What me worry?

It occurred to me a while ago that I don't like to worry. I doubt anyone does, but everybody does it. Worry shortens our life, makes us unhappy and generally no fun to be around. Considering it also occurred to me that worry of some kind is innevitable, I decided that I would try to minimise things that I worry about. My thoughts weren't revolutionary, but they made sense, and still do.

Don't worry about things you can do nothing about.

If you can do something, then stop procrastinating and do it. Most people create their own worry. The more you see you are making progress, the less stress you will have.

I'm not saying that not worrying is as simple as snapping your fingers, I know from experience that it is not. The difference is that every time I begin to worry about something, I ask myself "can I do anything to effect what I'm worried about?". If the answer is no, then I tell myself "well bloody well stop worrying, you are only making yourself unhappy!"

It may take a bit of practice, and a fair slice of logical thinking from you, but it does help. There are good elements to almost every bad situation, so try to think of those.

As an example: Last week I drove an hour up the coast with glee as I was on my way to catch a flight to my girlfriend's place for the weekend after another lengthy period apart. Understand that I invest a lot emotionally in these trips, as anyone in a long distance relationship would know. Now, I found out after a lengthy evening wait that my flight had been cancelled and I had to see the staff to make other arrangements, I was understandably stressed to hell, and quite frustrated. I do my absolute best to extract every possible hour out of these trips, so to find out that I may not make it as planned was awful. ANZAC day was also the very next day, and I loathe missing the dawn service (which I had planned to observe at the national War Memorial).

While waiting in the trip reassignment line with a lot of other distressed people for hours, I found myself hopping from one foot to the other in irritation. I stopped. I said to myself (not aloud as that would make me crazy) "I know this is not an ideal situation, but is there actually anything I can do about it? No? Then I'm going to force myself to calm down and just relax." And so I did, I actually smiled a few times and struck up some light-hearted conversations with fellow would-be passengers.

In the end, my flight was rearranged for early the next morning from another airport (which they bussed me to), had my money refunded, and the airline put me up at a nice hotel for the night. All in all I missed the dawn service, but at least I got there the next morning, and didn't lose that much time. I saved myself a few gray hairs by making the best of a bad situation, and letting things I could not affect play out as the gods wished.

Now that I think of it, all time spent worrying is a waste of time. It gets you nowhere and makes you incredibly unhappy. It's not simple to stop worrying, and it happens to everybody, but you can reduce the effect it has upon you. Don't ignore what you're worrying about, but work through it, or accept things the way they are.

We all like to be in control, though sometimes we must accept that we are not in control of anything but ourselves.

Aim high!