Battling the worrywart

I've been a worrier for longer than I can remember. Most times my mild worrying has beneficial outcomes that outweigh its costs. I'm punctual because I worry about being late. I'm rarely injured because I worry-wonder whether the proposed activity will cause injury. Worrying about the possible negative outcomes has enhanced my logical thinking, and I'm a pretty good strategist.

I used to worry if you'd think I was smart and/or pretty. I would worry that I hadn't read enough books, or I'd say something "wrong" or that the IRS would come after us, or someone would discover something about me that would make them not like me anymore.

The other day I realized I was worrying while baking the scones. I have rarely baked from scratch and I worried if the butter was cold enough, if the dough would come out right or not. Once I realized I was worrying about scones, I also realized I need to take a more proactive approach to battling the worrywart.

I don't need to worry about whether the scones will taste good, or if the other people in my swim class will think I'm oversuited if I wear my brand new swim goggles AND brand new swim cap.

Actually it was the anticipation of my swim class that got my mind off the fate of the scones. Once I became aware of the worrywart, I just imagined myself floating in the pool when I visited my brother in November and in turn imagined how I could let all the stress float away when I got to my swim class today.

The trick is to cultivate a way to let go of the worries that you can't do anything about/ don't matter. A while back I had a "worry jar." Back when I had a daily sit-around, I would write down my worries and put them away into the worry jar. Every-so-often I'd go back through and read and sort them. The worries about events that had passed or I no longer worried about got torn up and tossed in the trash. Worries I could do something about transitioned, and worries that were still worries just got put back away into the jar.

I need a portable system, something that can go around with me for all those worries that just come up along the way. You know, the ones that you think about when, even if you can do something about the issue, you can't do anything about it right then. You think of it and then it fades just out of reach when you are sitting down and ready to tackle the world. You still feel the oppressed by it, in your subconscious, but you don't realize it.

With all this in mind, I decided to make a worry envelope. One day passed, then two days passed and I'd not made one yet. "I need to make this simpler," I thought to myself. Afterall, I haven't done any papercrafting in months, yet I have a ton of little notebooks. "Maybe I can just add an envelope to the inside of one of those."

And that's what I did. Using an absolutely gorgeous palm sized notebook my mom gave me, I added a little clear sticky envelope to the back to store the worries in their "put away" stage. I broke a pencil in half to make it fit the same pocket size and wrote my swim class worries down, folded up the page and put it away into the envelope.

"worries about swim lesson: i won't be any good, i'll look foolish, i won't stick with it, i'll get sick from the bike ride (wet hair), my bike will get a flat tire on my way there, i'll be late"

 I did check my tire pressure (good enough), and I left early (first day of school and all), but other than that I'm pleased to say: the happy anticipation of swimming and floating totally canceled out the rest.

And now I'm tearing up these worries! See Rachel, no need to worry! Everything turned out fine! You took care of what you could (bicycle maintenance, leaving early) and the rest didn't matter.  Oh, and the scones were delicious even with burnt bottoms.

Now it's time to go bake some oven fries and spicy cod fillets for dinner.