3 STEPS TO QUICKLY WIPE AWAY WORRY & OVERTHINKING!

Our brains are wired to worry, and that’s okay. It’s a built-in mechanism for survival. “What’s next… What about this… Should I be doing that…?”

These are perfectly normal reactions to various scenarios, but reactions can sometimes ruminate in our minds to a point of concern. They can expand and spiral into overwhelming worry and overthinking. Worry can lock up our ability to react intelligently—it can feed on our anger, our fears and disrupt good decision making. Here are three ways to stop worry in its tracks: 1) MOOD Once you become aware that your natural concerns are beginning to affect your emotional state and raise your worry levels, consciously work to reign in your brain. Start by quieting your thoughts with deep breathing. Three to five deep breaths will naturally trigger physical responses that will lower your heart rate, calm your disposition, and shift your mood. 2) PERSPECTIVE Now that your deep breathing and intentional effort to get calm have turned down the volume on your reactions, begin to give yourself a mental moment to shift perspective. Changing the way you see things will put things into perspective. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems; often times our fear or anger can make things worse. You can quickly change your perspective by thinking or listing out three to five things that you are grateful for. You can list small things or big things. Either way, it's hard to be fearful or angry and grateful at the same time. This is one of many great exercises that will pull the brain away from piling on worry. Other exercises include, listing out worst case scenarios about the worry and working backwards through possible actions that you can take to resolve the worry. This can all help put the worry into perspective.   3) RESPONSE You’ve changed your mood and your perspective. Congratulations! You’ve regained control over your thoughts. You may now revisit the scenario that’s worrying you so that you can intelligently consider all of your options for action. But keep it in perspective. Don’t think about all of the things that can go wrong, or all of the things that have gotten you to this point of worry. Address the worry only. What can you (if anything) do about the worry? If you can do something rational, or if you can’t do anything due to your control and proximity, accept those options and move forward.