Worry Does Not Help You

When we allow worry to come front and center in our lives, we are displacing the present moment and trying to live in the future. It is a futile effort. All we have, all we ever know, is the moment we are experiencing right now. Words like “tomorrow” and “yesterday” are abstractions and useful to tell a story, but they are never something we experience. We are always in the Now.

Don’t Miss Out On Life

We often live as if we are supposed to be ahead of ourselves, doing more, being more, and someday we’ll have time to sit back and become aware of what is going on around us. Of course, that isn’t what happens. Instead, we keep on racing to get somewhere we think we have to be. Once we get there, we tell ourselves, then we’ll be successful. Then we’ll have achieved something worthwhile, whether our goal is money, status, physical perfection, or expertise in the field of our choice. Those goals do have value–but not if we achieve them by missing life, by letting it pass by unnoticed.

There is a quote I take to heart: “Life is an infinite series of probabilities” from Jane Robert’s book The Nature of Reality. What it means is that every moment leads into another, but each moment is total unto itself. Each instant of time gives us — if we are open to it — awareness of our absolute being-ness and of the intricate, remarkable choreography that shapes our lives.

Living Without Worry Enhances Your Life

Consider this as an example: If you start to leave your house and almost open the front door, but then go back to get your keys, that means you will open the door two minutes later than you intended. The whole world has changed by then. Nothing is what it was two minutes before. The wind blows against the leaves of the trees in different ways. The cars passing by are not the same. The sky has more clouds than it had two minutes before, or fewer. The light from the sun has become brighter or it has dimmed. You have changed as well. Your body has carried out a billion processes in that time, each cell shifting and moving and creating more of itself. Your emotions have changed, a physiological fact, but in a natural way, feelings that flow in rhythm with who you are and the day itself.

Each moment of life is the result of a new probability, meant to be acknowledged and noticed for its own sake. This is what we are here for, to feel ourselves present in our life and to know that no two moments are the same, but each one holds the essence of who we are and what we have become and will become.

The Real Effects of Worrying About Anything

What happens to all this if you are worried and decide to stay worried? The worry dominates. Everything else is pushed aside. Your worrying accomplishes nothing, does not add an iota of value. It diminishes your energy, your will to take action, your ability to think clearly, and your ability to appreciate life in each moment. It prevents peace of mind and hurts the heart.

Some call worry a kind of half-death, because while you are immersed in it, you are in a stasis that is a partial paralysis of living and being.

Let It Go

Worry comes to us all, but we have a choice — to yield to it, or to take action in some way that mitigates it, that benefits us and the people around us. We decide not to give ourselves up to the worrying. We let it, not life, go past.

That is when we find that solutions come to us, often remarkable solutions, for we have allowed the awareness of our creative purpose in each moment.