Ep 7. How to Stop Worrying

I’m Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number seven, How to Stop Worrying.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey, everyone. How’s it going over there? It’s officially fall here. I have my pumpkins out and my fire going and I’m sipping on Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend Tea. Hot tea. Have you tried this? You must. It tastes exactly like fall. Yummy cinnamon, spice, apples, oranges, ginger, and cloves. Are you even kidding? I’m in change-of-season heaven. I totally think it’s the best time of year.

So, today on the show, I want to help you to stop worrying. Did you know you can totally do this? You can stop the habit of worry and today is the day to start practicing. I have three secrets of my own to offer you. Three ideas that I practice that have given me so much power over worry.

I just don’t worry much at all anymore. I’ve let worry go. I have different, more useful thoughts now about everything. The truth is about worry that it’s just a bad habit. Worry pretends to be necessary, but it isn’t. It’s not useful either. Worry is a loop in our brain on repeat.

Our brain likes to worry. Our brain likes to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. It’s always on the lookout for trouble and thinks everyone and everything is out to get us. It wants to keep us safe from all the danger out there and in our future.

It thinks if we prepare ahead of time for the terrible future that awaits us, then we’ll be okay. It likes to drum up worst-case scenarios on repeat. We suffer today about something that may not ever happen. I call it “suffering ahead of time.” It’s such a waste of our energy and our precious time and all of our resources.

And, you guys, worry is simply just thoughts—sentences in our head. Worry doesn’t come from outside of us. It’s not caused by circumstances. We don’t have to control people or situations to stop worrying. We just have to get good at knowing that we are creating our own worry.

And if we want to stop worrying, we absolutely can. We can take ownership of it and get our power back. We can get good at being aware of our brain’s tendency and recognizing that our thoughts and worries are always optional and never necessary.

This is my secret number one. Worry is optional. It’s always optional. It’s never required. It’s never helpful. It’s never useful. It doesn’t just happen to us. It’s not genetic. We don’t come from a long line of worriers.

I hear women all the time say, “Well, I’m just a worrier,” like they can’t help it. It’s a part of their identity. But I promise you, you can help it if you want to help it. Worrying is a choice. It’s always optional.

It pretends to be important and preventative even, but it isn’t. We have lots of different ways we can think about everything if we want to. And we can get really creative and good at it.

Sometimes, we get so attached to the worries and thought that is causing us the suffering that we won’t let it go out of fear. We think somehow, if we keep worrying about it, we can control the outcome. But that is not true.

We treat worry like prayer. We ask everyone to worry with us. “Please, won’t you worry about this with me so the bad thing doesn’t happen?” But I don’t think this is how prayer works, you guys. I don’t think it’s necessary or helpful.

What if what we’re thinking is quote “the bad thing” isn’t bad at all? I can see that much of what I thought was a bad circumstance in my past actually was the best thing for all of us. I used to worry a lot and stress a lot and ask for prayer a lot, and now I can see how this isn’t the best way. This isn’t the most powerful way. Worry is not prayer.

Prayer, for me now, is the opposite of worry. Prayer, for me now, is the opposite of stress. Prayer, for me now, is acceptance and love for what is. It is not pushing against reality. It is not worrying and fretting and wanting something or someone to change or be different than what it is or who they are.

We don’t change any outcome by resisting it or making it bad. We don’t change any outcome by worrying it to death. Worry isn’t useful. Worry isn’t prayer. Worry isn’t necessary. And worry is absolutely optional. That’s my secret number one.

Secret number two is separate the facts from the thoughts. Stop letting your thoughts run away from you, dragging you with them. You can get really good at sticking to the facts.

If your brain’s default is to jump to worry every day about everything, this is your first course of action. Retrain it slowly but surely by writing down the facts about the story you created in your head. Recognize that most of the drama and worry is completely made up, not factual and not true.

I remember when my kids got their driver’s licenses, and every time I heard a siren, I went into full-blown panic. We happened to live by a fire station then, and I heard sirens all the time. The funny thing is, I never noticed the sirens until my kids started driving. And that’s what’s funny about our brain: it finds what it’s looking for. It’s looking for trouble. Right?

So, I created so much worry and panic for myself. I would lie awake at night and get myself totally worked up over nothing. It was all caused by my brain. Not the circumstance. Not that my kids were driving.

Panic is the feeling caused by a thought, not a siren. My brain was practiced at worst-case scenario, and I was practiced at believing my thoughts. I was practiced at worry and drama and panic.

