry, or fear, or guilt, or any other emotion that doesn’t really help us out too much. We give them energy and then they get to stay. My worry had me working harder than I really had to, sometimes losing sleep, and always looking to inoculate myself against the next big perceived threat to come my way, yet nothing ever did come my way.
And it wasn’t because I worried that it didn’t show up. It was because my worries weren’t really real. They were figments of my imagination – one of terror and doom looming right around the corner. Every turn was an opportunity for complete and total disaster to occur! I must prepare!
For nothing.
Tom Petty sang, “Most things I worry ‘bout never happen anyway.”
Oh Tom, so very wise. A friend once put up an Instagram post that had me cracking up and agreeing with its truth and yet simultaneously still not ready to let go of my habitual worrying:
I felt like oh man, yeah, I totally resonate with that! And then went back to worrying. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some nervous nelly who is frightened about every little thing. Over the years I’ve surrendered far more to the flow of life and letting the waves roll in as they please. And sometimes my foe worry wouldn’t be around much at all, but it was usually because I had everything exactly how I wanted it to be and so there was nothing to worry about. But when the time came for major change, worry would show up and make it ever harder to accomplish that change.
That’s when I decided that worry needed my attention instead of my constant running away from it. If it seems odd to suggest giving more attention to the very thing you are trying to overcome, bare with me. It will make sense soon; no need to worry.
When I stopped trying to dodge worry and instead got still and quiet, I asked worry what it was worried about. What are you doing here? It thought it was trying to protect me. It thought that it would keep me safe. If I just listened – “Oh, no way, open a business? That’s so risky, so many businesses fail, this is not a good idea. You’ll waste all your money getting it up and running and no one will come.” I heard what worry said, and understood that those were pretty valid points to make, but what I didn’t do is listen to what worry said. I did it anyway. And it’s been going quite well, and a whole bunch of people that I would have never met and helped wouldn’t have had access to me and the kind of work I do if I had listened to worry. So I gave worry it’s few moments, and then kindly explained, “I need to try. This is really important to me. I understand where you’re coming from and I appreciate you trying to help me, but you’re really just making things worse right now. I think it is going to be great. Let’s think positive!” Now at this point you might be thinking, this chick talks to herself in her head – I’m not going to do this. Well, let’s be for real. We all talk to ourselves in our own mind – we call it our thoughts. And we have all sorts of thoughts – positive ones, negative ones, crazy ones, peaceful ones. So when we personify one of these persistent thoughts and give it attention as if it is its own entity, then it becomes a little bit easier to deal with, because we see that it is not really us, it is just a part of us, and quite frankly, a part of us that we don’t really need running defense in the background.
Anyway, worry thought that it was helping keep me safe, but really what worry was doing was holding me back from really fully being me. And given the choice between giving my energy to worry (who really only ever made me feel pretty crappy) or giving my energy to fully being me (which always brought me so much joy) the choice was pretty clear: I was going to choose me, and even if I couldn’t totally tame worry’s opinion, I could at least choose to not listen to it.
Why do we worry?
We worry because as a society we’ve generally been taught to live in fear. Worry is a pretty common issue most people will deal with at least at some point in their lifetime, unless they’ve reached some sort of enlightened status and are immune to the human issues the rest of us face. But then they wouldn’t be reading this article, and you are, so you are probably familiar with worry. We may have been taught by our parents, even if it wasn’t on a conscious level, to worry. We may have been taught by our teachers (who can remember the constant fear they would implement about how hard the next grade would be or how we must prepare for the standardized test or how on Earth will you get into college with only three extracurricular activities and one sport!) We might have been taught by our religious experiences, at our first jobs, or simply by being a human being in modern times. I haven’t met anyone yet who I haven’t seen worry at least once about something (have you? I’d love to meet this person). Worry is one of the fibers in the fabric of our society.
We can acknowledge that worry is there. We can give worry its few moments of attention and energy, and then we can still go on with our lives, our goals, and our dreams anyway. In fact, we should do that very thing. Because the more people who are living lives they absolutely love, chasing goals that have meaning and value to them, and pursuing their dreams – especially if their dreams are of value to humanity – the better this place we call home. We are here in these bodies not to succumb to destructive energy but to create our very best lives. And we can only do that when we decide that we make our own choices and we don’t let anything get in our way. When we push past fears, worry, doubt, limiting beliefs and all the other things that keep people stuck in the same stagnant spaces and we set sail to all that we wish our life to be – then – that is when – we really start living.
So what can worry teach us?
It can teach us how strong we really are. It can teach us how we actually do know better than worry. It can teach us that despite having and feeling worry we do not have to give our power away to worry. It can teach us about who we really are and what we really want out of life. And while worry might be acting like a defensive lineman standing between us and that end zone filled with all the things we dream we can have in our lives, we muster up the strength and courage to go right past it and achieve the life of our dreams anyway. Maybe worry was actually just a cheerleader dressed up as a lineman all along. Maybe because of worry, we can realize what we truly want out of life and what is truly important to us. Maybe because of worry, we can not only know our true strength but also help others step into their true strength as well. Maybe because of worry, we can actually have everything that we desire. Because we can tell worry it isn’t going to win. We are going to win instead. Maybe worry knew what it was doing all along.
I wish you a life full of abundance of all of the things you want most. I hope you know you are strong enough to create it.
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As always, I wish you the very best on your life journey,
Erica Onofrio
Originally written 3.27.19
About the Author: Erica Onofrio is owner of Soul to Soul, a center for healing, reiki & yoga located on the beautiful island of Ocean City, New Jersey, where she gives reiki & intuitive readings, teaches yoga & reiki trainings and various other classes.