So you are worried about something. You are frequently worried about something. \u00a0But whatever worries you changes from day to day. Well, here is a post about worrying, worrying as an activity, about what’s good and bad about worrying.<\/p>\n
As negative as it sounds, worrying itself is not negative. \u00a0Being worried can make us better off. \u00a0When we are worried our intellect sharpens, worries make us focus on problems, confront issues, win battles and move on with life. As an entrepreneur who over the course of 25 years founded four startups worth over half a billion and blew up one, I was never worry free. \u00a0Indeed my start ups always felt to me as a string of endless worries, of failures, that somehow\u00a0miraculously\u00a0one day, were highly valuable. \u00a0In all of them I had near death experiences. \u00a0In all of them, thanks to worrying, I found ways out of them. Because worrying as in “I have identified a problem” is a positive trait. \u00a0Worrying as in “I am deciding on the best strategy to cope with adversity” is a positive trait.\u00a0But many times we worry about issues in life that truly don’t deserve our focus, that are not real problems we should worry about. \u00a0That are not true challenges. That are bogus.<\/p>\n
That is why some people are more “worriers” than “warriors”. And indeed there is medical evidence for this, genetic evidence<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0Research shows that some genes code for worrying behaviors (worriers) while others for learning from adversity (warriors). Warriors see challenges as learning opportunities. \u00a0Worriers on the other hand\u00a0don’t fight true problems– they lie in the battlefield of their mind, waiting for an enemy who doesn’t show up. \u00a0And instead of rejoicing when real evidence shows them that they are trouble free, on they go, to find something else to worry about. They are the\u00a0hypochondriacs of life.\u00a0 And they exist. \u00a0On a\u00a0good\u00a0day they\u00a0become lawyers and turn their handicap into income, billing others by the hour for their worries. But most are not that lucky, and worry in vain. And we understand them because even the most optimistic among us has something in common with those “worriers”. We have all worried about issues that just did not deserve our attention. The key question is how frequently does this happen to us.<\/p>\n So how can we distinguish the worrier in us from the warrior in us? Here’s an idea. \u00a0Start a diary of your worries. \u00a0Every day write a note to self in some type of social media, about “the worry of the day”. \u00a0Write it in a circle with only one member: yourself.\u00a0Tell yourself what upsets you that day. Something like: today I am worried about… blank. \u00a0And build a collection of worries. A timeline of worries.<\/p>\n And then, at some point in the future, go back to these worries. \u00a0And see what you were worried about last month, or last year. \u00a0By then you will be able to judge if worrying made sense. If it helped you. \u00a0If you worried about something worthy of your angst. If you had a fear or a phobia. \u00a0If you were a warrior, or a worrier. And if you were a worrier, use this diary to learn to fine tune your worries to their likelihood of true damage to your life in the future. Learn to pick opponents who deserve your anxiety.<\/p>\n I know, I fight ghosts sometimes, we all do. And we will go on worrying about some harmless issues. Still, it would be good to have a “worries tag cloud” after a year. \u00a0To be able to study what made us lose sleep, and use that cloud to avoid sleepless nights in the future.<\/p>\n This article was also published in LinkedIn<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow Martin by clicking below <\/em>
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