How I Stopped Worrying and You Can Too

Worry destroys people. It sucks all the joy out of life and fill us so full of shame that we can’t even enjoy spending time with family and friends. Worry can make us so desperate that we turn to drugs, even though this only makes the situation worse, and it may eventually drive us to suicide.

I know how much pain worry can cause because it was such a huge part of my own journey. I remember in my early teens drinking a bottle a vodka in an attempt to calm my mind down. This soon became a habit. Things got so bad by my mid-twenties that I had a brief spell of being homeless.

Even after I finally quit alcohol, I still continued to have regular periods of intense worry. This would often involve taking to my bed and becoming completely dysfunctional. Then, 8 years ago, something changed (you can read my blog post from that time here), I stopped being a worrier.

How Things Have Changed

Many of us are facing a huge amount of uncertainty due to the impact of coronavirus. My last great battle with worry eight years ago was triggered by financial concerns, yet my response to this current situation could not be more different. There has been no worry, no sleepless nights, no self-pity, and no begging the universe to save me.

I remember something the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said that he didn’t care what happened to him. When I first heard this, I wondered if he might be depressed, but I get it now. What he seems to be talking about is the realization that it is not about what happens to us but how we relate to what is happening to us. If we resist what is happening we suffer, if we don’t resist, there is no suffering.

Stillness as the Anecdote to Worry

My episodes of worry would become so intense that I would want to die. I just wanted it all to stop. The only thing preventing me was that I didn’t want to hurt my family, and if I’m honest, I didn’t have the courage to see it through. Stillness is where it all stops. It was what my mind was so desperately seeking, but it does not involve a physical death. It is a kind of death, but only the death of the worrier who is replaced by a core of unshakeable stillness from where we experience our life.

I find it hard to talk to people about stillness. It is impossible for me to describe how important it is, how life-changing it is, and how wonderful it is . When I do bring the topic up with clients, their eyes tend to glaze over. I’ve realized that the only way to appreciate stillness is to experience it for a sufficient period of time. It is only by doing this that we can see it is the answer we were always looking for.

Stillness is always there, but it becomes more noticeable to us the less we resist life. Once we spend a sufficient amount of time in stillness, it becomes our natural resting place. This means that no matter what is going on, it is experienced from stillness and with complete acceptance.

Wu Wei – How Shit Gets Done

Right now, your body is performing millions of incredibly complex tasks that keep you alive. You are not aware of this work, and if you were to suddenly have to take conscious charge of these activities, you wouldn’t have a clue what to do and would begin dying right away. If you trust your body to keep you alive, why can’t you trust your mind to take care of the challenges that face you in life?

Wu Wei comes from Chinese philosophy, and it can be translated as ‘effortless action’. A similar idea can be found in Christianity when they talk about ‘taking your hand off the rudder’. It means that instead of trying to micromanage our mind, we trust our mind to do what needs to be done. I now look at my old friend ‘the worrier’ as like a clueless boss who comes into a factory and tries to micromanage everyone – this only leads to chaos and unnecessary stress.

As we become established in stillness, we start to trust the mind to take care of whatever needs to be done. Without any effort or stress, the right response to life just arises by itself. The biggest force in nature is the drive to survive and thrive, so we shouldn’t be surprised at how effortlessly our mind can do this (especially when the clueless boss isn’t looking over its shoulder).

How to Stop Worrying

There are many practices that will allow you to experience stillness. The key to escaping worry is to hang out in this stillness as much as you can until it becomes who you are. The way I teach clients to do this is by first bringing their attention to the five senses. Next, develop a sense of appreciation for whatever our attention is focused on. When we do this, even if it is only for a few seconds, we are not resisting what is there, and this creates an encounter with stillness.

A common mistake that beginners make when they come to the practice is they try to stop the thoughts. This usually leads to frustration and mean even more anxiety – i.e. we start to worry about not being able to stop worrying. We don’t stop worrying by physically stopping thoughts, we escape worrying by finding a refuge in stillness – then the anxious thoughts run out of steam because we are no longer giving them fuel