Why worrying impacts your health E12

October 19, 2021

Why worrying impacts your health

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In this episode, I want to talk about our habits of worrying. In my opinion, worrying has become a normal state of being these days – but in reality, it’s overused big time, quite often useless and actually makes us sick. Keep reading to learn more!

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Are you somebody that worries a lot? Do you feel anxious about something or someone?

Maybe you are not even that aware of being worried or anxious. These days it has become the norm to be worried about something at all times. 

People might even think that something is not quite right with you if you are in a conversation and say: “I have literally no worries.”

And you know what the other person might say? Great that YOU have no worries. But what about the world out there? Are you not worried about humanity? Should you not be worried about Covid? Are you not worried about … (dot dot dot) it could be anything this person might throw at you.

Worrying has become a normal state of being

That´s how normal it has become in our society that we HAVE TO worry at all times. And if it is not directly something in our life, well, then we better find something out there that we can worry about.

But do we ever stop and reflect on what we are doing? What we are doing to ourselves and our health? What do worrying and anxiety do to our lives? Well, we are going to do that now. I want you to wake up and reflect. 

I have always been good at worrying. Worrying is something that your mind does when it thinks about the future. Because it cannot predict the future, it starts worrying about it. It creates all of these scenarios of what might happen and because our mind is more likely to think negatively, it goes automatically to the worst-case scenario – and it´s difficult to get yourself out of it, right?

My usual worries that kept my mind busy in the past 

I myself worried a lot at work. I had worries that were constantly in my mind, for example, worrying about all the tasks that I have not done yet and that still need to get done. Worrying if my boss will like the presentation that I have been working on for the last 3 days. Or how it will go when I have to give the presentation next week.

Let´s be honest: there is always something to worry about. Do you have such an experience?

When I started to work more on my energy system and my thoughts, I started to see what worrying did to me. It would bring up feelings of not being good enough, unworthiness, scared of not getting the approval of others, and guilt for not doing a good enough job. These worrying thoughts combined with these feelings put a lot of stress on the body.

Stress is the number one reason for most of our top illnesses.

Today we are much more aware that this constant stress on our bodies is unhealthy and dangerous (Episode 15). With the busy state of our lives and how much we deliver these days in our jobs, it is hard to eliminate all stress from our lives. But the stress we are creating with our worrying and anxious thoughts is something that we can eliminate or start to reduce.

The thing is that these thoughts and feelings are created artificially by our mind and a lot of it is not helpful at all. Let me give you an example:

Let´s say you are invited to go to a party on Saturday and you have been looking forward to it for some weeks. And you just received a text message from a friend telling you that your former best friend is going to be there as well. There is a reason why this is your former best friend. 

So what does your mind go straight away: it starts to create all of these scenarios of what could happen, right?

You might be having thoughts like:

  • How will it be meeting her after such a long time?
  • What should I say to her? How should I behave when I meet her?
  • What if she ignores me and pretends like we don’t know each other? But everyone there knows about what happened 2 years ago?
  • What if she does not ignore me and she comes over and is super nice to me – as if nothing ever happened?
  • Should I play along and do the same? Or should I call her out on our fight?

All of these thoughts are happening straight away – and they will probably happen all the way to Saturday. Who knows what kind of crazy scenarios the mind comes up with until the party?

And every time you think about it, you create feelings alongside these thoughts. Feelings of nervousness, being scared, frustration, shame, and anger.

What is currently happening is, that it is Tuesday afternoon. You are standing in your kitchen and you are going through these thoughts and feelings. What happens is that you are putting your body under a lot of stress. You are signalling your system to create stress hormones. Your system thinks that you are currently in the situation that you are picturing. As if it is currently happening. 

You know what? Your body does not know the difference between it being real or just imagined in your mind. Your body is under complete stress and releases chemicals that it does not really need – because in reality, it is standing and sound in your kitchen.

