Do you know what a worry is made up of? Do you know how you worry and keep on worrying despite what other people may say or even despite what you may consciously know to be the truth?
There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t or hasn’t worried about something or someone, so we are all accustomed to worrying and in most cases it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to changing the situation, but we still worry anyway.
Well as a person, who has done my fair share of worrying, I was interested to see if worry had a pattern to it. Obviously your situation and mine would be different, we are different people, with different parents, culture and a whole host of other variables, but I bet you and I worry in exactly the same way.
The Worry Formula
I looked at how I worried, how my clients worry and the general idea of what it would be like if someone worries about a thing, and this is what I came up with. It’s simply the yes but formula. Or more precisely, I want X but….
The ‘but’ is important because that negates what precedes it and signifies a worry, a stressor, apprehension, fear, doubt and other negative states and if you use the I want X but… a lot you’ll feel anxious.
So this is what I noticed.
When we want to do something and we use this formula to frame it in our mind, it makes us worry, or more scared or more anxious or more stressed.
So if I want to go on holiday but I’m scared of flying then I’m going to feel anxious if something or someone makes me do it.
If I want to ask for a raise, but I’m scared that if I get a no then I can’t ever ask for a raise again, then if I had to ask for a raise then I’d start to worry about it.
If every time I speak to one of my colleagues we end up in an argument and I had to work with them on a project, then I’d feel anxious about how to survive that interaction because of how I’ve felt about being around them in the past.
Can you see that no matter the situation the formula stands correct?
I want to go on holiday but I’m scared of flying
I want to ask for a raise but she’ll just say no
I want to avoid relating with my colleague but my manager says I have to
So the question now is, how many of these ‘I want to … But’s…’ are you experiencing in your everyday at work, in business or at home? And if you were to add them up, could you now see that you will feel anxious, worried, scared, fearful, apprehensive, and other such negative states because of how many times you experience this in your day?
It’s inevitable, isn’t it?
So what can be done about it?
Step 1 is to recognise when and where or with whom your thoughts fall into this formula
Step 2 then would be to change how you react to that situation by learning new skills, or changing your attitude about it in some way.
Going Deeper
If this doesn’t stick for you, then you would need to get deeper and change the association to that thing.
So if you fear flying, then you might look at changing how flying is represented in your mind and then the fear of flying would be gone or at least lessened.
If you dislike your colleague so much that relating to them has a negative impact on you, then you’d change how you saw them, and iron out any differences between you, or just recognise that there maybe a personality clash and learn how to communicate with people you don’t readily get on with.
Deeper Still – The Motivation To Act
But let’s say you know you dislike certain situations, and there are things you could do about it, but you don’t have the time, or the money or whatever reason (excuse) you could come up with, what you need is motivation to do it.
That motivation comes in the form of changing your perspective on taking action, when you don’t want to or cannot see a need to (after all you’ve put up with it so far …)
When I change my clients beliefs, it’s not like micro surgery, it really is only about finding the leverage part of their perspective and giving them another, that helps them naturally and automatically do what they need to do- no thinking required, but don’t want to do, because ‘effort’ is required.
When their perspective changes, it’s amazing how easily they do the thing they had been putting off, just because things now seem manageable or easier to them.
The No Thinking Required Approach To Making Changes
So if you find that you want to make the changes but you’re not motivated to do it, then you need deeper help and support and that’s where I come in. There is so much you can do consciously, but if like me you don’t want to think about it, you just want to naturally do it, then let me change your perspective on it. It really makes life easier for you.
Here’s to an easier time of it
Speak Soon
Elaine
