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Has anyone ever told you to stop worrying? I don’t know about you, but this feedback, while understandable and often accurate, often irritates me and doesn’t usually inspire me to stop worrying.
Whether you’re a business owner, a leader of a team, an employee rushing for a deadline, a parent taking care of kids, or just a human being living in today’s world – worrying is something just about all of us do.
Some of the things I find myself worrying about are…money, making mistakes, the future, how things will turn out, what people think about me, the well-being of my loved ones, the state of our country and our world, and much more.
If you actually take the time to sit and think about it, most of the things that we worry about never actually happen.
Worrying can affect our mental health, lead to persistent anxiety and chronic stress, impair our decision making and negatively impact our relationships. Constant worrying also fosters a negative mindset.
To stop worrying, we have to let it go, forgive ourselves for it, and choose different ways of facing our fears.
Stop Worrying – It’s a Set Up for Failure
No matter how much we worry, it never really works. And the deeper we look at what worrying really is, the more we realize that it is a setup for failure.
When we worry, we are actually preparing ourselves to be upset, because we’re assuming something will not work out in the future. When we do this, our worrying not only creates stress, it can literally contribute to additional negativity and unfavorable outcomes.
While worrying is quite normal and common, there are usually deeper emotions underneath our worry like shame, fear, guilt, hurt, or anger, many of which are much more difficult for us to feel and express.
And if we don’t know how to feel and express these emotions in a healthy way, it can set us up for real difficulty and failure. By feeling these authentically, we can deal with the root of the issue, not the superficial impact of it (which is what worry usually is).
There is nothing wrong with feeling scared, angry, hurt, and even “worried,” in and of itself. These emotions, like love, gratitude, excitement, joy, and others are very important to our human experience. Emotions that are felt deeply and expressed appropriately are positive and give us power (regardless of what they are).
How to Stop Worrying
Worry is always a sign that there are some deeper feelings and issues for us to address. It is a good reminder for us to get more real, take better care of ourselves, and pay attention. The best things for us to do when we get worried are:
1) Ask ourselves what is underneath our worry
Ask yourself why you’re really worried. Understanding the root cause of your worry is crucial for effective problem-solving and emotional well-being. By asking yourself why you’re worried, you gain insight into underlying issues, enabling you to address them directly and work towards constructive solutions.
2) Face, feel, and express these underlying emotions
Facing, feeling, and expressing underlying emotions is vital for emotional health. It promotes resilience and aliveness, and can also facilitate healing.
You can get support from others in this process if you need it…you don’t have to do this alone.
3) Choose how you want to feel
Once you have felt and expressed these underlying emotions, you can then actually choose how you want to feel and what you want to create. Choosing how you want to feel is empowering and it fosters a positive mindset
4) Appreciate yourself
It is so important – and healthy – for us to have the courage to be honest and to deal with our emotions. This, however, is no easy task. Show yourself grace and appreciation for taking on such a challenging endeavor.
5) Focus on the good stuff in your life
Be grateful for what you have, who you are, and what you are going through. Remember: every challenge in life is an opportunity for personal growth and development. Challenges teach us how to overcome obstacles and build our resilience.
If we can bring this level of awareness and consciousness to our worries and to our lives in general, we can create real freedom and power for ourselves.
We don’t have to stay stuck in the trap of constant worry…we can be free.
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4 Things You Can Do to Dramatically Enhance Your Career
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Are You Bringing Your Whole Self to Work?
Do you ever make mistakes that in the moment seem like a huge deal? Like forgetting your passport at home before an international flight, accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient, saying something to someone important that you regret?
We’ve all made these types of mistakes.
In the big scheme of things, though, most of these mistakes really aren’t a big deal. In fact, they’re actually great learning lessons that can help us learn, grow, and evolve on many different levels.
Why It’s Okay to Make Mistakes
A lot of us are too hard on ourselves. We don’t give ourselves or those close to us much permission to make mistakes.
We actually spend and waste a lot of time worrying about making mistakes. And in turn, many of us can be unnecessarily critical of those around us when they make mistakes.
When someone is compassionate and supportive towards us when we make a mistake, it reminds us that having compassion for ourselves when we make a mistake – instead of judgment and criticism – is a much healthier and more positive way to respond. This is also true for how we engage with others when they make mistakes.
How do you relate to yourself and others when mistakes are made?
While it often depends on the nature of the mistake (some are bigger than others, of course), many of us tend to be hyper-critical of ourselves and those around us when it comes to errors. And the stress, criticism, and negativity we associate with mistakes can actually cause unnecessary harm, fear, and anguish – in essence, making a difficult situation even worse.
What if we had more freedom to make mistakes and gave the people around us permission to mess things up as well? It’s not that we’d start rooting for or expecting things to go wrong, we’d simply have more compassion and understanding when they did (which at some level is inevitable in life and business).
By granting more permission for mistakes, we actually create an environment within ourselves, as well as our key relationships and teams, that is conducive to trust, connection, risk-taking, forgiveness, creativity, and genuine success.
While it can seem a bit uncomfortable, and even counter-intuitive, allowing more freedom for mistakes to be made, ironically creates the conditions for less errors to occur, and more fun and productivity to take place.