And how many more times are you going to do that to your body until Saturday? Be honest with yourself. You might not be able to leave it at this one time on Tuesday, right? You might have similar thoughts again on Wednesday morning at breakfast, Thursday afternoon while driving in your car, and for sure Friday evening, the evening before the party.

Each time you are creating a stress scenario in your body and making yourself unwell.

And for what?

You cannot know what will happen. Our mind is not able to look into the future. And have you had these kinds of situations before where you created worst-case scenarios in your mind and what happened in the end? It was all not that bad. Sometimes not even anything bad happened. You might be looking back and thinking: Oh, I had nothing to worry about. Everything went actually better than I thought.

Is that not what happens most of the time? But what did we do to ourselves leading up to the event? We created a lot of stress in our system, we spend a lot of energy having these thoughts and these feelings. And how much time have we spent worrying? And then we say to ourselves: I don’t have enough time. Yeah, right.

And even if, in the unlikely scenario, the situation ended up being one of the scenarios you imagined and it was awkward for 5 or 10 minutes. Does that really warrant all the worries throughout the week? Is it really worth it to say: See, I was right. I KNEW this would happen.

“Or is it better to start worrying less about things that we cannot predict? Is it not better to put less stress on our body and our system and to be healthier?”

In the end, it is your choice.

You are creating these thoughts and these feelings. And if you understand this now, you can start changing them. You have the control to choose differently.

It is hard and needs a lot of practice to not have worrying thoughts at all – especially in this scenario. They will come, let´s face it. That does not mean that you need to keep having them for the next 10 minutes or even 30 minutes. You can choose differently. You can choose to stop the cycle of worries and the feelings that come with it.

Here are a couple of things you could do:

  • Say to yourself: Stop the worries. This does not help me or my body. Let´s think about something different.
  • You could distract yourself, take a few deep breaths and do something different that will distract your mind.
  • You could write it all down. Getting our thoughts out of our minds and onto paper is very healing and releasing. Once they are out, you will feel lighter and more objective. Seeing the thoughts written down on paper might help you see the craziness in some of these.

A book I can highly recommend

A really good interrupter is the “5 Second Rule” by Mel Robbins. I can highly recommend her book as her way of disrupting the monkey mind in your head is really powerful. Check out her most popular books on THIS LINK.

And the last tip I have for you is

To move your body and your mind to a happier place. This can be a safe haven for you to go to when you need it – especially in situations like this. It could be a nice memory, a mantra or you could literally create a place in your mind that you go to, to switch off these worrying thoughts and to create positive feelings in your body straight away.

I created a meditation just for this as I wanted to create such a place for myself when I need it. This meditation is designed for you to let go of worries and anxious thoughts. By handing them over to a higher power, you create space in your life for peace and love. The place you are going to create keeps you calm and safe. 

Are you ready to build your space of inner peace? Then let this meditation guide you through this journey. I will add the link to the meditation in the show notes. 

And I will close our episode today with this great quote from Erma Bombeck: “Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do, but it never gets you anywhere.”

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So whether you choose to donate, leave a rating and review, or both, know that you’re an integral part of my vision. You are helping everyone who struggles with burnout or high-stress levels to experience how awesome their life can be. So, thank you for your support!

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Try this meditation to feel safe and calm

Build Your Inner Peace of Mind is part of the Purposefully Meditating course. This meditation is designed for you to let go of worries and anxious thoughts.  By handing them over to a higher power, you create space in your life for peace and love. Are you ready to build your space of inner peace? Then let this meditation guide you through this journey.

WHAT’S INCLUDED:

  • 4 Modules with short & precise lessons to learn all you need to know about meditation
  • 3 Meditation Packages each including a powerful meditation in different lengths and a workbook
    • Transform Your Energy, Transform Your Life
    • Build Your Inner Peace of Mind
    • Connect with Your Self-love Energy
  • Bonus: My Morning and evening Meditations to help you create your New Self each day

Find out more and listen to the meditation samples here:

Purposefully Meditating Course

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