Worrying won’t get you anywhere

Jul 25, 2008 • Paul Singh

This is the tenth in a series of posts about the lessons I wish I’d learned earlier in life.

This is a big one so listen to me carefully: Most things you fear will never actually happen. Even if they do, they’re never as painful or bad as you expected. So, I’ve learned that worrying about stuff is just a waste of time.

This is, of course, easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life has actually happened, you’ll probably end up laughing at yourself. (I know I did.) Now think about how much time you’ve wasted worrying about trivial things.

How my friend and I used to waste time:

I have a friend who’s been interviewing for a few jobs recently. She’s experienced, talented, knows all the right people and has great interviewing skills. The problem is that she nails herself after the interview and starts worrying about everything. In fact, she’ll sit there and constantly check her cell phone for a call back. A week goes by before she hears anything back but she wasted a whole week! (She got the job she wanted anyways.)

When I started this blog a few months ago, I constantly worried about whether visitors would actually care about anything I had to say. Whenever a new post went up, I’d spend nearly the whole next day watching the statistics. And for what? What I didn’t understand at the time was that it simply doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I keep blogging and dealing with all the other things I’ve got going on.

“But, I’m still worried!”

Fine. First, you need to get some self discipline. (Need some outside motivation?) Second, go do something else. Seriously, if you just can’t get the worries out of your mind, at least put your energy into something useful.

The bottom line:

You probably have tons of other stuff to do.

Stop making excuses. Worrying isn’t going to solve anything anyways. Start spending your time working on other things. When and if something bad actually happens, just get started on the solution. Seriously, it works.