When I first heard this advice, I thought it would be impossible to follow. Scheduling a time to worry would mean I was giving myself permission to worry. And why would I do that? Wasn’t my goal not to worry?
After much skepticism, I decided to try this technique about a month ago. And believe it or not, I have seen surprising results!
The first week I had a worry time for 30 minutes each day. At first, I wasn’t sure when I should set aside time to worry. In the morning? During my lunch break? After work?
It turns out after work was the best time for me to worry. Why? Well, because every time I had a worrisome thought during the day, I told myself, “You can’t think about that now. You can think about that during your worry time later tonight.”
When 8:00 appeared on the digital clock, I began to worry. All of the anxious thoughts that I had tossed aside during the day came back to me, and I discussed them (okay, more like spilled them) to my husband. As 8:30 neared, my husband warned me, “You have only five more minutes left to worry.” Then, “You only have one more minute to worry,” he would say.
Miraculously, unnecessary thoughts made their escape from my mind at the end of the worry time. I was then free to live my life without any cares - until the next worry time.
This routine happened for about a week. Then, something amazing happened: I didn’t care to worry!
Once I started to train my brain to be more positive, my worrying started to decrease. During the second week of this exercise, I continued to tell myself during the day that I could worry about anything during my worry time. But then when my worry time came, I either forgot what I had been worrying about or I felt so good that I didn’t want to ruin my good mood with worrying!
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still worry. I just haven’t been worrying as much or as often.
This technique, coupled with the imagery technique (I imagine I am throwing away my worries), has helped me greatly. While I have seen much improvement, I still need practice. Hopefully, with time, not worrying about insignificant things will become second nature.
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