Winning the War Against Worry

Are you a worrywart? A nervous Nellie? Do you constantly fret about everything from your health, to what people think of you, to what could happen today, tomorrow, or even next year, especially in these times? If this sounds like you, then you may be worrying your life away. Excessive worry doesn’t just affect your mental health, it also wreaks havoc on your physical well-being. Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes heavier, and you might even break into a sweat. Worry should come with a warning label: “Discontinue if you can no longer enjoy your life. Side-effects may include insomnia, exhaustion, depression, digestive problems, stress, or lack of focus.” 

Like the old saying goes, “Worry is like a rocking chair—it’s always in motion, but it never gets you anywhere.” We lie awake at night worrying about bills, relationships, our jobs, the election, and more. Worry can turn toxic. For the record, if you run into a bear in the woods, you do have something to worry about! But how many of us actually come face to face with a bear? Let’s try to be more worry-free and live life with our arms and eyes wide open. Life is short, so we don’t have time to let worry whittle it away from us.

Worry uses our imaginations negatively

Enjoy your life now, not when. Recently, I was enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend at my favorite restaurant. I’d just returned to my table with our order when I noticed the women at the table next to me. They were talking about being worried. The conversation was based on “what ifs?” We all know that conversation well. So many of us could have sat down with these perfect strangers and joined in without skipping a beat.

So often we get stuck in the rut of worry. Stuck in a rut of drowning, seeking a peace that surpasses understanding. There’s always something we can do—a different conversation we could have with friends. Dozens of decisions or actions we could make at any given moment that could lead us to a breakthrough. But if we’re honest, we’d all admit we’ve spent more than a little time stuck in a worry-rut. 

Why do we worry about what we cannot control?

Why do we let worry carry us so far that we cross the crazy line?

If we could stop dealing with worry, we could live life fully alive because worry robs us of our joy. We’d feel no need to shy away from a challenge. We’d embrace it and figure out a way to conquer it with God’s help. We’d set ourselves up to win all along the way. We would not just follow our dreams, we would chase them! 

“Someday” is not a day of the week

Life has taught me this lesson: “Someday” isn’t coming. If we want to be happy, healthy, and worry-free, if we want to love the work we do, if we want great relationships with family, our community, and our friends, we can’t wait for some magical event to make worry go away. Worry chokes hope. We have to live life day to day, looking forward with anticipation. 

A dear friend of mine, who sparkles with hope and has a gift for living life fully alive, encourages people not to worry. She teaches people to live life as it were their last day. She challenges them to live life with excitement and a sense of humor. She doesn’t stare at stop signs. She is a woman on the go. A worry-free woman, on a mission to show others that life is a gift. Worry is not on her list. She has learned how to escape its grip and to live each day to the fullest, even when she stares a bear in the face with an eyebrow raised and shaky knees. She’s taught me how to live fully alive.

Philippians 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything.” Is that really possible? It is when we understand the difference between toxic worry and healthy concern. Worry obsesses. Concern addresses. Worry causes more problems than the problem at hand. When we are worried about something, it takes over every aspect of our lives. We cannot move on. We become paralyzed. Worry gnaws at our core. I don’t like the word “gnaw” when it comes to my dreams and desires.

The life we want doesn’t happen by accident. My neighbor says, as he battles cancer, “We must put God in the foreground and He will take care of it.” 

Worry can keep us completely in the dark. Utterly blinded. It masquerades as a helper, but secretly chokes us. It steals our peace. Kills our joy. It can even destroy our life, if we let it. We can begin to deal with problems if we take it one day at a time. Stop waiting for “someday” and start living life fully alive today. “Someday” is never coming. But the good news is we can have the life we want today, if we will let go of the grip that worry has on our life. What we really want is progress—even if it comes one small step at a time. We must do something different. 

Worry-busting steps

We can climb out of the emotional black hole. Here are some steps to help you win the war on worry:

1.  Pray

Ask God to come to your rescue. Even on your worst day, He will not walk away from you. He won’t change His mind about how much He loves you. You never have to worry about that. “I the LORD do not change” (Mal. 3:6). 

2.  Exhale.

Breathe in and breathe out. If possible, breathe in the smell of lavender or peppermint. Both have a calming effect on people.

3.  Ask yourself, “What can I do in the present moment to change this?”

Most likely, the answer is to be still, rethink, and continue to give your worries to God. Don’t give into hopelessness.

4.  Remember that it’s rarely as bad as we worry it will be.

Anxiety or worry is all about anticipation. The “what ifs” are always worse than the actual event, if it happens. 

5.  Cry out loud.

Yes, that is what I said. Cry out to God. Get it out of your system and then leave it there with God and proceed with life.      

In the grand scheme of life, our future is either negative or positive according to how we think. We cannot change the number of days in our lives, but we can change the quality of our life. We are never too old for a new beginning, so we can toss worry to the curb.

Worry doesn’t have to steal your life from you. You have a choice!    

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:27).

~ By Tammy Whitehurst