5 Ways To Stop Worrying About The Future

How many times a day do you find yourself worrying about your future?

Be honest, and really think about it. How many times you get overwhelmed thinking: where will the money come from? If it’s ok to follow your dreams and not do what everyone else is doing? If it’s ok not to take the safest route or to be brave and take the path that no one else has the courage to take? How many times you cry in your sleep wondering if you are nuts or everyone else is wrong?

Don’t worry, we all wonder about these things, and sometimes it might get very overwhelming, but you are not alone!

There were times when I would judge the ones that are carefree and do not think about all the things that might go wrong, because I would think “How can they be prepared for the worst, if they have no idea what might come along?‘” and I realized that worrying every day about the same things over and over again, is not going to make them disappear, it’s just going to make me feel really uncomfortable and scared. So why would I want to feel this way, every single day? Why feeling scared and sad every day for the same reasons?

I started reading a new book, which I have been meaning to start a long time ago, it is called ‘The monk who sold his Ferrari’ by Robin Sharma, a modern day fable that emphasis the journey to spirituality and a life lived with purpose. This book showed me something very interesting (not newsflash, because this information is in almost every book about spirituality or self-development) about our thoughts and how they shape our life.

Did you know that about 95% of your thoughts today were thoughts that you thought yesterday?! 95%! So, if you have mostly negative thoughts today, you will have the same negative thoughts tomorrow and the day after that and so on… Isn’t that just weird? Now, what if we would associate a garden with our mind? Let’s picture it: you walk into our own beautiful garden, full of colorful blooming flowers, that smell amazing and the whole scenery makes you feel calm and confident. Out of the sudden, someone starts to spill toxic waste in our garden, just a few drops every day… and your flowers start to look a bit sick and then they lose their color and suddenly, before you know it, 95% of them are gone. You start to panic and ask yourself ‘How did this happen? There were just a few drops every day, and now 95% of it is gone?‘

Worrying and creating negative scenes about ‘what might go wrong‘ are small drops of toxic waste, that WE spill over our mind, every day. It might look insignificant, but a small dose every day, will kill your garden on the long run, and you will end up feeling scared and sad.

How can we stop our thoughts ruining our garden?

5 Ways To Stop Worrying About The Future

#1. Listen to your thoughts

It is said that we cannot stop our thoughts, but we can chose which ones to focus on. So, this is the first step! Be present and listen carefully to what your mind is saying. You are not your mind! Although it might be hard to understand, but you are not your mind, so you can spot your thoughts and realize how many times a day you are telling yourself what you can or cannot do! Do this exercise for the next 7 days, just be present! Listen to all the things that go through your mind and realize what you are actually thinking. You will be amazed!

#2. Laugh at yourself

We get so mad when someone tells us we cannot do something, but we don’t realize how many times we tell ourselves negative things! How many times you caught yourself saying or thinking ‘I am so stupid! I never do anything right! Of course that only bad things happen to me!‘? Why would you allow yourself to talk down to you this way? How can you solve this really quick? LAUGH!

Laugh when you hear yourself thinking this way. Laughing about it will change its energy and its power over you. (Think about the Harry Potter movie and how they would put the Bong back in its closet if they could laugh at whatever scared them the most – i know, i love Harry Potter, but this is a great example).

#3. Cultivate good thoughts

After a lifetime of thinking negative thoughts, it is really hard all of the sudden to stop them. What you can do is crowd them out! How? By thinking a lot of good thoughts. You can start adding positive affirmations in your Reminder app, get apps which give you a positive quote daily (i use DailyQuote and Quote of the day on my iPhone), start and finish your day with 3 things you are grateful for and praise each good thing that happen each day. Because, there is no day without a good thing, but we are so focused on the bad things that nothing else matters and that ultimately eats us alive.

#4. Journaling

I start and end my day with my journal. In the morning, I write a few phrases about how i want my day to go, a few things that i am grateful for and 3 big goals that i want to accomplish. At night, i check my goals, understand why i did or did not accomplish them (to make me accountable and at the same time understand my weaknesses) and write again a few things i am grateful for and i appreciate myself for. It is hard to always wait for others to tell you how beautiful, smart, understanding, fit, etc you are… so why not tell that to yourself? There are days when i appreciate myself for having a polished look, or for being teachable, or for being smart. Some people find it wrong, self-praising, but i find it very useful for restoring our self-esteem.

#5. Understand that you are the one in charge

A lot of people say that some things we cannot control or have no power over them. I don’t agree with it, because in many books that i read, everyone talks about how our feelings shape our thoughts and ultimately our reality. If you find yourself feeling scared, anxious and worried, the universe will send you events that will make you feel this way, because the universe always give you what you ask for.

You might say every day ‘I want to make $10,000 this month‘ but you would be feeling very scared and the ‘behind the thought’ thought would be ‘That is rather impossible, because i have no idea HOW that will happen‘ and if by the end of the month you don’t receive your $10,000 you will blame the books, the universe, God… because you definitely asked for it and did not receive it. But guess what, at the same time, you were feeling something totally different from what your words were and the universe goes for the most powerful feeling.

Realizing that you are in charge of your feelings and of your thoughts, will make you more aware of why some things keep on happening to you. Shift your mood when you feel sad, watch a comedy, go for a walk, go for a run, do something that will make you happy and don’t stay in the low energy vibration, because light attracts light and you want to attract only good things in your life.