I met a potential coaching client the other day, wanting to explore how they could spend less of their time in a worried state. The brief conversation led to me being curious about worrying. Its intent, patterns of behaviour, structure, purpose etc.

In pondering my own experience I notice that I don’t typically worry when I’m in a really good mood.  When things are joyous, happy, positive, worry seems to be absent?

The next thing I notice is that worry seems to be in two broad forms – imagining a future potential scenario or assessing a past one. I worry about something that might or might not happen, or I worry about what I’ve just done, or not done. This leads me to notice that worry seems to be neutral in some way – it shows no favoritism to good or bad, might or might not, did or didn’t.

Worry seems to be a state of disablement.  Worry, in a sense, stops me acting.  It occupies me … with worry.  I don’t know that worry achieves anything other than keeping us busy. I am reminded of this quote (attributed to a number of people)…

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it gets you nowhere.

I have also met people for whom worry becomes a state of existence. They develop beliefs about the need to worry in order to be themselves. Worrying develops a heightened state of challenge that delivers, it seems to them, a better result.

Curious that we worry.

That’s enough worrying about worry for now. Time to just be.