You wouldn’t carry around and nurture a rotten egg.
Yes, it is a silly thought, but it reminds me how foolish it is to worry, when worry accomplishes nothing.
For the most part I am a really happy person and I tend to wake up that way almost every day. But, there are days that once I get going, I begin to WORRY. And, there are other times when the blues strike for no apparent reason –not a sadness mind you, but rather a deep funk. Thank goodness these are getting fewer and further between.
They say that women have a greater propensity for worrying than men, that we tend to over analyze things. It’s something that once it hits, I have to get a hold on quickly. I have learned to turn to two books: Change Your Thoughts –Change Your Life, Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer and Peace a Day at a Time, 365 Meditations for Wisdom and Serenity by Karen Casey.
Although, I am a Christian, I appreciate Buddhism’s lessons on kindness, generosity and self-love. So picking up Dyer’s book and delving into it was a given. It is an easy read, but if you read the lessons twice you gain a deeper meaning. The other book, Karen Casey’s, I picked up without realizing that it is a book for AA. I simply picked it up in the bookstore when the title caught my eye, flipped to a page, read it and was hooked! Its lessons are so short and simple that it is hard to fathom the effect they have on your thinking. Bookmarks now fill each and I’ve underlined and written in all the margins my thoughts and feelings, little phrases that sing to me. Both books are filled with Biblical scripture as well; and like faith, neither are one dimensional.
If I am honest, my worrying has another component that I don’t like. I call it the ugly cousin –CONTROL. Trying to control even the smallest of things seems almost an addiction. I know it is poisonous. It can make what should be non-stressful situations stressFULL and can place a hardship on even the strongest relationships. For example, because I am an extremely punctual person (a little OCD when it comes to time, I have multiple alarm clocks) I let what should be a minor irritant –waiting on someone for what I felt was an ungodly amount of time- almost ruin a friendship. A girlfriend told me she would meet me at a specific time, and showed up 45 minutes late; she was smiling and chipper I might add. I was beyond ill. What I didn’t understand at that time was that I was the one with the problem, not her. It was my expectations that caused the problem.
Give up expectations of others, stop worrying and just find something to smile about.
It is amazing how much of this I began to understand once I read Dyer’s and Casey’s books. By changing the way I viewed things, I changed the way I felt.
*****
ELIZABETH MOZLEY
@ElizabethMozley & @CentipedeYAread
And on Facebook – We Share the Same Sky, author Elizabeth Mozley
We Share the Same Sky, a memoir
Elizabeth Mozley Partridge, Alabama Author 
I really relate to this! Gooooosh I am such a worrier, and so is my mother, and so is my grandmother… But yes! Change the way you are thinking, discipline your mind… – well I try to. and it helps but it’s hard work eh?
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Yes it is! I go through it in spells. There was a time about five, six years ago (when I took the NYC trip alone) that I actually started wearing a rubber band around my wrist. When I caught myself worrying I’d pop it. Until that point, I’d not realized how often I was. But, it made me aware of it and then I was able to make myself knock-it-off. The books are wonderful. Especially the Casey one. You just start at the beginning and go through it, one paragraph a day. I’d read the lesson twice a day. They vary day to day but are all connected, and it is amazing at the end you realize that your way of thinking has changed!
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THat does sound good..! I have an app called, Transform your life – a year of awareness practise. And it’s a day by day paragraph and a thought, and a little thought task. It’s nice. 🙂
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