Worrying is something we all do every day. I don’t care how old you are, whether you’re male or female, black or white, we all worry about the same things most of the time. As I’ve grown older I’ve shed some worries and gained new ones. Along the way, I’ve had to learn how to deal with worrying as a whole so that I can manage each worry as it arrises. That’s because all worrying is the same – it all stems from fear caused by chronic rumination. In the last 30 years, I’ve noticed that people worry about the same things as they move through life. I’ve also noticed how common it is amongst almost everyone on this planet!
With that said, there are clearly five main things people worry about. These are the things I see people worrying about every day no matter who it is or where we are. In this post, I’m going to share how I personally deal with these things people worry about and how you can apply the same philosophy in your life so that you can overcome them too. Just because you worry so much, it doesn’t mean you have an ‘anxiety disorder’, it could be simply down to the fact you need to deal with these five things properly. I believe that if we can overcome these things, we can make our lives a lot calmer all round because they usually dominate each of our minds, most of the time.
1. Worry Over Work
If you’re worried about work on a regular basis, you’re certainly not alone. Most people I come into contact with on a daily basis usually worry about the following things;
- Getting a job
- Going to a job they hate
- Feeling like they’re not good enough for the job
- Deadlines
- Other people at work
Worry about work is not so different than worrying about school in that they are both very similar and present the same fears. The structured nature of work is not so much different than a classroom. I myself have certainly had my fair share of worrying over work in terms of all of the above. The sad thing is, we spend most of our lives at work and yet we worry so much over it. In most walks of life, work is essential to living a life worth living. After all, we need money to have a good standard of living, so it makes sense to make peace with it.
So why do we find it so hard? well, you could argue that some of us don’t do jobs we enjoy or that we find too hard. We might also have a boss that is impossible to please or deadlines that seem impossible.
How to solve this: It is important that we don’t let ourselves get too wrapped up in the little stuff. It’s important to remember that you are providing a service to a business to which you are being compensated. If you feel like you’re not ‘good enough’, just remember you were employed for a reason. The tasks may seem difficult but it is up to you to take them on, and whether you win or fail, the important thing is that you try your best. You are not expected to know everything, instead, you are expected to learn as you go. Everything you do at work is a chance to improve on your skillset and mindset. These new skills can be transferred as you move through life. See your employment as a learning opportunity, not something that you are chain down to.
If you hate your job and can’t commit to it properly, it’s probably time you looked for a new one. Quite often I have seen people settle for jobs they despise because they can’t muster the courage to go to an interview with new people. Putting yourself out there in an interview is also a chance to improve your skills that you can then use for another interview if you don’t succeed the first time. So, it’s important not to see this scenario as a waste of time, but instead as improving your skill set.
If you’re worried about finding a job because you haven’t got one currently, the above also applies.
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2. Worry About Money
Arguably the most common worry is about money, or, a lack of it. I have experienced this myself, especially after the birth of our son. Money can become very tight, and in a world where wages haven’t risen much since the ’70s, the job market can look bleak. Every single one of my immediate friends and families has worried about money more than anything. It can feel as if there’s just not enough to go around sometimes. I had to leave a job I enjoyed to go and start a job that I hated just so we had enough money, and for me, that was utterly depressing. It felt as if I would never be able to stand on my own two feet, just because I didn’t have enough currency in my bank.
Money is a tough one because we all need it to live. We worry that we’re always broke, can’t afford food towards the end of the month, or don’t have enough to cover our expenses. Worry over money can cause sleepless nights, (which I’ve experienced) divorces, suicide and family break-ups.
So we can’t shy away from the fact that we all need money, and we have to commit to earning it for our own sake and our families. So what can we do about worrying over money?
How to solve this: There’s really only two ways to solve this when you get down to the core of it. You can either try and earn more money, or, cut back on your expenses. When I was having trouble with money in 2017, I had to take a look at the money I was spending each month. If I’m honest about it, I had been burying my head in the sand for years. I never checked my statements, went overdrawn because of stupid purchases, and just had a relaxed attitude towards the money that left my bank account.
I knew I had to take some responsibility if I was ever to stop worrying about money.
Now, for most, earning more might not be an option right away, so the best thing to do is look at your expenses. When I first looked at mine I realised that I was spending too much each day on coffee and lunches. I immediately started to take my own coffee and lunch to work each day which saved me a tone of £££ by the end of the month. I realised that every cent that left my account was important and added up quickly. The £2 coffee I bought each day at work was costing me £52 a month! When you start looking at the bigger picture, you can start to pinpoint large monthly expenses.
