Meet My Friend Worry

 

I have fantastic news for you all. You are all winners. Every last one of you. Just by sitting there, just by existing, just by being alive. All of you have countless ancestors who survived perilous infancy and growth, wrestled with their rivals, attracted a mate, managed to conceive which resulted in the birth of a descendant who repeated the whole process again. You need to think beyond your parents who probably met “at a dance”. You need to go back beyond humans to homos erectus. Before penicillin, hospitals, police, laws. All the way back to the genus of apes. All through the different ages of mammals, dinosaurs and amphibious land animals who first left the ocean. Not to mention Billions of years of evolution by marine creatures in the oceans. 

You are a miracle each and every one of you. You are masterpieces of evolution through trial and error. I want you to look to your left and right and look at the masterpieces either side of you. Look right. If you are next to a wall, you can just look at your own magnificent self.  

Now some of you might be thinking, that one, is definitely an error. And the person on the other side is still on trial. You might be right. But that is all part of the process and I have great faith in you winners. If we were all stranded together on a deserted island, I would fancy our chances of surviving. 

And why would I would fancy our chances? Because all those eons of evolution gave you a gift. A large frontal lobe. And inside that frontal lobe, is the jewel. Your ability to worry. Without it, your fate would have been sealed millennia ago. Your ancestors would be at best insignificant fossils somewhere in the middle east. Homo Sapiens lingered there on the brink of extinction for over 10,000 years with a population of less than 10,000. Over that time, they greatly increased the size of their frontal lobe and eventually emerged into Europe with bows and arrows and displaced all before them. 

It is generally accepted that this ability to worry motivated us to plan ahead for things like winter. Many people think of worry like a black cloud on the horizon that follows them around. That is the wrong way to look at it, and if you are one of those people, you need to change your mindset. I want to introduce you to my friend, worry. Yes, my friend. In the same way that you don’t get fit without demanding exercise and some personal trainers will say “you need to meet my friend pain”. 

Although sometimes, I think of worry more like a conventional mother than a friend. Constantly looking over your shoulder. In your ear about dangers and deadlines. Have you booked your car in to change those tires? Do you have travel insurance? 

There are two ways to get your mother to get off your case about something. One is to do it straight way. And frankly, there is no better way than that. There is no time like the present. That is the fastest, surest way to deal with a worry. Just do it, now.

The other way is to convince your mother so comprehensively that you are going to do it, that it is no longer an issue. So make yourself a list and commit to that list so strongly, that if a job makes it, it will get done. Everytime. Review it everyday. Then once it makes the list, everyone can be sure that it will get done and it is no longer a worry.

Sometimes you might have a big problem. I have a few bits of advice here. One is to share it. A problem shared is a problem halved. A worry shared is a worry halved. The other is to delegate or ask for help. And don’t be all apologetic about it. If it is still too big, break it down in to smaller pieces and tackle them one by one. The last tip, is learn how to say no if your list it getting too long. Just learn how to do it nicely.

But know this, no matter what you do, your brain will find something to worry about. That is fine. Get used to it. Just keep adding to your list and keep finishing items on the list. You will become more composed, more successful and more wealthy. And everyone knows, the person with the biggest house, the most money and the least worries when they die, wins.

If you don’t already have a mechanism for a list, get one. Stop worrying. Start winning. And take your place among the master race of magnificent worry warriors that we have evolved into.