Out Of Your Mind(set) With Worry? Take Back Control In A Minute

Worry can really mess with things--most particularly our minds. I don’t know about you, but I need my marketing mind set for success (not worry)--every single day. If I get caught up in one of those awful worry cycles, it's a little bit like a hamster wheel. It keeps me busy (to exhaustion!), but it doesn’t get me anywhere. Worse, it squanders precious time, energy, focus, and productivity; it steals the best part of my days and even my sleep at night.

Can you relate?

One of the best ways I have found for breaking out of the worry cycle--or better yet, never letting it take hold--is this:

Whenever I feel it threatening to overwhelm me, I remind myself that worry is really a fear of giving up control of the known, to the unknown. Nobody likes the unknown. The good news is that every unknown can be turned into a known. Once we know what we are dealing with, we can put an action plan in place to handle it. Here’s what I mean:

When I was a young mom I worried each time I put my child on the school bus, because I was giving up my control over his environment and care (known) to others (unknown). I was letting him out of my control and that was hard--until I realized what I was doing and came to understand it in the way I just described. Then I felt a little foolish; I hadn’t really thought of myself as having a lot of “control issues.” Oops.

Self-knowledge is a humbling thing. And totally necessary for growth.

I found that by pinpointing my worry around the particular “known control” I was giving up, I could see new options for relieving the fear of the unknown. For instance, in the school bus scenario, I made a point of getting to know the school bus driver by reaching out to him with a friendly greeting and short exchange each morning. Amazingly, after just a couple of days, my fears gave way to trust. I was pretty sure that little Mac was in good hands and that I could let go of the worry.

The lesson here? That there is something over which we always maintain complete control--our own thoughts, fears, and behaviors. By getting clear about what we fear--and the particular unknowns involved, we can take back control (in a good way) and relieve worry.

So here is an action formula to follow when worry threatens to mess with your marketing mindset:

Step one: identify the unknown that scares you;

Step two: make a short list of things you can do to change the unknown into a known;

Step three: Start doing them.

As a bonus for yourself, once you start turning worry into confidence, try this little exercise: Recall another time in your life that you got through a situation that had caused you a lot of worry. Tell yourself a good (true) story about how things finally worked out. Make yourself the hero or heroine of the story--because you are!