It’s human nature to worry at times. A little bit of concern is a good way to check in and make sure you’ve got things in order. Too much worry causes stress and zaps your energy.
For cancer survivors and caregivers, there are many issues and situations that would seem very worthy of worry. But if worry is causing stress, anxiety, loss of sleep and low energy, it isn’t serving your best interests.
In Thomas Delong’s guest post in the Harvard Business Review, The Worrying Trap, he shares a lighthearted example of how his family’s worry gene shows up in their lives. He offers three tips for avoiding the fall into the worry trap.
I love his first tip which is to basically assess big and small worries, set aside the small ones and recognize that a significant issue in one area doesn’t mean everything is falling apart (my paraphrase, not his words).
Nothing wrong with tip two which is to create a list of tasks or an agenda to help you address the issue causing the worry. My tip three would be very different when working with my clients.
It’s great to come up with an action plan as in tip two, but if you don’t pause to take a moment and understand the thoughts and feelings at the source of the worry, you’re less likely to actually get around to following through on your actions.
You can’t do your way out of worry. It may mask it for awhile when you busy yourself with tasks bu
t until you come face to face with the underlying thought, you continue to have the source present.
When you work through the thoughts, limiting beliefs, assumptions and inner critic messages that instigate worry, it is like pulling weeds from the garden by their root instead of just pulling off the leaves.
Living my life by applying the concepts of Energy Leadership™ I learned through my iPEC Coach Training, life for me has meant getting to a place of enjoying 80-90% more ease and peace. I no longer worry about that which I cannot control. I have the ability to face my fears and concerns and move through them so I don’t get stuck…and I get the same results reported to me by my clients. Taking the Energy Leadership Assessment is a great way to uncover those roots and begin to pull the weeds from the garden.
