Worries. They can be omnipresent, going round and round with no end in sight.
They’re like old friends who knock on your door in the middle of the night and wake you from a sound sleep because they’re looking for someone to feed them beer and chips.
When I was younger, I didn’t see a difference between a worry and a problem.
You worry because you have a problem, right? Seemed simple enough to me.
It took me a long time — years! — to understand that a worry and a problem are not the same thing at all.
Having the courage to see the difference between the two was hugely liberating.
Worry is all about tormenting yourself with disturbing thoughts, picking at something, or nagging at yourself. Endlessly.
Problems are different because problems do have one thing over worries — they come with solutions!
Sure, maybe not all the solutions are perfect or ideal, but at least there’s a goal to work toward. With worry there’s no goal — just more worry.
When I was younger, I was afraid to turn my worries into actual full-blown problems…because I was also afraid I wouldn’t be able to find solutions.
What if this problem is just like algebra class? What if life is nothing but one big story problem with the trains and the cars all leaving at different times and going in different directions? What if I can’t figure out what to do or where to start???
Then I remembered something I learned from Algebra.
Just because I couldn’t figure out the solutions lickety split in my head didn’t mean they weren’t there.
I simply hadn’t found them.
Talk about an unpleasant reality check!
And I really face-palmed when it dawned on me that I couldn’t find solutions until I first identified the problems.
So now, I try to take my worries and turn them into concrete dilemmas…then find solutions.
It’s not always easy, but it is doable — I promise!
More on this next time!