Welcome back! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Definition of worry: living in fear about a future that doesn’t exist yet.
Worry is the most energy-zapping, mind-numbing, time-wasting downward spiral we humans engage in. I specifically referred to us (homo sapiens) because we are the only species known to participate in this non-productive and many times debilitating activity. Can you imagine a cow worrying that the grass in the pasture might not grow back, or the cat worrying about whether she’ll get Fancy Feast tonight?
It seems that worrying has become our national pastime. We worry about everything: losing our financial security, getting sick, our kids not turning out okay, gas prices skyrocketing again… the list goes on and on. When we worry, we not only lose our creativity and resourcefulness, but we also actually diminish our resilience by dumping harmful chemicals like adrenaline (the fight or flee hormone) and cortisol into our bodies. Worry actually lowers our immune response, making us more susceptible to the illnesses we fear.
So what’s the antidote? It’s simple, but it isn’t easy. We can’t live in fear if we are truly experiencing gratitude. So grab a pen and paper and start writing down three things you’re grateful for every morning and every night. If you make this a practice for forty consecutive days, an amazing thing happens. You actually start looking for things to write about during your day, experiencing the calming presence of gratitude in your life. You begin to feel your resilience and resourcefulness returning. And you make choices and decisions that empower you, working within your sphere of influence to do the things that will make a difference in your life… the things you actually have control over. The things you can’t control occupy less space. You begin to feel optimism.
Take the forty-day Gratitude Challenge and see what happens. What do you have to lose?
