5 Easy Steps to Worrying Less at Work 

By Elisha Goldstein, guest contributor

Imagine being able to show up at work feeling more self-confidence and less worry. What impact would that have on your energy level and what you can achieve that day? As humans, we will always struggle with worry and fear. But when we allow them to take control of our thoughts, actions and consequences follow. We might find ourselves procrastinating more often, being less creative, taking fewer risks—all of which affects our level of growth and success.

When we take stock of our personal and professional lives, we will always see definite ups and downs. As the old Eastern saying goes, “Life is filled with 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.” All things come and go, and there will always be joy and sorrow in everyone’s life--although our brains have a tendency to amplify the sorrows and minimize the joys in the flow of life (at one point there were good evolutionary reasons for this, but they no longer serve us in modern day).

Whenever the brain perceives something as “bad,” it starts to worry about it. But often, there is no real utility to the worry--it only serves to dig us into a deeper hole and blind us to the joys that might be waiting around the corner.

There really is no way to cure worrying, but we can learn to get better at recognizing it and gently guiding ourselves back to a sense of perspective on what matters.

Here are five steps to help you start worrying less:

1. Soften your understanding of worry

Worrying is useful when we try to anticipate and avoid any potential dangers. It’s the brain’s way of trying to protect us, so worrying certainly has its time and place. However, worrying often only serves to ramp up our nervous system, create imbalance, and cause us to worry even more. The brain has good intentions, but it can sometimes work to place us in destructive vicious cycle. This is an important first step to worrying less.

2. Allow/Accept the feeling

Worrying usually arouses the feeling of fear or anxiety. However, if we choose to allow and accept the negative feeling, we can acknowledge that this feeling is present and call it out. We don’t want to resist the feeling because what we resist persists. So instead, the idea is to practice allowing things to be as they are. Here, you are saying to yourself, “Allowing, allowing, allowing.”

3. Feel into it with kindness

Now we have the opportunity to deepen our awareness and investigate the feeling. You may choose to put your hand on your heart or wherever you feel the sensation in your body. This is one way of signaling to the brain a sense of love or kindness to the unpleasant feeling which can help to transform it. The brain also maps the sensation of the touch with is inversely correlated with mental rumination, turning the volume down on negative thinking.

1. As you feel into it, you might ask, “What does this feeling believe?” Does it believe you are unlovable, unworthy? If you allow it to be, can it actually consume you?
2. Ask the question, “What does this feeling need right now? Does it need to feel cared for, to feel secure, to feel a sense of belonging?”
3. Whatever the answer, see if you can plant these as seeds in yourself. For example, you can plant the seeds of intention saying, “May I feel safe and secure, may I be free from this fear, may I feel a sense of belonging.” Make this personal to whatever your needs are.

4. Expand awareness and wishes to all people

Whatever the worrying is about, it’s important you know you’re not alone. Feeling vulnerable is part of the human condition, and millions of people struggle with the same source of vulnerability that you experience. But when we’re feeling vulnerable with anxiety it’s often personal--we need to try to impersonalize the experience and get outside of ourselves.

You can do this by imagining all the other people who struggle with worry and wish them all the same intentions you just wished yourself.

For example, “May we all feel a sense of safety and security, May we all be free from the fear that keeps us stick in a perpetual cycle of worry, May we all feel that sense of belonging, etc…”

5. Repeat steps 1-4 over whenever you feel worried or stressed

Steps one through four spell the acronym SAFE. As you intentionally practice feeling SAFE, in time you will notice that you start to become less reactive to the worried mind, and more compassionate with yourself when worry arises. Your perspective will shift as you recognize that worrying is part of the human condition and that you are not alone with this experience.

If we are able to turn down the volume and worry less, we open to a sense of spaciousness, ease, and joy.

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is the founder of The Mindful Living Collective - the central online mindful space to find the teachings, practices, and tribe to up-level your mind, your life and business. He is also the co-founder of The Center for Mindful Living in Los Angeles and creator of the 6-month online coaching program, A Course in Mindful Living and in partnership with Mindful Leader - A Course in Mindful Living for Leaders.

DON'T MISS his free online Masterclass May 22nd, 2019 at 12 pm PT on Getting Over Anxiety and Fear - Living the Life You Deserve - https://www.crowdcast.io/e/overcome-your-anxiety/register

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