Looking at things on a monthly scale gives you a better perspective.
I then looked at my phone bill and realised that I was churning money out each month for a deal that wasn’t even that good. When my phone contract was up for renewal, I switched to a phone that was just as good but half the price.
3. Worrying Over Health
Another big thing people worry about is their health. This can often lead to health anxiety whereby we worry about everything around us making us sick, or a lot of the time, think we’re already sick. It is no secret that the Western diet is high in saturated fats and carbohydrates. In the last few decades, there has been an increase in weight-related illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure in countries like the UK and the USA. And it’s not just illness, people also worry about their weight and image. I too have worried about my weight and health for many years. I’ve always tried to keep in shape, but sometimes life can seem to get in the way. When you’re anxious or depressed, it can be difficult to motivate yourself into action.
How to solve this: Overcoming health anxiety is tough. After all, nobody wants to get sick. As we get older, it can also seem more difficult to look after ourselves. However, there really only is one thing that we can do to make sure that we stay healthy – make better choices. That means watching what we eat or quitting smoking for example. I have struggled to keep my exercise up when we had our son and work has always seemed to exhaust me. It wasn’t until I reached my mid-twenties that I realised I had to start taking care of myself. I believe we have to reach a point where we realise that our body is the vessel we use to move through our lives so it’s important to look after it. There’s absolutely no shortage of illnesses that we can get, so it’s vital to pay attention to the way we live.
Even if you can only fit a thirty-minute walk into your day, you’re taking care of your body to some degree and exercising it slightly. It’s also important to watch what we eat. Even if the things we eat don’t make us fat, they can be causing harm within us, like clogging our arteries for example. Food seems to be the thing most of us struggle with, at least for me and the people I know. It’s easier to grab a pizza than prepare a meal like fish and vegetables. However, the short-term effort that goes into cooking healthy meals pays off over the long run.
4. Worry About What Others Think
Another one of the biggest things people worry about is what others think. Whether it’s your parents or your partner, worrying about what others think about you can be crippling. What’s worse, it can stop you from doing what you really want to do with your time. I spent many years valuing what other people thought of me more than what I truly wanted in life. In hindsight, I can see that that attitude help me back for a long time before I started to do what I wanted. I could even use this blog as an example. Once upon a time, I thought that starting a blog about worry and depression would make me look weak and pathetic, especially to those that know me. It took me a long time to even start writing about mental health because I was worried about what people would say or think.
It was only until I realised I was wasting time worrying about something that wasn’t really that important that I started.
How to solve this: The first thing to remember is this – what other people think about you is none of your business. The problem is, we tend to value other people’s opinion more than our own. Over time this keeps you in a box of safety behaviour when the thing you’re worried about is kind of irrelevant. Whilst it’s important to hear people out, only you have control of your life. Listening to peoples negative opinions of you can make them seem more real which only causes more safety behaviour.
For example, if you’re so worried about what your parents think about your relationship, you won’t fully invest yourself in it or you might even end it.
5. Worrying About The Past
Another thing people worry about is the past. That damn thing we wish we could go back and change. There’s plenty of times in my life where I’ve looked back and wished I’d said or done something different in a conversation or argument. The problem is, we spend so much time worrying about the past that we let it interfere with the present and the future. We get so trapped in what we have learnt from the past that we find it difficult to see a different future for ourselves.
How to solve this: What’s done is done. It’s easy to think that our current circumstances are permanent, but the truth is, with every second that passes we are changing. We can never get that time back so we must commit to the present moment. Many of us believe that the past was better than it was, and the present is worse than it is. However, this could not be further from the truth. Why is it we have a distorted view of the past? In reality, our present will once be in our past, and it’s the only thing that we truly have control over.
I believe you should only compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not other people. If you can be a better person and get better each day then you’ll eventually end up in a better position in a months time or a years time. We cannot worry about the past because it will only destroy our present. This, in turn, keeps us in a state of worry forever. You can choose to wake up tomorrow and commit to the day, or, you can choose to wake up tomorrow and keep yourself in a victimised state again. It really is a choice that only you can make.
The past has gone and does not exist anymore. You should only judge yourself on what you’re doing right this minute because it is all you have.