Stop Worrying and Start Doing

The real cost of worry in your life.

The difference between you and the successful person you admire so much is not that they are smarter than you or they were born with a creativity gene or a genius bone in their body. Nope. Sorry! You are just as smart and just as creative and just as much of a genius as they are.

The difference most certainly isn’t about them having an easier path than you either so please don’t fool yourself with those lies. They have crossed over the same set of challenges, obstacles, problems and painful headaches. Their timing may be different but that’s about it.

The main difference is the lens through which you see your life and your opportunities – or rather, your endless list of “problems”. Let me explain about the beast that holds you back from what you are really capable of doing.

Worry.

It goes most by this name but it is also known as stress, anxiety, overwhelm, “I don’t know, therefore I can’t!” syndrome, followed generally by a large dose of self-pity and self-inflicted pain, which ironically creates even more – you guessed it – worry!

Worry. And the inconvenient definition.

Don’t kid yourself! Worry is not “thinking” or “planning” or “being realistic”. Worry doesn’t help you move your business forward or get closer to your goals or discipline your child better. Worry also doesn’t make you into a responsible concerned adult.

Worry is a complete waste of energy and time about something that is not happening and likely won’t happen.

But here’s the twist: the more you worry, the less you do what matters, and the more likely that those things you worry about come to be.

Do you see the beast in cyclical action?

Allow me to illustrate with examples, because, I was quite an expert at doing all of these.

You worry that you don’t know how to run your business? Instead, learn what you need to know step by step starting today and seek the help that you  need instead of going it alone.

You worry that you are not good enough to write the book or shoot the blog post or change your career or decide your own course of life? Instead, believe the opposite, do it anyway. If it turns out to be a smashing success, great and f it turns out to be a giant mistake, you’ll be glad for the experience.

You worry about how doing something will turn out while the success figure you admire so much is already doing it, come what may, success or failure.

You give power to your worries by listening to them and they shut out their worries to give power to their desires and dreams instead.

You worry that it may be hard and you are afraid of hard things, while the success figure couldn’t care less about easy or hard. They set out to learn whatever it is they need to know because they know the power of learning.

All the time you waste worrying is far better spent learning.

The hard stuff gets easier with learning, while it becomes more insurmountable with worry.

Here’s how hard vs. worry play out in reality.

The irony: Hard is not going to break you but worry will.

Hard is going to make you stronger but worry will ride on your back and weigh you down and zap your energy and bring down your spirits. Tell me I’m wrong, huh?

Hard is going to make you better and finer for every challenge that lays ahead. Worry is going to make you far less ready and far more anxious for everything else.

In fact, a lot of worry – also known as despair – can even paralyze you from pursuing anything else in your life because you can’t get it together to move past this current stage.

Okay great. You get it. Worry = really, really bad. What now?

Well, I won’t just say “stop worrying!”. It makes light of the situation, and the situation is anything but. Worry is a big problem, I do get that. Remember that stupid song “Don’t worry, be happy!” – my reaction was always: ” Whatever pal! You don’t get it! I’ve got things to worry about!”

But I will say this. It’s not as hard as you may think to cure your worry wart. Let’s look at eradicating the root of worry so you don’t allow it to take hold from the very start.

As a past queen of worry and anxiety, I admit this is not an immediate shift … as in you won’t stop worrying at the end of this blog post but you will know how to stop it going forward if you should so desire.

Why? Because worry is a deeply ingrained habit, so naturally it takes a conscious effort to shift the patterns of your mind from flowing immediately to their familiar state of worry.

Let’s talk about shifting these patterns with a practical approach instead.

The antidote of despair and how to harness it.

The antidote of despair is action because worry is the absence of action.

So the only way to reverse worry by taking clear, methodical and consistent action in the direction of your goals.

Simple? Yes. Easy? No. Does it work? You bet!

It has worked for me every single time. Instead of worry, which paralyzes my productivity, I stop myself, and analyze the worry and then blatantly ignore it so I can do what I need to do.

You feel overweight? Go for a walk. Cut down your portions. Start juicing (that’s how I lost weight!) Do something consistently for a while. Measure results.

You feel alone? Schedule time with a friend. Get on Skype with your community. Ask for advice from a mentor. Take a class to meet new people.

You feel overwhelmed in your business? Hire a coach. Join a mastermind. Evaluate what is working and what is not. Decide where you need help and invest in yourself.

So your job is to take immediate measured methodical action. Start doing so you stop worrying.

Every single step towards the problem, the challenge, the hardship counts as action.

If you do not take action, worry has power over you. The choice is yours. It really is that simple but it’s not to say it’s easy. It’s so very hard and by now, you know all about hard. Hard makes you better, finer, stronger and savvier for your future. Easy is over-rated and makes for a boring life.

Next time a worry pops into your head and starts to make its way into your speech, stop it in its tracks. Evaluate the right next step you need to take that gives you power and makes you feel in control. Then take the step after that and the one after.

Soon, you will feel in charge, worry will fade into the background and over time, you yourself will become the success figure that you admire.