WORRY = Wasted Energy.............

Do you know that my youngest has ADHD? Those of you that already knew this will find the statement she made this morning very typical, "Man! Second day of school and I have already lost my backpack!" The really cool thing about this, is since this type of thing is so common place, it caused her no worry. She is used to things either turning up (usually when she is looking for something else) or figuring out a way to substitute/do without/replace the missing item. I have learned to go with her flow and let her handle it instead of trying to fix something that she doesn't see as broken. This has saved me many hours of stressing over things that in the big picture of life have little value.

I am pleased to anounced that, at least for yesterday, I was right about the art class that my youngest "had" to take. She was dreading it, as she feels she has no artistic ablility. I told her to forget about her artistic ability and just have fun with the process. She couldn't wait to tell me two things about art class last night. 1. There was a WHOLE TABLE FULL of kids that she liked in the class so that was going to make it fun, and 2. after the class completed their first drawing, the teacher (who is also the boys track/cross country coach, and knows my youngest well) was going through the stack and when he came to hers his comment was, "_______, we'll have to work with you." This made her laugh, so see, she was already having a blast in the class.

It is not easy to give up worrying. Many of us have made a life long habit of this activity, maybe even have our identity tied up in the fine art of worrying. Like any other activitity in our life, we should only hang onto it if we find value in it. Except for the fact that worry/stress sometimes made me not eat (so them potentially lose weight) I have never found any real value in it. (As soon as I am happy, I started eating and gained any lost weight right back.) I fret, and fret, and fret, and the worry remains. Until the problem causing the worry is resolved, sometimes in the strangest of ways, nothing changes. So why then can it be so hard to give up an activity that is so counter productive? I think for the most part it is because when under stress we go with what we know.

Say, hypothetically you lose your job, no money saved up, and no job prospects in sight. EVERYONE would expect you to be worried. In fact they may think you down right weird if you were not worrying about your financial troubles. Picture all the ways you might worry about this scenario..... Now picture not worrying about it at all? What was different about the two things? Did either make the problem go away? Did either make you feel better emotionally, so that you might better make head way towards solving your problem? No right or wrong answers, just an experiment to show you how much of a worrier you are, and how well it works/doesn't work for you.

Try it for real the next time a problem creeps into your life. Let me know what happens.