Take Action On Your Worries, Or Leave Them Behind

There can be many struggles along the path towards positive thinking, one of which is excessive worry. Negative thinking often takes the form of worrying about things that are completely beyond your control. These thoughts can soon consume your life. This is why it’s important to use some positive thinking techniques to address your worries (both rational and irrational).

Step 1: Notice Your Worry

The first step in these positive thinking techniques is to notice that you’re worrying. As with negative thinking, worrying about anything and everything can become a habit that you do without thinking. Start by trying to catch your worries before they take hold.

Step 2: Ask Yourself Important Questions

Next, you need to question your worry. Is it something you can do something about right now? Or is it something you have no control over?

If it’s something you can’t do anything about, and that you have no control over, you simply have to tell yourself that fact. There’s nothing you can do, so distract yourself to put the worry out of your mind. Whatever you do, don’t take time to think about the consequences of your worry. There is no point.

Step 3: Take Action

If the worry concerns something that you can do something about, then take action and do something about it! You may be able to do something about it right now, in which case you should. Doing it now will mean you can simply forget about it for the rest of the day, and can feel comforted by the fact that you have taken action.

If you can’t do something about the worry right now then there is one thing you can do to ease your mind – schedule a time to address your worry later in the day or week and leave your worry to rest.

Step 4: Switch Your Focus

Whether you realize that you can’t do anything about your worry, or you take action now or schedule it later, the next step is to put the worry out of your mind. By following all of the steps above, you know that you’ve done everything in your power to take control of your circumstances. There is nothing left to worry about.

In some cases, simply recognizing the above fact may be enough to stop you worrying. In others, however, you may need to distract your focus onto something else. For example, if you’re searching on Google about the things you’re worrying about, you may need to stop and get away from the computer to stop your worrying. Or you may want to go out and take a walk to get a change of scenery.

These positive thinking techniques may seem simple, but they can make a huge difference between worry that can actually be productive, and worry that takes up your whole day. Learning to control what you can and to forget about what you can’t control really is one of the most important steps to becoming a more positive person.