Do you know or remember the expression, “worry wart”? I haven’t heard it in years. I don’t know if people use it any more. But I do know that all over the world, people still worry a lot, whether they’d still be called “worry warts” or not.
I used to be one of those people. I suppose I came by it honestly enough. I grew up living in a fear-filled, hostile environment and when I left home, I kept finding more of the same. I’ve sometimes said that if we got theme music to go with our lives, the first three or four decades of mine would have been from the film, “Jaws.” I was in a constant state of anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or a grand piano to fall on my head à la the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
Sure enough, the shoes and pianos kept dropping. So I kept worrying.
As a kid, I didn’t have much choice about what was happening in my environment. Then I became an adult who didn’t know she HAD much choice about it. I’d got so used to worrying and being in fearful situations that I just went from one to the next to the next. It was all I expected from life. I thought I had no choice or control about any of it.
I used to say that if it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all. And of course, the miseries continued to come. And so did the worry about more.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about “The Secret” and “The Law of Attraction” and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve seen it in action and it works. “What you think about, you bring about.” If you focus on what you want, you’ll get it. If you focus on what you don’t want, you’ll get that, too.
But even if you remove any notion of “The Law of Attraction” and look at the concept as simply as possible, it just makes sense. Let’s say you’ve decided you want a particular job and you’re excited about it. You’re thinking about it a lot, you’re imagining yourself in that role and you can’t wait to make it happen.
In that frame of mind, you’ll be open to spotting an advert about just such a job, or one that sounds like it might be the right one. Or you’ll overhear a conversation about one that’s opening up or someone comes to you and says, “I heard about this job possibility for you”, so you jump at the chance and get details and contact information.
On the other hand, if you think you’ll be stuck in your job forever, you couldn’t possibly change, no one would hire you, you’d never get any other job, you can’t learn anything new or some other bunch of blah blah blah, your eyes will skate right past those adverts. When you overhear a conversation about a job you might like, or someone tells you there’s one available where they work, you’ll think, “What’s the point, they won’t hire me anyway.”
So even if you take the contact details, you won’t bother using them.
In either case, you validate your beliefs. It’s what we do. It’s human nature. Forget thinking about “The Law of Attraction” and just think about how your feet will lead you to whatever is on your mind. It’s kind of like when you’re driving and you go into a skid. They always tell you do not look where the car is heading or you’ll keep steering in that direction. They tell you to look back to the safe part of the road, where you want to be.
Well, there’s a reason for that. We will follow our gaze, literally and figuratively.
Did you ever notice that if you’re griping about feeling miserable and saying, “I have all this stuff to worry about”, it never makes you feel any better? In fact, it makes you feel a whole lot worse?
Well, guess what? Worry is just a prayer for the negative. So no wonder you felt worse. And you probably dragged a whole lot of whatever you were worrying about right smack into the middle of your life because you were open to it, you were thinking about it, you were focusing on the direction of the skid. So you slammed right into the wall or the oncoming vehicle – the very obstacle you were trying to avoid.
Whatever “stuff” you’ve got going on, don’t worry about it or you’re just praying for more of the same. Look away from the skid and turn your attention to where you want your car to be headed – and get back to the safe part of the road.