I didn’t know then what I know now. And what I know now is that a circumstance is a neutral fact. It’s not good or bad until I think a thought about it. I used to think that there were good circumstances and there were bad circumstances. But now I know that that isn’t true at all.

Circumstances are just facts in the world and in our life, and we get to make meaning out of them. We can make it mean something terrible and worry about it and lose sleep over it and make ourselves sick over it. Or we can look at it objectively and stick to the facts and show up to the situation in a much more powerful and calm way.

And men seem to be naturally better at this than we are. They stay pretty neutral and fact-y. For some reason, we want our husbands to get as worked up as we are. We want them to fret about it, worry about it, and talk about it. But they don’t want to and they won’t.

And annoying as it can be to us wives who are in the habit of worrying, it’s actually the best thing for us. It’s brilliant. So, you can learn a lot from your husbands’ “just give me the facts” attitude. It’s actually better. It’s more helpful and useful. So, way to go, men out there. Turns out you do have a couple of things that you might be better at than we are.

So, listen, girls. Get good at what’s actually true. What’s factual—that everyone on the planet would agree with you about. Nothing is a problem if we don’t make it one.

So, stop drumming up drama and creating worry and panic about something that hasn’t even happened and probably won’t. Get good at pulling the facts out from your made-up story. This is my secret number two.

Secret number three is decide to believe that all is well, because it is. I truly believe it. All is well and all will be well in the future. Life is 50/50. We create our reality. If we choose worry over peace and acceptance, then we choose needless suffering for ourselves and we never create a life we love living.

We always have a reason not to love it. We always have a reason to complain and gossip and fret and worry. We never allow our life to be good. We don’t allow our people to be good. We never allow ourselves to be good. We’re so stuck in our negative story and endless fears and made-up troubles. We won’t let go of them.

They almost become like our little security blankets. My coach calls them “our little Wubbies,” like our babies used to have. But our babies outgrow their Wubbies when they mature, and we’re supposed to do the same thing with our worries.

We can set them down and let them go. We don’t need them anymore. We don’t need to cuddle with them and hide from life using them as an excuse. We can trust that all is well, even if our brain wants to convince us it isn’t.

Our brain isn’t the boss. Remember? We are the boss. You are the boss. I am, and if I know anything for sure, it’s this: all is well today and all will be well in the future for me and for you.

And my only job is to stay focused on what makes me feel most alive right here and right now and do more of that. My only job is to stay in love and stay curious and to keep going. My only job is to manage my thoughts and emotions and hope you do the same thing.

Because here’s the truth about the future: we create it. We decide ahead of time how it will play out. We’re actually making it up as we go. So, we might as well make it amazing. Why would we suffer ahead of time with terrible stories in our mind now? My life is amazing because I make it amazing. And I’ll always make it amazing. I create the amazement of my life by the way that I choose to think about it.

Not because I don’t have problems, but because I don’t worry about them. I accept them. My problems are not a problem for me. I know all is well, even with the so-called problems. I know that all will be well in the future, even though there will be problems because I trust myself and I trust I’ll know how to think about them. I don’t overdramatize them or make them a big deal because they just aren’t.

This way of thinking allows me the freedom to enjoy my everyday life and not miss it with the made-up nonsense of worry. I don’t think it should be better or different than it is. I think it’s awesome just exactly how it is today. I don’t worry now and I won’t worry later because all is well and all will be well. That’s my secret number three.

So, my dear friends who get caught up in worrying about all the things, let’s recap three secrets to practice so you can begin to set yourself free from the useless habit of worry.

Number one: worry is optional. It’s never necessary or useful. It’s just a bad habit that you can drop.

Secret number two: get good at sticking to the facts. Separate the facts from your dramatic story. In other words, think like a man.

Secret number three—and this is my favorite and this is the most powerful of all—know that all is well now, and all will be well in the future, truly. You just get to decide this is true. And only good things come from believing this. Trust me. I know.

The better you get at managing your thoughts and feelings, the less time and energy you’ll spend on worry. You never have to try and control the people and situations outside of you. You always and only have to learn how to control you. That’s the best news of all. Stop worrying and start experiencing a peaceful, powerful life. It’s completely possible and it’s the best life ever.

Erma Bombeck said, “Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” I love that and I loved her.

So, I adore you guys so much for showing up today. This is such a fun thing for me to do. And I’ll see ya next week. Have a great one.

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away a few of my very favorite things to five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the podcast. And it doesn’t really have to be a five-star review, though, of course, I would be ever grateful. And I do hope you love the show. But I do want your honest feedback so I can create something awesome that provides a lot of value for you.

So, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com/PodcastLaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the podcast in an upcoming episode.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.