How to Expand Your Capacity for Mistakes
Here are a few things to think about and focus on to expand your capacity for mistakes in a positive way:
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
At the end of the day, the vast majority of mistakes we make in life really aren’t all that big of a deal. The bigger issue when it comes to mistakes is either our fear of making them or our reaction to them once they have been made (by us or other people). As we lighten up and practice letting things go, we find that most things we stress or worry about are really small things. Living life with this awareness allows us to have more peace and a lot less stress.
Forgive
When someone makes a mistake, especially a big one, forgiveness is an essential aspect of moving through it. Most of the time there is no malicious intent by the person who made the mistake.
Sadly, we tend to spend and waste a lot of time and energy either with blame or resentment, instead of focusing our attention in a more productive, positive, and healthy direction – forgiveness. It’s often quite difficult, but most important, for us to forgive ourselves when we make a mistake. However, if we can remember that most of the time we’re doing the best we can (as are others), we can hopefully get off our own backs and allow ourselves to be human (which means we aren’t perfect, nor is anyone else).
One of the main reasons a lot of us don’t trust ourselves as much as we could is that we haven’t forgiven ourselves for our past mistakes. When we do this, it creates so much freedom and peace – both for us and for others.
Look For the Lesson
There are often many lessons for us to learn when a mistake is made. While it’s not always the easiest or most enjoyable way to grow, it’s often quite effective as it gets our attention.
Mistakes are how we learn in life. Most of the time when we make a mistake, even a really big one, we gain a great deal of knowledge, experience, and insight that is invaluable.
Remember: it’s okay to make mistakes. By accepting this, you expand your capacity for imperfection in a positive way and gain even more self-trust.
How can you give yourself and others more permission to make mistakes? Feel free to leave a comment or question below.
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The Important Benefits of Being Grateful at Work
Are you struggling to enhance your career?
We’ve all been there. You might be stuck in a role that hasn’t led to growth in years, or perhaps you no longer feel any passion in your current job. Maybe your company doesn’t prioritize growth, or maybe you just don’t feel motivated at all. Whatever your reasoning is – you’re not alone.
In today’s digital age and world of instant feedback, social media chatter, and computer-generated graphics, we’ve become more critical, negative, and even spoiled, to our own detriment. More of us are finding it harder to find fulfillment in our lives and careers.
If you’re feeling stuck in the day-to-day bore of your job, there are some things you can do to shift your mindset and thus improve the quality of both your career and your life.
4 Ways to Enhance Your Career
1. Be easy to impress
Be in awe of people, talent, nature, art, technology, work, and the world around you. Embrace a sense of wonderment, like a child does. There are so many extraordinary people and things around us all the time, we just don’t often stop to appreciate them and allow ourselves to be impressed, especially at work and if we’re feeling frustrated with our current job.
2. Be hard to offend
In other words, don’t take things so personally and allow yourself to get offended so easily. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and said to yourself, “It’s going to take something enormous to offend me today.” That would probably be a good mindset to take to work and out into the world, don’t you think?
Once we’ve lived a bit, gained some professional experience, or think of ourselves as somewhat sophisticated, we often get jaded. It takes something pretty remarkable to impress us. And, sadly, we get offended very easily and blame others for our stress, frustration, and disappointment.
3. Make a commitment to yourself
Make a commitment to yourself to be easy to impress and hard to offend…and see what happens to your career and your life.
Making a commitment to yourself is a crucial part of both personal and professional growth and development. It fosters self-discipline and empowers you to pursue your goals.
Making a commitment to yourself builds a strong foundation for self-improvement, allowing you to take the right steps to prioritize your well-being and enhance your career.
Remember: committing to yourself also means being able to realize and fully acknowledge when or if a certain career isn’t for you, or when a certain part of your role or career has run its course.
If you’re starting to realize that you’re no longer bringing your whole self to work, it may be time to take a step back and figure out what caused the change.
4. Have a growth mindset
Operating with a growth mindset means committing yourself to constant learning and embracing challenges as opportunities for development. Actively seek out feedback and use it to motivate you to improve in your career.
When you embrace this type of proactive growth, it helps you feel more comfortable taking risks and seeking out new responsibilities that can show your skills and potential for advancement.
Take the Right Steps to Enhance Your Career Today
As I travel around the country and the world working with people, leaders, teams, and organizations of all kinds, it’s clear to me how important having this type of approach can be. Unfortunately, we often justify our lack of being impressed and how easily we get offended, instead of realizing all the ways these things hold us back.
Moving forward successfully in our careers has a lot to do with how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. While it may be easy to get caught up in the drama, stress, and negativity of others, our work environment, or the world we live in, ultimately, we have a choice.
If we choose to be easily impressed and hard to offend, to make a commitment to ourselves, and to operate with a growth mindset, these things can have a dramatic and positive impact on our careers and our lives.
Liked this article? Here are three more…
The Challenge and Importance of Inclusion at Work
The Important Benefits of Being Grateful at Work
Have the Courage to Be Vulnerable
This article was originally published in 2019 and updated for 2023.