A few weeks ago, I was going into one of my worry cycles again and it stopped me from doing anything productive or meaningful that day. So I set out to find a tool that could support me to break my unhelpful worry cycles.
Enter the worry list.
A worry list is a powerful tool to take control and reduce your worries or anxieties. It also helps you to free your mind from things that haven’t yet happened and may never happen.
It’s easy to create a worry list.
1. Start by writing down all of the worries that you think about over the cause of a day, regardless of how big or small they are. Worries concerning your work, your life and the world in general.
2. Now categorise your worries into the things you have control over & the things you can’t control.
3. Take a look at the worries you have control over. Go through them one by one and create an action plan. What are you going to do and by when to minimise or remove the worry?
4. Now take the worries you can’t control and keep in mind that humans are predisposed to worry about things, especially the ones we don’t have control over. If it feels appropriate, set a specific time in your calendar, perhaps once a week for 15 minutes, to worry about the things on your list you can’t control.
5. Finally, turn this into a weekly or monthly practice and add any new worries to your list as well as ways to deal with them.
As a result of doing this, you will hopefully not only worry less but you may also notice that you have control over a lot more things than you might have originally thought. Of course, there will probably still be a number of things you can’t control but you can always control how you chose to react to them if they occur and that’s an encouraging thought.
If you also worry a lot, then give this list a go and let me know how you get on.
I would also love to hear about your experience with your worry list if you keep one. Are there any other tools you use to keep your worries at bay? Send me a message here.