The Worry List

Two old guys sit at a bar drinking, says the one to the other,'Number 12', to which he starts bursting out with laughter and responds with 'Number 47', to which the first guy laughs heartedly in return. The point is that the two gentlemen have been telling each other jokes for so many decades that at this point they can just refer to the number in the joke repertoire.

A friend once asked me what she could do about excessive worrying and I told her that unfortunately she can't really do anything about it. What I recommended though was to put together a worry list similar to the joke catalogue from our two friends. While there is no limit to the ingenuity of the ego to come up with cancerous thoughts, they nevertheless all fall into general areas such as 1) Worries about my child's health, 2) Worries about my child's education, 3) Worries that I am neglecting my child, 4) Worries about my own health, 5) Worries about my financial well-being, 6) Worries about my job, ...

List them all and be specific enough to capture them all, but be general enough not to drown in them and then memorize the list very much as our two friends did. What it will do for you, it will allow you to distance yourself from the voice in your head and will show you how much of your time is spent on this cancerous activity of questioning everything without any underlying reason. This little trick will also reveal to you that none of these concerns are real. All your mind does it to play back these fears like a tired old record. Most importantly, when you have mastered your worry list, you can actually track the worry train before it leaves the station just because you will not engage with it. Just imagine what energy boost you will get from this feat.  You will simply tell yourself, 'oh, it is 57 again', and then you will move on with your life. How amazing is that!