You Can’t Control Everything.

Summary:

This video is for those who worry about the things that are out of their hands. The things they can’t control. There’s a lot of us who struggle with this. Something bad is bound to happen, right? Exactly. But not every bad thing we think is going to happen in the future actually comes to fruition.

In this video, peak-performance coach Steve Arnold provides us with the following tangible ways to stop allowing worry to steal our joy:

1. Get present with life. If your mind is being used, you d0n’t have the capacity to worry. A tangible way to tackle this? Create an anchor thought when you feel distracted. Steve’s is “go to the breath.” He tells himself to breathe in and out, over and over. This gets him back into the moment.
2. Accept the worries. Don’t resist them, don’t try to analyze them, don’t try to problem solve them. Let the thoughts pass. The more you think about them, the more power they have.
3. Believe in yourself more. You’re strong. You can handle what comes your way.
4. Practice making yourself uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable experiences you have, the more strength you’ll build up for handling even more uncomfortable things.

Yes, you are worried about something. And that thing may happen, and that thing may not happen. But remember that challenges are beautiful things because they help you grow. They make you stronger for the next thing that gets thrown your way.

Full Transcript:

Do you ever worry about things that are completely out of your control? Do you ever feel like maybe
you’re not experiencing life the way that you should because you are constantly worried and constantly thinking about bad things that might happen in the future? Things that probably won’t happen, but you still feel like they might so maybe you should keep thinking about them and worrying about them like maybe you could prevent these things from happening?

Well, I don’t wanna say this flippantly because I used to have that exact problem. I used to worry in a major, major, major, kind of way almost constantly. I had a very serious chronic worrying problem and it was taking away from my enjoyment of my life and I’m happy to say that I feel like I have pretty much solved this problem. I mean every once in a while I will occasionally go down and worry about something a little more than I should, but it’s very very very rare compared to how it used to be.

Now, I wanna give you a few tips and some things that really helped me out that I believe will help you out as well.

First of all, you need to get present with life. You need to get engaged with life. You need to find things
that you enjoy doing, because if your mind is being used, then it just doesn’t have the capacity to worry, because you’re engaged in the other thing that you are doing.

So you need to get present. Now, for me, I have an anchor thought. And every time that I have a worrying thought that I know is not serving me, I go to the breath. So I focus on the breath, and that gets me present. I have a mantra. I say in, out, in, out, in, out and I just focus on my inhalation and my exhalation, and that helps to bring me back to the present. My thought may go back to the worry, but then I bring it back to the present. It goes to the worry, I bring it back to the present, and then eventually I’m distracted, I’m thinking about something else that I’ve pretty much forgotten about that thing I was worried about.

Okay, the second tip: You need to accept the worries. Don’t resist them, don’t try to analyze them, don’t try to problem solve them. If there’s something that’s really nagging and is really an underlying problem, that thought will come back to you later, and then you’ll have a chance to actually problem solve and analyze it. But when you first have that thought, be really careful, and for the most part it’s probably going to be something that’s not under your control so just go ahead and accept it and be present just like the first tip.

Be present and you need to just let that thought pass. The more you think about it, the more you try to resist
it or try to analyze it, the more power you’re going to give it. It will snowball and it will get worse and worse and worse and worse and it will get harder and harder and harder for you to
be able to let it pass. So just accept the worry.

Okay, the third tip: You need to believe in yourself more. You need to believe in your strength, and you need to believe that if that thing happens that you’re worried about, you can handle it. You’re strong. You are a very strong person, and you can handle whatever comes your way.

Alright, so one thing to help out with this specifically and very practically is: practice making yourself uncomfortable. Because the more you make yourself uncomfortable, the more you’ll realize that when things either don’t go your way or things just feel a little out of sorts because you’re intentionally making yourself uncomfortable, the more you start to believe in yourself and believe that you can handle things.

So, the truth is bad things happen, and if you accept it and you embrace that and you have confidence that you will be able to handle it on the other side, then you will stop worrying about it so much, because if it happens you know that you can handle it and you can maybe even thrive, for example, failure. Failure is something that really helps us on our road to success. So, if you are worried about trying something new because you’re scared that you’ll fail, you need to reframe that and think about failure as a good thing. And think about challenges
as a good thing.

So, you may be worried about something. That thing may happen, and that will present a challenge in your life, and challenges are beautiful because challenges help you grow. They help you get stronger for the next thing that comes in front of you.